Tag: color obsession

Something Fun for Color Junkies

A few years ago I was at my local yarn store. There were some bins of sale yarns. I could not concentrate until I had arranged the yarns in those bins by color. The woman working there at the time told me it was because I am a color junkie.

WOW! A term to describe my obsession with color!

I wonder why I was happy drawing in pencil for all those years when I definitely have an obsession with color. Since I’ve devoted this entire year to completing all the pencil drawings for the upcoming book The Cabins of Wilsonia, I really get immense pleasure from working with color wherever I can – knitting, arranging the clothes in my closet in color order (Everyone does that, right?), mixing paint to ~~cover up~~ dress up parts of the workshop, organizing my drawing students’ colored pencils, et cetera.

Awhile ago, I discovered something really fun to do online. It is a color test, and it is free. I scored very high (low, actually, because in the test low is a high score.) Then I forgot about it until last week. I took the test again and look!

Isn’t that thrilling??

You can take the test too. Try it and tell me what you think, either by email or by commenting on this blog. I’d love to hear if it is as fun for you as for me. It’s probably just me. That’s okay, I’m used to being different from the average bear.

color junkie color obsession

Color Lesson: About Lavender

First, a confession. I thought “lavender” was spelled “lavendar”. Really! Me, the Typo-Psycho! I was getting it mixed up with “calendar”. This is a prime example of the Middle-Aged-Mush-Brain I am currently experiencing.

Now that I know how to spell it properly, let’s talk about it.

Lavender is light purple. I used to hate that color. This was the result of a trauma that happened when I was in about the 3rd grade.

My older sister had a bee-yoo-tee-full lavender dress that I COULD NOT WAIT for her to outgrow. Finally, finally, it came to me. I tried it on, looked in the mirror and was HORRIFIED. My skin looked YELLOW!! I ran to find Mom and told her, “This dress makes my skin look yellow!” She was astonished that yes indeed, it did make my skin look yellow and probably even more astonished that her 8 year old daughter noticed such a thing.

It was a life-defining moment, although I didn’t know it at the time.

In the 1980s, my Mom took my older sister and me to a color consultant to “have our colors done”. (My younger sister was and is too smart to need this and too cute to care.) Doesn’t that sound wonderful?

It was. Turns out that everyone can wear almost every color. The problems occur when you choose the wrong shade. That lavender did not have enough blue in it to suit me. I still have my color swatches from that session, and they have helped me tremendously through the years.

You can learn about it from a book called “Color Me Beautiful” by Carole Jackson.

I also learned that as we age, our eyes become more aware of the color purple. Sure enough, in the last 5 years or so, I have come to be almost obsessed with the purple color that has a ton of blue in it. There is a version called periwinkle, and a darker version that is the color of my favorite dutch iris and some lupine and definitely a penstemmon and for sure my favorite Mineral King wildflower called “Explorer’s Gentian.

Explorer’s Gentian

So, I’ve grown from “I hate lavender” to “Oh wow, check out that color!”

What else would you expect from a color junkie?

confessions of a Color Junkie, part 3

Purple, or “violet”, as it is more correctly called, is a color I haven’t liked very well most of my life. A few years ago, something changed, and I began to crave periwinkle, that almost blue shade of violet. Think lupine, brodeia, dutch iris. . . Someone told me that as we age, the cones in our eyes see purple better than when we were young. Oh-oh – is that the reason? (Brings to mind that poem “When I am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple”.) While on our photo trip over Yokohl, I was knitting a sweater in that wonderful bluey purple color; I actually asked Michael to stop next to a lupine so I could hold the sweater out the window and compare the colors. I was thrilled to see they were an exact match! (You just never know what will set off a color junkie.) I have found that to be a difficult color to mix, working only with the primaries, that has been a difficult color to mix. I finally asked Diana Moses Botkin about it, and she advised me just to buy a tube of violet! Wow – if she says it is okay, it must be! Just one other thing – I’ve noticed many men refer to burgundy or maroon as “purple”! I wonder why. . . can’t get a helpful explanation other than “It looks purple to me!”

Sweater colored lupine (ok, I might have messed around with the color in this photo!)

Periwinkle, the plant (also known as the dreaded invasive vinca major)

color obsession periwinkle

Color Junkie, continued

Lavender and I have a history. My older sister had a lavender dress that I thought was Absoloootely Beyoootiful, and I couldn’t wait for her to outgrow it. After about a zillion years, I finally made it to 3rd grade, and the dress was finally mine. I tried it on, stood in front of Mom’s full-length mirror to admire myself and was horrified to discover that my skin looked yellow! T I ran from the room, yelling for Mom! She said, “My goodness! Looks like lavendar isn’t your color!” It was a terrible moment, one that sealed a poor opinion in me toward lavender and its stronger cousin purple (or more correctly known as “violet”). Since then I’ve learned that anyone can wear almost any color. It is the shade that matters, the hue, the variation. That particular shade had too much red in it, and still makes me look like an advanced case of jaundice. Put me in a shade with lots of blue, and the compliments fly my way. Lavender, violet, purple, lilac – there are many names for this color.

Lavender, the plant

Lilac, the plant

color obsession lavendar

True confessions of a Color Junkie

A few months ago I was at Creekside Yarns, knitting with April and getting some help with a project. As we sat there together, I kept seeing the bins of sale yarn and they were bugging me. Finally I told April that I just HAD to organize the yarn by color. She just looked at me for a moment, and then said, “Color Junkie.” WOW! THAT’S IT! I am a Color Junkie! After she outed me in that small but momentous revelation, all the evidence of being a color junkie is surfacing in my memory. Here is the first one: as a kid, I remember lying on my bed just contemplating the colors in the bedspread. Suddenly I was totally captivated by the blue – it just mesmerized me with its beauty. I jumped up, ran to find Mom and tell her. Lacking an understanding of my Color Junkie beginnings, all I could think to express was this: “My favorite color isn’t pink anymore – it’s blue!” I’m sure she was puzzled what brought it all on; I’m thankful she just kindly listened. Here is a look at part of my blue obsession:

favorite flower

a painting subject I couldn’t resist and will probably paint over and over

my kitchen floor

chair in my herb garden

blue color obsession