February 12 - Custom Colors and Color Poetry
Today’s practice is inspired by my many years leading color mixing workshops. One of the favorite activities was to create color samples cards and name custom colors.
It was delightful to see how color inspired language in these workshops. Sometimes colors were named for things they resembled while others were more about the process of making them. “Patriotic purple” was a light lavender made from mixing red, white and blue. “Orch” was a mix of peach and orange.
If you are going to mix some colors, here are a few tips and a bit of additional color vocabulary.
Strong colors and weak colors - when mixing it is important to add small amounts of stronger colors into weaker ones. For example, red and blue are stronger than white and yellow. If mixing green, you would add the blue to the yellow rather than the other way around.
You see a bigger change when you add small bits of a strong color to a weaker one. Think of mixing house paint at the hardware store, if you want pink, they will begin with a can of white and add bits of red until it is the correct tint.
Mixing brown, black and darker tones can be a great challenge. Typically colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel mix browns and grays.
Whether you mix your own colors or choose from colors you already have, I hope you will let colors inspire language in your practice today.
