For many years, people have been submitting essays to a series call This I Believe. Radio broadcaster Bob Edwards regularly includes recent ones on his weekly radio show and the topics range from apples to zoology and everything in between. This seemed like a good idea for a series of blog topics so today I thought I’d ramble on about one of my favorite beliefs: color.
Remember tissue paper gift wrap, the kind that had glitter in it? I remember a particular piece of glittery tissue paper. I carried it around with me for a long time, fascinated by those little glittery bits of color embedded in the paper. I was so very sorry when I spilled a glass of milk on my favorite piece of paper. Only little kids can be satisfied with something as simple as a piece of shiny paper. So I quickly graduated to aluminum foil. It lasted longer. It came in a big roll in a box so you could get more if food disasters occurred. And better yet, you could wrap it around coins to make them shiny. No great mystery why girls like jewelry because a love of shiny is part of our DNA.
Even aluminum foil gets torn up so it wasn’t long until I discovered colorful fabric. Mom liked to sew and there were always scraps of fabric in bags and baskets waiting to be used in quilts or as patches. My favorite fabrics were satin and velvet: shiny, soft, and best of all, they came in all kinds of colors. No mystery why decorative scarves have long been a fashion favorite: color and shine!
Now consider a man’s reaction to glitter from a fun story about our astronauts. Astronauts spotted glittery, colorful lights outside their spacecraft and wondered if this lovely sight could possibly be some form of outer space life. Until they realized that the shiny stuff appeared every time they dumped urine from the space craft. At least that speculation shows creative imagination.
From a young age, I was an artist. Still am. I love to slosh paint around to see what I can make of it. I like teaching color to my art students. Beginners assume that if you want to make a color lighter, add white. This works. However, there are other colors to mix to get lighter colors and much more variety. Add yellow to blue and you get green. Add more yellow and you get a lighter green. Magic! Beginners also assume that if you want a darker color, add black. This works but you may end up with a very muddy color – not very pretty. Black is an elegant, stunning color, but you can get dark colors by mixing other colors together.
Add a tiny bit of orange to blue and you get a darker blue. Add a tiny bit of yellow to purple and you get a darker purple. Add a bit of green to red and you get a darker red. These colors, known in artist jargon as complementary colors will darken each other if added together in the correct amounts. How much is the correct amount? Well that depends on the color you want. It is both magic and a delightful puzzle. In the case of this type of puzzle, I tell my students, there is no wrong answer. In a math puzzle, if you get the wrong answer, the space ship crashes or the bridge collapses. In an art puzzle, there are many possibilities and the only limit is your imagination.
Some of my students look at me as if I am crazy and some frown seriously. Most seem to have lots of fun once the paint starts flowing onto the paper. Colors make people smile!
I also remember teaching kindergarteners about color. They are suitably impressed by the magic that occurs when primaries are mixed into secondaries. Red and yellow make orange. Red and blue make purple. Blue and yellow make green. Magic. Kindergarteners reasonably assume that if two colors are mixed together to make another color, more colors mixed together must be better. They are not ready for the finesse needed to mix complementary colors so invariably they mix every color they can get on their brushes and they end up with mud. But it is all great fun.
Give them finger paints instead and then the organized chaos really begins. I taught art students about painter Vincent Van Gogh using finger paints. If you look at his paintings, Starry Night is a familiar one, don’t just look at the colors, look at the texture he achieves by applying paint in thick, swirling layers. Fifth graders make amazing pictures with both color and texture using finger paints when you inspire them with a master class about the magnificent Mr. Van Gogh.
I have nearly finished reading Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s book The World’s Worst Journey about Robert Falcon Scott’s second Antarctic expedition to reach the South Pole. It is a fascinating tale of adventure and hardship and exploration. Cherry-Garrard is very aware of the look of Antarctica and he brings the colors of that vast place to life in his story. This place of always-winter is full of colors both subtle and intense. Imagine many months of total darkness when the only light is candlelight or moonlight or starlight. Imagine the intense days of 24 hour sunshine during the summer months when ice and snow are many shades of blue as well as white and the sky is ever-changing colors with parhelions (sunbows) and southern lights (like northern lights) making stunning mirages in the sky. Cherry-Garrard sees purples and reds and yellow and greens and rich blacks and browns in Antarctica.
Colors matter and not just to artists. We don’t make only one color of automobile and we don’t paint our houses one standard color. Imagine a world where everything was a single, specific, prescribed color and no variety of any kind was allowed. In a world where some folks like to be in supreme control, the only color allowed would be grey. Greys are beautiful. Nothing but grey would be ridiculous. But colors matter and to some folks, some colors are not good. Consider the idiotic idea that skin color has something to do with human value. This has been one of humanity’s most stupid, ugly, and hurtful ideas. On this Martin Luther King holiday, let us celebrate all colors in all uses and forms. Color exists only to bring joy and variety and pleasure and imagination to the world. Colors should always make people smile. The more colors, the better. This I believe.
