Color signifies life. In our explorations of the solar planets and their many moons, we have yet to find life on any world in space, and therefore the colorfulness of our planet, especially the green of our vegetation and the blue of our water, appears to be unique.
To help the nation respond to terrorist threats, American government announced a color-coded warning system — from green for the least serious threat through blue, yellow, orange, and red for the most severe risk.
Red is a color that is traditionally connected with danger and excitement, therefore perhaps attracting less cautious, more adventurous drivers.
Can it be true that color is not a thing in itself, but merely an observer’s mental sensation caused by light falling on an unfathomable surface? Is a lemon really yellow or is the yellow sensation only occurring inside my own mind? Scientists tell us that lemons, whatever color they might or might not be (perhaps even colorless!), have particular surface qualities that absorb all light wavelengths except those that reflect a particular wavelength back to my eye/brain/mind system. This specific wavelength causes my visual system to experience a mental sensation that in English is named “yellow.”
I have attached great value to drawing and will continue to, because it is the backbone of painting, the skeleton that supports all the rest.
Another connection that links drawing, painting, and color involves brain processes. Drawing a perceived subject seems to require mainly the visual, perceptual functions fo the nonverbal right-brain hemisphere without interference from the verbal system of the left brain. Color and painting, on the other hand, require the same visual-perceptual functions and input from the verbal, sequential left hemisphere for mixing colors.
The purpose of the constancies is efficiency. The brain does not want to make up its mind, so to speak, every time conditions such as light, distance, or unusual orientations change the appearance or size of familiar objects. An orange is seen as that color even when seen in a blue light. We mostly see what we have learned to expect to see. Penetrating this mind-set and breaking through the constancies requires new ways of perceiving — just one of the important skills that you will learn by doing the exercises in this book.
The yellowish light of midmorning will cause red to become more orangish, and the bluer light of late day will shade the red toward purple. The brain resists acknowledging these changes, however, and a red flower will seem the same red throughout the day.
French artist Claude Monet had an insatiable desire to see and understand how colors change under varying conditions of light. In his zeal, he painted the same subjects, such as haystacks or church facades, from the same viewing point, over and over during the course of many days.
In the Western world, theories about color have a clear history of development, beginning with the ancient Greeks, who thought that colors arose from the struggle between light and darkness. Aristotle considered red to be midway along a continuum from white to black, with the other hues arranged accordingly — yellow nearer to white and blue nearer to black. He thus conceived a linear ordering of colors based on the paleness or darkness of pure hues, a theory of color ordering that persisted for over two thousand years.
Even a full century later, writer and scientist Johann Goethe scathingly wrote about Newton’s work, “Go ahead, split the light! You try to separate, as you often have, that which is one and remains one in spite of you.”
Newton believed that there was a correspondence between sounds and colors. Perhaps because of this mind-set, he decided that he saw seven colors in the rainbow — note that there are two blues, indigo and blue.
In this way, he aligned his diagram with the seven tones of the musical octave. Scientists continue to study this music/color analogy today.
In a way, naming a color by its attributes is similar to identifying an object. We ask ourselves first “In what category is this object?” then “What is its size and shape?” and last, “Of what material is it made?”
Beauty is certainly a soft, smooth, slippery thing, and therefore of a nature which easily slips in and permeates our souls.
Yellow is one of the most ambiguous colors. It is the color of sunlight, gold, and happiness, of intellect and enlightenment, but it is also the color of envy, disgrace, deceit, betrayal, and cowardice.
So few colors give the viewer such a feeling of ambivalence or leave in one such powerful, viscerally enforced connotations and contradictions. Desire and renunciation. Dreams and decadence. Shining light and shallowness. Gold here. Grief there. An intimate mirroring in its emblematic significance of glory in one instance and, in yet another, painful, disturbing estrangement. An opposing duality seems mysteriously constant.
The yellow submarine symbolized youthful optimism, and the Blue Meanies, who despised both music and love, were the unsuccessful opposing force. Modern law enforcement uses bright yellow tape to mark a crime scene, another good-versus-evil sign. In the ancient symbolism of dreams, pale yellow meant material comfort, but deep yellow signified jealousy and deceit. Gentlemen are said to love blondes, but women with blonde hair were called — by those same gentlemen — “dumb blondes.”
On the other hand, yellow in nature is often extolled as cheerful and charming.
In Jungian psychology, yellow symbolizes the flash of insight called “intuition,” which seems to come “from out of the blue” or “from left field,” which, incidentally, is the visual field of the right hemisphere of the brain.
Blue evokes the void or vast distances, as in something disappearing “into the wild blue yonder.”
It is serene and pure, like the ocean.
In its darker versions, blue represents authority (the prototypical elected official’s dark blue suit), and in the symbolic meaning of colors in dreams, blue means success. Both the Ford Motor Company, founded by Henry Ford, the quintessential authoritarian manager, and IBM adopted blue as an identifying color.
In its paler versions, blue means happiness. In Christianity, the Madonna is usually clothed in blue, symbolizing fidelity, as reflected in our modern phase “true blue.”
Yet, like other colors, blue is ambiguous and mysterious. Blue connotes reverie, sadness, and melancholy. Picasso, in his “blue period” paintings, depicted the lowlife of Paris with its sadness and poverty. When Picasso’s mood improved (along with his living conditions), he initiated his “rose period.” And how many hundreds of sad songs have the words blue or blues in the titles?
If, for example, blue appears in your painting of “Anger,” it may mean that anger, for you, is related to authority and power. If it appears in your depiction of “Love,” for you it could mean that love is boundless and vast, or, conversely, it could mean that love carries an element of sadness or “the blues.”
Orange is related to heat and fire, but without the intense feelings ascribed to red, as red becomes more red-orange in mixture, it loses its meaning of danger.
Purple is a dark color, the closest in value to black, and some of its symbolic meaning stems from the fact that it reflects so little light. Purple’s complement, yellow, is the palest of the color wheel hues and the color that reflects the most light. Thus, the two together form something like sunlight and shadow (or perhaps, in emotional terms, joy and sadness).
Purple is a color associated with deep feeling, as in “purple passion” or “purple with rage.” It is a color associated with mourning for the death of loved ones. In early cultures, purple dye was extremely difficult and expensive to produce. Therefore, “royal purple” quickly came to symbolize the ruling class, dignity, and power, and purple clothing was forbidden to those of lower rank.
Politicians, even today, avoid wearing pink ties. Illogically, however, politicians often wear red ties, a color even more highly charged relative to communism.
Gray is the color of gloom and depression. “What lies before me? A future that’s stormy, a winter that’s gray and cold.” Gray is also the color of indecision and uncertainty — of “gray areas” that defy direct action. It is the color of ash and lead, and it is associated with aging, as in “the graying of America.” It carries the connotation of lack of strong feeling and an abdication of self.
Of course, the best possible way to practice your color skills is to continue painting. I know of no better way to slow down perception and see color in all of its complex relationships. color is a study without end, because you will always feel, as every painter feels, that even though your last effort was flawed, your next effort will depict the beauty of color may be the one wherein nature will yield some of her secrets.
It is the aesthetic that represents the highest form of intellectual achievement, and it is the aesthetic that provides the natural high and contributes the energy we need to want to pursue an activity again and again and again.