What Color Should I Paint My…?
January 11, 2013 § 2 Comments
January 11, 2013
More than ever, our homes are critically important to our sense of comfort and well-being where we build our own personal nests. The act of decorating our home is the catalyst that sparks our creativity, providing that special environment that helps us and those who live with us thrive.
Which is why it is not so simple to answer the question “What color should I paint my…?”
Image Via Colors For Your Every Mood
There are absolutely no quick or easy answers to that question. There isn’t a “magic bullet” answer as there are many factors to take into consideration, including:
Mood/Emotion
Lighting
Family
Lifestyle
Room scale/size
Likes/dislikes
My book Colors For Your Every Mood can help to guide you to some moods and color palettes as well as give you some of the color psychology behind those colors. Once you have familiarized yourself with color moods and you still feel you need some help to attain the “feel” you are comfortable with, you may want to hire a professional. At the very least, the book might help you to validate what you feel instinctively.
Before taking that final step and applying paint on the walls, it is important to think about the emotional aspect of color. The colors you choose will create moods and feelings that will have a great impact on you (and your family’s) well-being and comfort level.
You see, for someone to blindly suggest you paint any part of your home without them having a sense of who you are and what you hope to get out of the space, you are potentially asking for trouble. You wouldn’t want to end up with furniture that no longer matches or works in the space. These are costly mistakes that can be avoided.
Holiday Special Discount: Code Word COLOR
December 31, 2012 § 2 Comments
November 29, 2012
The Color/Design class is the gift that keeps on giving...to yourself and to your future.
Have you been dreaming about taking your career to the next level? Don’t wait for another year to invest in you. This is the time of year when you are often thinking about doing for others and overlook yourself and your own potential.
What’s Your Sign? Is Your Birthstone Emerald? Color Me Curious.
December 13, 2012 § 2 Comments
December 13, 2012
Lorraine DePasque is a Style/Trends editor for instoremag.com. She has interviewed me many times before and we are often on the same “wavelength” when it comes to spotting trends. This was especially evident when it came to Emerald. I often tell people at my presentations to look to high end jewelry for future influence.
You can say that Lorraine had her (Emerald clad?) finger on the pulse of this one considering that she posted this blog back in April. Click the link below to read Lorraine’s rationale of Emerald in terms of jewelry.
Holiday Special Discount: Code Word COLOR
November 29, 2012 § 4 Comments
November 29, 2012
The Color/Design class is the gift that keeps on giving…to yourself and to your future.
Have you been dreaming about taking your career to the next level? Don’t wait for another year to invest in you. This is the time of year when you are often thinking about doing for others and overlook yourself and your own potential.
Image thanks to John Q Shearer a student from the July 2012 Color/Design class.
Join us in January in sunny Burbank, CA to attend my Color/Design training program where we immerse ourselves in color forecasting, color and emotion and learning more about consumer color preferences. Most of all, you will learn how to turn your love of color into a lucrative career or enhance and validate what you already know.
Email us at: leiseman@nwlink.com.
Comic Book Color And The Creatives Behind It
November 26, 2012 § Leave a Comment
November 26, 2012
Comic Books for Social Change
This is no news: comic books are a well-known powerful media to send social messages. There are many examples of successful experiences that connect them with positive social change all over the world.
Animal Defenders
Comic book characters have a lot of power because they can do anything and everything and also have the potential to engage a super broad audience in age, background, and reading skills. That, and our love of color, design, the environment, storytelling and teaching is what pushed Veronica and me into this adventure.
She is a graphic designer and illustrator, I am a teacher and a writer and together we founded and manage Musgo Comunicación Visual, a design studio based in Caracas. But we wanted to give something back, so we also teamed up to build Patrulla Verde, an environmental NGO devoted to producing free educational contents via the Web, some in print, as well as public speaking in schools, colleges, community centers, companies and even malls and public spaces.
We pooled together our talent and experience in an effort to send an environmental message conductive to action to children and adolescents in the Spanish-speaking community, which at least in our neck of the woods, lacks resources and local information and direction. Three years later we are trying to reach English speaking kids as well.
Vero created four endearing characters and together we made meaning out of them. Tomas represents all themes related to water, Zoe embodies renewable energy, Lucas defends biodiversity and Beto, the bunny, is the only “non-human”, and he gives voice to the other more than 10,000,000 species with whom we share the planet. His theme is global warming.
Animal Defenders
Animal Defenders pg 1 (English version)
Choosing a color palette was a challenge because the characters had to each have their own identity but also, when pooled together into a vignette or drawing, they had to look in harmony, as part of a team.
Animal Defenders
Beto and Lucas are a twosome, they play together and joke together and that’s why they both wear the same red hat. Nobody else wears red, but for each one of the other two characters there are blues and greens that obviously talk about nature. Tomas’s orange hair and darker skin are in line with him being a laid back, beach-loving kid. And Zoe’s hot pink speaks of fun, bubbly, the color of an empowered girl that, although super feminine, is opinionated and fierce when she knows she is right.
Regarding the backgrounds, the predominant color of a page is always related to the mood and atmosphere of the storyline… which means that the writer, ejem! …that’ll be me, is the true trendsetter here, because it is she who decides if the situation is a comedy or a drama, if it’s day or night, indoors or outdoors, happy or sad. It is actually a lot of fun to set new challenges in each story for Vero!
Animal Defenders
In this particular issue, Animal Defenders, she chose happy bright colors for happy bright moments and darker ones that vary if it is just night or a scary situation, or a suspenseful, stressful one. When the characters are able to reflect upon their experience light comes again, but in a different way than in the happy beginning. This is a less saturated shade of yellow, paired with light grays because it is later in the day, and deeper into the kids’ thought process.
Learning about psychology of color in Lee’s seminars and workshops has proven to be an extremely powerful tool to better the work we do, and to engage the population we want to reach. Patrulla Verde-in this case Veronica-was even showcased in Green Graphics, a publication by Catalonian publisher Index Books (2011), for our characters, logo and image.
Toti and I at the Color/Design class graduation ceremony.
We are extremely thankful to Lee to allow us to share our work with her followers and friends through this amazing window.
Veronica and I at the graduation. This is one of my favorite parts of the class.
Thanks a million, Lee!!
-Veronica Ettedgui & Toti Vollmer
Art: An Artists Color Psychology
November 9, 2012 § Leave a Comment
November 9, 2012
Debora House is a multi-talented artist and colorist now living in Stockholm, Sweden. Debora and I met several years ago when I first moved to Bainbridge Island, WA and we formed a fast friendship as we are kindred spirits in color (and a lot of other things as well).
We have worked together on projects since then. Her sense of color is impeccable – so moody and evocative. Of course I have several of her paintings – several in my office, as a matter of fact!
Debora decided to take my online Image Color Training a few years back and I am hoping that she can join us for a future Color/Design program, whether in Burbank in January or here on the island in July (where she still has a lot friends). She is truly a gifted colorist and I invite you to view some of her latest paintings.
I am an artist. To me everything is open to arrangement and interpretation, from clothes to food to garden bulbs. I like the moment standing before the emptiness of the white canvas and knowing the first strokes are like the first lines in a novel – they will lead me to an unknowable place. I recall another artist saying, “If you know the outcome why bother painting the painting?” That’s how it is for abstract expressionism, you don’t know but you explore with hope and energy.
I have had the good fortune of being raised by a designing woman who taught me very young to memorize color. I have practiced recalling color my whole life. It has been what inspires me and has led me to pursue work in fields where it was required: Interior Design, Textile Design, Colorist and now as a painter.
When I took a course in Color Image Training under Leatrice Eiseman, I was forced out of my own comfort zone and personal preferences into colors as they suit or affect others. When a colorist like myself goes through what basically amounts to retraining the eye to see whole color stories as they relate to others, I was made to explore my emotional reaction to colors in a new way because I had to include colors I didn’t like! In learning to assess how certain colors that challenge me might suit someone else perfectly, I opened my heart to a much bigger palette. Using that knowledge as a painter let’s me explore and accept colors that, in the past, I would have omitted without a thought.
Northern Lights
Before I begin a painting I think of the narrative of the story I want to tell. In the painting Northern Lights I wanted to communicate the mysteriousness of the Northern Lights. I live in Stockholm which is as near to the Arctic as one needs to be yet the lights always elude us. The time to see them is precisely when there is too much cloud cover to observe them. We can have months without a single ray of sunlight. Naturally this drives some people mad and if you’ve ever seen a Swede on a beach and wondered how they can lay there like a lizard for hours, days, on end, it’s because they are storing up the light. You know, you just know, those magical colors are out there swirling over your head but you can’t see them. So the painting is my way to illustrate the color behind the clouds and a roiling icy sea.
Pi in the Sky
Pi in the Sky is a landscape about infinity. In a blue band that separates heaven and earth are the beginning numbers of Pi. The numbers start off the surface of the canvas on the side and wrap until there is no more room for the infinite formula. The intention is that math (something commonly perceived to be anchored in reality) at some point, in higher mathematics, becomes an abstraction. In the skyline is a fixed and accurate constellation in gold metallic – The Big Dipper.
Spring
Spring is a part of a series of seasons. Living in a place where winter lasts almost half the year, spring is a longed for time. I used colors that were, to me, hot or acidic: The new green of the grasses, the riotous reds of tulips and peonies, quince in the horizon line and a sky filled with golds and pinks inside the blues.
Spring comes quickly and once it starts it bursts forth all at once with energy and beauty.
I painted this painting quickly as well. It came together with a minimum of washes and almost no struggles. The green is an example of forcing myself to use a color that fit the piece but is not a color I am drawn to naturally. In that way it is more a practice of color theory than intuitive thought.
I feel I am always learning to see things in a fresh way and to enjoy where these color stories lead me. I want to have an experience that is self-satisfying in the process of creation and to look back later and see the sense of commitment that went into every layer. But mostly I want to stand before the next blank canvas and make the first stroke.
