Studio Studio | Color is crazy!

Quick Study by Mary Highstreet (L), Original by Fredric Edwin Church (R)

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Just wanted to share with you my crazy experience with color after completing another quick study for my Color & Light Class recently.

This study was so tricky!  ...and it is part of the reason I had a hard week last week.  In doing these quick studies, when identifying and painting colors, we aren't supposed to use the eye dropper tool but instead select the colors by eye.  And boy was I getting it all wrong!  Yeiks, my painting was a big fat mess at first, I had colors all over the place:  I saw greens, blues, purples and pinks...which actually are not there!!!  Do you believe that?!  Color is so tricky you guys!  I feel like Gollum from Lord of the Rings, "Tricksy little colorses!"

Erm, anyway...

Just to prove it, I'm going to show you what I thought the colors were, then using the color picker, I'm going to show you the actual colors here.  Then if I still can't make a believer out of you - go ahead, try it yourself!

CRAZY, right?!  I saw so many colors (L) that weren't even there!  In actuality, the colors ended up ALL being in the same hue family (R) - WHAT?!?!  HOW DID ORANGE TURN INTO GREEN, PINK AND PURPLE?!  *blank stare*  I wish I was in the live class right now so I could ask Nathan Fowkes just what is going on here.

I still haven't figured it out... why do I see rainbows when it's actually just mud?!

(For those of you reading who are fellow color and light junkies, or perhaps scientists at heart: once I figure this out & do a more in depth color analysis, I'll definitely share my findings!)

Hope you enjoyed this Studio Studio post and perhaps learned something new about color as well!

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Just for fun, here's a dog meme (semi-related) that we made for our dog Zoe who HATES grooming and usually ends up looking butchered (see pic below).  She feels about the grooming as I feel about color sometimes...hope it brightness your day a little:

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