Date: Fri, 3 Feb 95 08:21:50 -0600 From: Sally Melville To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: colour I have been sitting on my hands through all this talk about colour (for no particular good reason). Bnd when I found myself awake at 5:30 thinking about replies, I knew it was time to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! So, I apologize in advance for the length of this, but here goes. COLOUR COMBINATIONS I agree with the possible gender connections being made and with the idea that if you like and wear some colours well you are more likely to work with them well. (I work with and write about colour so consider myself pretty competent. But I'm a hard-core "autumn" and cannot get around my aversion to blue.) But there's another factor at work here that takes it out of the personal and the gender. Our eye is attracted to lighter, brighter, clearer, and warmer colours. Yellow and white are the most "attractive," in this sense. (Interesting that Kaffe Fasset is reported to have said that he doesn't like to work with either. Yellow, however, does appear in his work; white rarely does.) So, light, bright, warm colours attract a lot of our attention, and we may, therefore, find it difficult to put them together. They are so active and demanding that they almost seem to make our eyes vibrate. It's easier to look at and work with a collection of cooler colours; they are much less individually demanding. COLOUR AND DEPRESSION This part was inspiried by someone's talk about looking awful when in mourning and in black. It's personal stuff but may speak to others out there. It certainly was a revelation to me! My husband died 2 years ago next week. Since then I have bought clothes that were only black, brown, and dark green. Anytime I put on something older and brighter, I couldn't stand to look in the mirror. I didn't think much about it, except that something was also happening with my knitting. I am a part-time, professional knitter/designer. But I found myself having difficulties filling commissions for knitted work. My knitting output for 18 months was a measly 6 garments!! (As compared to my usual 2/month.) AND half of those 6 garments were from patterns! (I write patterns and hadn't knitted from one for about 16 years.) One of the commissions was a personalized mohair coat for an artist. Took forever, with lots of ripping. I talked to her in the midst of it and said that I just couldn't trust my ability to see colour anymore. She informed me that, yes, this happens when we are sad. Not only does our creativity shut down, but we have difficulty seeing colours. She told me about a painter/mother whose daughter was brutally murdered and who now couldn't paint because all she saw was black, white, and gray. I wasn't this bad: I was seeing colours, but bright ones were offensive, or I would put too many bright ones together and know it wasn't working but couldn't see why. (The good news is that she helped with the colours for the coat. It's done, and she's thrilled! She wears it all over the world to openings of her work!) DESIGNING FOR VK In the midst of all this (last summer) I designed a piece for this spring's VK. It's a veggie cardigan thing. I DESIGNED it (not surprisingly) in a navy/indigo and medium brown background with medium colours for the veggies. They changed the colours to brights on a background of red and white! I could hardly look at it all the time I was making it and would NEVER be able to wear it. Maybe this can give some of you a giggle when you see the next issue! The good news is that I am now seeing colour fine and working prolifically! Thanks for listening (reading? hanging in there?) Best to you all, Sally Melville