And then somehow as a consequence I've watched some things about color mixing
That Oto Kano on YouTube
She had this thing about how to mix any color
And I watched it and it was terrible
Well probably isn't terrible if you're not good at mixing color it wasn't bad advice
It just seemed not terribly helpful
But then I recalled a story that surely I've told you but maybe not cuz why would I have told you
When I was in high school I was in the art program and probably a final project for I'm going to say junior year but maybe it was sophomore year I don't remember for sure
We did a religious painting
Now I think if you were an atheist you were allowed to do something that just related to like your history and family or something I don't know and it was four designs it wasn't like supposed to be or maybe it was like a joint project with design and art history or I don't know something but it was also part of the very little bit of color theory
And so you had this whole like design that was based on some sort of idea
And you chose colors which perhaps related to your idea
but the colors had to relate to each other in some sort of color theory way
So I did karmic wheels
I did secondary colors
Based on a triangle
In the painting was these wheels and
Was orange and green those were sacred colors in Japan and purple was tied in with India somehow that I might have just made up I don't know but
They weren't fact checking your story anyway I still have it somewhere it's one of my favorite things that I did because when you look at it from a distance the wheels seem to float above the background because of the color contrast
And you were supposed to use taped block the stuff off but I knew I was not going to be able to deal with that so I just did it freehand I mean I drew it with pencil or whatever first so I could see the spaces but I painted it free hand
And you know it's pretty small pieces and supposed to have two coats on everything
I'm just trying to give you enough information that it makes sense but I feel like I'm just going on and on and on
Anyway so when you picked out what your colors were going to be they had Pantone squares swatches and can't remember right now what you call them but you know every color has a number and blah blah and pantones you you've heard of Pantone so I'm sure okay so you pick out your pantones and then you have to mix the color to match your pantones
Which I guess is hard
They made a really big deal about how hard it was going to be
And Debbie Moses I mean she just kept mixing and mixing and mixing and she ended up with like pint-sized jars of this paint
So I took them and I guess pretty much everybody in class took the majority of the hour or when it was a 3-hour block most people didn't take the whole 3 hours but most people took I think at least an hour to mix the paints to be the same color as the pantones you know and get them approved as actually the same
But it took me like I don't know 10 minutes 15 minutes tops it was super super easy right
And so I took him over and got him approved and they're like you know you didn't mix enough of this You want to have extra because you'll never be able to mix it again and I'm like I could absolutely mixed again and they're like no it's really really hard to mix the same color
and I'm like it's really not but you know I mean watching the other people in the room it seem like they were having a lot of trouble with it I think I maybe did end up mixing more I don't know any rate
I knew I had more of an aptitude for color than like most people
But just recently watching that video of her trying to explain to people how to mix a color All the stuff she was telling him it's like well of course anybody would know those things and indeed it's not even the way I would do it right but then I thought about
When I was at Starbucks and I was a shift supervisor I volunteered to do the equipment maintenance to be the one who was responsible for the ongoing equipment maintenance if they would teach me how to do it because I don't have an aptitude for that kind of stuff
I can't look at something and figure out how to fix it and I don't necessarily have any genetic predisposition for that either because my father would occasionally try to change his own oil and he would break the car
But when I went to the class no joke the guy was pretty much like you just take it apart and look for what doesn't look right and fix it
I did get to watch him take things apart and put them back together and in fairness we weren't taking broken things apart we were just you know taking the grinder apart and cleaning it and putting it back together
But it's super hard to recalibrate those things well it's not I guess if you have an aptitude for that but I didn't have any sense of you know this is how much you turn it to get it this degree finer you know and so it would always be just like a guess and it would be again and again and again and I would end up crying every time every time
But then I kind of realized that for most people
Oh and in these watching things there were some people who are more or less professional artists who were saying things like you know I like to have a lot of colors on my palette because I don't enjoy to mix colors it just takes too long and
Many people had colors on their pallets that were like those colors are too close to each other why would you have both of those colors All you got to do to get that color is mix a little tiny bit of that with it so it's a waste now I get how if it's a color that you're going to use a lot of that you know it's kind of a pain in the ass to have to keep mixing it if you need a lot of it again and again and again but
Anyway today for some reason I was thinking about it there was a kid in my fourth grade class well sometimes he was in my fourth grade class and I don't know what his actual name was but his nickname was Jupi
Which I think related to Jupiter somehow
and he
always got in trouble because he couldn't show his work in math
No he couldn't show the work because he didn't break it down into steps that way his brain made jumps
And eventually they figured it out and they moved him up first they just moved him
To like the 5th grade for math
And he was in fourth grade for the rest of his stuff
But then I think they decided he needed to be higher in math than 5th grade could handle so I think he started going to some sort of special tutoring or something so that he could get ahead in the other subjects so that he could move on to junior high or middle school or whatever the fact they called it I think it was Junior high
But I think I've got something like that with color
And I've been playing with a bunch of new paints
I'm trying to make a travel palette that has colors enough colors that I don't feel the need to mix
But that's super hard because the mixing is my favorite part and I pretty much can't use a color straight out of the pot
I mean I can I guess but I don't enjoy it
And so I've been trying not to mix
But it's not going very well
I mean I've got different kinds of paint different brands and so they've got different textures and they are they have different qualities so you know I'm trying to keep myself interested in the colors without being able to mix them but I'm still mixing them
But then I was like man I don't have a perylene maroon I really like perylene maroon
I'm not looking apparently maroon I'm just remembering it from my head which they say you can't do
And I'm using the colors I have pearling violet which I'm really really enjoy
So I mix other colors with it I don't know which color side mixed with it cuz I'm not thinking like that I'm just doing it so I don't remember what colors I used
But I mix it and I mix it and I'm like no that isn't quite right I guess I can't get perylene maroon not from these colors well you know I didn't really think I could I was just trying see what I could do
So I've got my color that I've mixed
and
I go get the purling maroon and I paint it next to it
And it is pretty close
I just didn't have the right colors to get quite the right undertone but it's the same value and it's very close to the same color I mean like surprisingly close
And of course it would be a pain to have to do that every time
And especially since I don't remember what I used and so every time would be a new mixing experience until I wrote it down which I don't know when I might do that
But
COLOR
it's a thing
