March - Being brave with colour ...

Colour is a fabulous thing, and I've always been a bit chicken to use it bravely, so this is an ongoing ambition, even in my own journals. I've found having a basic understanding of the colour wheel solved many of my hesitations when putting a page together.

When you know that colours adjacent to each other on the colour wheel harmonize, and colours across from each other pop with contrast, then it makes it easier to make your page express the emotion you want it to have. I've been doing it so long now that many of my colour decisions are becoming subconscious.

My tendency is to harmony, and that can make some of my pages a tad boring. I once jokingly told someone my journal pages were the "Kevin Costner" of journal pages - well-meaning, earnest, pleasant to look at, but not jaw-droppingly life-changing (well, not for others anyway - making them may well have been life-changing for me).

So, let's have a look at the colour wheel, shall we? Firstly, I want to share with you this beautiful, amazing, colourful FOOD! As health is part of our objective in this class, this is for anyone who thinks fruits and vegetables are boring:

Now, on to the more usual colour wheel. I designed the wheel below to make it more obvious how combining the primary colours (red, yellow and blue) lead to the secondaries (orange, purple and green). On the outer ring, you can also see how you get to the tertiary colours, which you get by combining a primary colour with a secondary colour.

When I'm trying to create a "restful" page, I usually choose colours from the cool side of the wheel (greens, blues and purples). When I'm creating a energetic page, I choose from the warm side of the wheel (yellows, oranges and reds). And (of course) all of these have shades and tints as well. So even though red is full of energy, you can tone it down with white to make pink. Black added to orange can make an earthy, relaxing brown, so the options are truly endless.

Colours have predictable effects on us, regardless of who we are. Advertisers count on this. They choose certain colours (and colour combinations) to guide our emotions they way they want. Green packaging for eco-friendly. Bright yellows for energy. Blues to relax us. Here's a summary of some  positive and negative effects that we see in the world around us, especially in print:

One fun thing I've done with a colour wheel is to use it to explore how other things in my life overlap. For instance, I wanted to explore the three pillars of healthier living (nutrition, exercise and inner self-care) and I used the colour wheel as the base for seeing where those areas overlapped, just the way the colours overlap:

For instance, one way that exercise (red) and nutrition (yellow) can overlap is by making sure I have healthy snacks for workouts. A little further thinking brought me to: make them myself, and carry them with me. Nutrition and Inner Self-Care overlap by me recognizing how amazing food is - to let myself have a deep appreciation that food really is fuel, and it's important to know I'm worthy of the good stuff, and not to be afraid to try new things. Exercise and Inner Self-Care overlap by finding an activity I love so that moving isn't a punishment I impose on my body, but something I look forward to doing that brings me joy at the same time it strengthens my body. Further overlaps here are to do it regularly and to do with people I like (both much easier if I'm doing an activity I actually enjoy).

The All Body Community has certainly made that part of the plan so much easier. Belonging to a community of people who DO activities together, including this journal series, and the other health lectures, nurture us on more than the physical level, and we can (and do!) talk to each other about our journeys which also strengthens the effect. Pretty amazing, hm?

This month I encourage you to ADD COLOUR bravely to our usual black and white handouts. Below are some ideas on how to do that. The first thing I’d recommend is you find out is how water safe your original is. If it’s a photocopy (like our handouts) or from a magazine, it’s a pretty safe bet you can work on top of it with wet materials like such as:

• Water-soluble crayons and pencil crayons
• Watercolour and acrylic paints
• Felt pens and highlighters
• Inks (either in a pen or in using a brush)

If you’re printing from an inkjet printer, you’ll probably have to stick to dry methods such as:

• Crayons and pencil crayons
• Washi tape
• Things that can be smudged with just your fingers, like chalk pastels, oil pastels
• Colour sticks like the Marabu crayons (like we have in class) and similar products such as Gelatos and Tim Holtz Distress Crayons (they’re called “distress” because of the colour palette he favours which is muted in tone).

I also brought some of my favourite books on being brave with colour for show and tell in the class. I should mention that not all of them are "beautiful". For the purposes of this class, we're more interested in being challenged to be adventurous and leave our comfort zone.

Creative Pep Talk by Andy J. Miller.
Variety is important! Each page is created by a different artist with their motivational quotes.

The Exquisite Book by Julia Rothman, Jenny Volvovski and Matt Lamothe. A wonderful unfolding book
with many, many artists ~ all the drawings are connected by a single horizon line.

Turbulence by Henrik Drescher. This one definitely fits in the "not beautiful" category (some of the imagery almost verges on violent), but there's so much energy and colour packed into that it kept pulling me back into it until I bought it

Spilling Open. Sabrina Ward Harrison created this book at age 24, and it just passed its 20th birthday. Not only is she brave with colour, but the questions she asks of herself in this very personal exploration are wonderful to think about as well. 

Messy Thrilling Life. Another fabulous Sabrina Ward Harrison book (she has more, too!).
Highly recommended you have a look at any of them.

The Sketchbook Project World Tour. More variety ~ lots of artists!
 Many of the sketchbooks in this book are available to view in their online digital library as well.

Sequins and Skeletons: the Art of Mariam Wosk. Not only are her amazing large collage wonders well worth a look,
but the thing that made me happiest in this book were the photographs of her "glue books",
where she collected and curated images for inspiration. 

I wanted to also mention that the Sketchbook Project has an online digital library of many of the more than 40,000 sketchbooks they've collected over the years (including mine!). You can search their online library by topic, artist, geographic location or materials used. A wonderful inspirational online resource to many artists (some amateur, some professional) and all their styles and interests.

In case you're interested, here are the links to my sketchbooks in their collection: 

• Today I am Inspired By ~ the book I showed you in class.
• Builder of Bridges ~ a woman bringing stones to the river.
• The Science of Story ~ what if we taught writing with diagrams like we teach science?
• Time Traveller ~ Thinking about moving backward and forward in time

One more post for this month to come where I'll show you the pages I created with the handouts from class ... that's up next!