Live Inspired!
Inspirational Color Quote of the Week: Colors Hot Pink, Orange, turquoise, Gray What Do You Notice? “There were hot pink things and turquoise things and bright orange. The only thing that mattered to us was the gray-scale value, and if you really walked through the set, it looked a little jarring.” -- Jan Pascale (set decorator) What do you think? Hot pink things. Bright orange things. turquoise things. Hmm, sounds pretty disorganized. A lot of jarring colors and a lot of just things! But what about you? You walk into a room? What do you notice? The colors? The layout? The people? And what stands out for you? What matters most? Lots of possibilities, and obviously what you notice/pay attention to might vary due to all kinds of factors, including the particular people and the nature of the situation. Is this a room in your own house? At the home of a friend? In a work place? At a store in a mall? So you might want to try out an experiment to actively ask yourself what you do pay attention to when you go into a situation. But here’s designer Jan Pascale walking on to a set. She’s noticing the colors of things, and she’s finding the contrast jarring. Think about it. It could have worked. After all, pink and orange come together to make a shade of coral, for which turquoise can be a pretty good match. But really, hot pink and bright orange. Sounds like in this particular case the colors could have been used more productively. But what’s all this about gray-scale value, and how does it fit in? As an award-winning set decorator, Pascale is providing the rest of us a great lesson in noticing. She’s paying attention to something pretty unique to her expertise, and it turns out that that expertise also provides some important learning for the rest of us. So consider. For the lay person, like me, I’m thinking she’s interested in the contrast between a number of reasonably bright colors with something that’s simply gray—quieter, mellower, more in the background. Amidst all the “noise” and brightness, here’s what’s grounding and what’s sturdy? You don’t have to be the loudest person on the set to count? Being who you are, however introverted or extroverted, is absolutely enough? I like that way of looking at the world. Well for Jan Pascale, it turns out that the idea of gray-scale value is a lot more concrete. It’s a technical term relevant for people interested in understanding photography and imaging. In a single measure, you’re tapping into the amount of black vs white (dark vs. light) in an image, completely removing color from the equation and leaving only the underlying patterns of contrast for your interpretation. In rendering each of the three colors on the set (pink, turquoise, orange) as levels of grey, you can come to think about the scene in a very different way. Do we have emotional responses to various colors? How does that change when those same colors are converted to levels of dark and light? A really interesting perspective. And a perspective that provides ideas that go well beyond color and can teach us quite a lot. What we at first pay attention to may leave out important parts of a story, pointing up the need to think about what’s most basic/important? Change your focus and different aspects of a situation come to light? It’s possible in the first place to give some more conscious thought to what you notice?? Different people sure do pay attention to different aspects of a situation, and they bring different perspectives to the same thing. So what do you yourself notice? While in some contexts, hot pink, turquoise and orange may be exactly the kinds of colors you choose to attend to and to put together, the gray and the gray-scale value certainly adds a lot to the story. How do these ideas resonate with you, and what are one or two actions you might want to take in the next day or so on that basis?
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AuthorI am a Life Coach, a Color Wisdom Card Practitioner, and yes, even a Professor (political science, State University of New York at Albany). I use the Color Wisdom Cards to support clients in exploring priorities and taking concrete actions to stay on track with the goals they set. Because in my own life I have overcome a lot of self-doubt, I want to work with people towards more confidence and self-empowerment. You can do it! What is it you want to do? Categories
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June 2021
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