Somewhere Over the Rainbow

I was a bit of an odd child growing up. I suppose that is no surprise, often, creative types are a little different. I spent a lot of time wondering about things, like why even on my hands and knees peering through the holes in the open weave of the grille cloth on our hi-fi I couldn't quite make out the tiny little ballet dancer and orchestra I just knew were in there dancing and playing the Nutcracker Suite. I could be found gazing deep into a prism, fascinated by how the whole rainbow lived not only within it but colorized the sidewalk and my fleshy little hand.
As I got older, I wanted to know how everything worked, literally what made the clock tic. I took things apart, sometimes even managed to get them back together again before a parent found out, and learned the inner workings of the world around me by experience. It didn't matter that I didn't have the internet, we had an amazing set of encyclopedia Britannica's to go to when puzzled about something. I suppose my father made that very expensive purchase way back in the early 1960's knowing he would have a brood of inquisitive kids. He was a scientist with a brilliant mind and when the encyclopedia failed me, I could always count on him to either have the answer, or be so intrigued by my question that he would surely find the answer for me.
Of all the wonders in my world, the most captivating was anything about color. Since my earliest memory I experienced this phenomenon that I can't explain, that involved seeing colors around people, and each color had a sound or note associated with it. Revealing this to my father, the guy with the scientific mind and a card carrying member of the skeptics society was probably risky. Fortunately he also loved me very much and didn't outwardly question the validity of my claim. I don't really know if he believed me but he didn't dismiss the notion as far as I could tell.
I've long since learned not to openly admit to seeing and hearing colors that way now that I am wiser about such things. I have also learned that the fact that I see colors so vividly is something that not only has scientific basis but a fancy name, Tetrachromacy (‘Super Vision’). In short, it is a genetic mutation that causes the ability to see not just three channels of color like most, but four channels. It is more common in women because it is carried in the x chromosome and often a daughter of a woman with Tetrachromacy also has it.

"The existence of this extra photopigment may allow a tetrachromat to see more detail or variety within the visible spectrum. This is called the theory of tetrachromacy.  While trichromats can see about 1 million colors, tetrachromats may be able to see an incredible 100 million colors, according to Jay Neitz, PhD, an ophthalmology professor at the University of Washington, who has studied color vision extensively."

I can't verify whether I am a Tetrachromat or not, but I strongly suspect so. I am also very light sensitive making light and colors so bright at times to be almost painful.

Knowing this explains, or at least may help to excuse, my obsession with color. Some people are easily placated with gifts of chocolate or flowers, and while I wouldn't refuse either, give me a color wheel, a swatch book or a paint chart and I will swoon. I can be completely absorbed by making page after page of color charts and comparisons. I have books full of color notes I have made during one course or another about color theory or from various painting classes.

Recently, in a class taught by artist and mentor Charlene Collins Freeman about granulating watercolors, we were given homework that included making swatches of the special granulating pigments made by Daniel Smith. Of course I was over the moon about the assignment. I excitedly began to look up, learn about and paint pages of swatches of the granulating colors that I own.
And then it hit me, a new game, a challenge that I have now committed so fully to that it has become a new "healthy" habit and since I am also a bit compulsive, now must be part of each day.

Swatch this!

Here is how the game goes:
After painting a swatch of the color I am learning about, I paint it again with three values, the darkest value I can make with the color, a middle value and the lightest wash I can get. After that I paint a larger patch of the color, wet into wet, dropping its darkest value into the band of color and letting the thicker, milky consistency of the pigment swim into the watery version of the color to see how it acts, blending it a bit across the band but not with much effort. The point of the exercise here is just to see how the color likes to play with water.
I make notes on the swatches from the labeling system that Daniel Smith uses on their tubes pigment; designations or grades about the pigment's light fastness, whether it is transparent or not and how transparent, and that it is a granulating color.

Of course I cannot leave well enough alone, I have to take it a step further. I test the color out in a very quick watercolor sketch that is primarily the color of the pigment with one other color if needed to make the sketch "read" as the subject I intend. The other color has rules though, it has to be on my palette, not a brand new color, which means I probably have used it very recently on another "swatch sketch" either on the same page in my sketchbook or a close neighboring page.

But wait, there are more rules: the watercolor sketch cannot take more than 5 minutes, but ideally only 2-3 minutes, should be freehand or only a very rough pencil sketch to  find some trickier details before painting the sketch.  And, to make the challenge even more interesting, I have to randomly pick the subject by its color from within my library of photos on my iPhone. I have a mere 15,000 photos to choose from, and I am pretty sure that while that is a large number of images, I am not the only one who has that much reference material at the ready. It is fun to "spin" my way through the library as if it were a roulette wheel and when I see the color go whizzing by, stop on the color no matter what the image and that is what I have to sketch.
I found that randomness to be a necessary rule because I know myself all too well and if I had not made up that rule, I would spend the entire allotted sketch book time laboring over what to paint. That ploy will waste and entire painting session every time.
The rewards from the challenge make all those rules worthwhile. I learn experientially as well as from research about each color, how it is made and from what. I learn to trust myself and my abilities, not worrying so much about a perfect little drawing, they rarely are, but being content with their rapid execution and looseness and enjoying the essence grabbed from a randomly chosen photo and the characteristics of an interesting pigment.

I invite you to join me in this little game. I have great plans to post one of the sketches here each day until I have exhausted the pigments I have in my collection. We shall see if that is where this ends, or if I start wondering about something new.

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