Wendy Ervin Fine Art
  • Home
  • New! Latest Paintings
  • About
  • Paintings
    • Landscapes and Seascapes
    • Cityscape and Figurative
    • Flora and Fauna
  • Events
  • Contact
  • Blog

Color is a Brain Thing

3/29/2019

2 Comments

 
A few months ago I read an intriguing article about the reality/non-reality of color that really got me thinking and I've wanted to write about it here ever since. The problem is that I don't want to get all scientific and intellectual because that's over my head and kind of mind-numbing. I also don't want to copy excerpts from studies and articles on the subject, so here goes...in my own words:
Do you think you would know "blue" if you were born without sight? If you see something bright yellow, do you have a unique "feeling response"? The reality is that a large portion of our brains are stimulated by color in unexpected ways, completely unrelated to the hue or wavelength of the light reaching our retinas. We interpret a green lawn as green, regardless of whether the shadows of a tree make that green more of a blue. Our mental associations with color are anchored in our experiences in this world.
Picture
Picture
Have you ever noticed that a mere suggestion of a color, without seeing it, fires up your mind? Pink is a good example (even though there's a feud over whether it is even a real color or not!) But think about pink for a minute and your brain will imagine a rose, a baby blanket, your favorite sweater; all of them 3 dimensional objects your brain has categorized as pink to help you interact with your external world. 
Picture
Picture
Color perception seems also to be linked with culture and language. A tribe in Africa is able to distinguish and name several different shades of green, but could not pick out an obviously blue square amongst a grouping of green ones. They were able, however, to pick out more hues of green than the rest of us can. Scientist think that until we have a word for a color, we don't "see" it. Our brains seem to be wired to ignore what doesn't appear relevant.
Have you heard the phrase: "learning to see"? Artists hear this all the time as they are developing their visual skills. They hear it most when painting from life. It has taken me years to see the reds and violets in the shadows of trees or the warm yellow on the sunlit side of a white house. I remember watching an artist from California paint a grove of cedar trees and her choice for the dark shadows was a warm maroon! The "rule" is that shadows are painted with cool colors, but by golly, that maroon beneath the cool greens of foliage was perfect!  

Color is influenced by not only conditions of light and angle, but also by relevance and language. It was never relevant to my life whether or not a white house actually was more pale yellow on the sunny side and bluish on the shady side until I started learning how to paint one that rings true to the viewers eye.
Picture
Little White House 9x12 oil on panel $350
I've got more to say on this subject, but that's all my brain can take for now. Stay tuned for future pithy posts about the brain and color.   Thanks for reading my blog!!
2 Comments

Do This Thing....uhhhh, ok.

3/19/2019

2 Comments

 
It's been a few years since I got my first initiation into internet website management. I started with what has proved to be the easiest website to construct and maintain: this one- Weebly. It is truly a "drag and drop" website builder, with only a few complicated steps involved to link it to Facebook and MailChimp.  Even so, it took me a 40 hour week and lots of YouTube video views to put it together.
Picture
Fast forward a couple years...I get a phone call from my local art group leader asking if I would be willing to help out with their website. I'm pretty sure I wrote a blog about this. Whenever I attempt something new I enter the world of humility and humiliation. Most of mine in this case were in the privacy of my own office space as I became familiar with the Wix website platform. It always feels like I am going to blow up the internet, when I'm learning this stuff,  but I quickly realized that until I push that little "Publish" button, nothing at all changes on the viewer side. Wix building is so much more complicated than Weebly, but also offers so many more options to make interesting pages. I was able to animate images, add fun little boxes and lines in different colors and styles, use all kinds of fonts of multiple sizes, etc.  Once I got the hang of it, it was fun to work on.

Picture
Another fast forward to now:  I've been invited/recruited to work on The Chestnut Group website and, guess what? A completely different platform: WordPress.  And to top that off, it was built for this artist group by actual professionals. Holy moly, there are pages within pages, secret dropdown menus and so many boxes to check, uncheck, ignore, pray over! My introductory experience involved having to decide what to do with boxes that had words like "delete user" "expire member" "block password". Yikes! But, fortunately, I have teachers that have walked me through the various things I'm expected to do. And, since it is so easy to forget things, I've been creating recipe cards for each of the procedures with step by step instructions. 

Picture
So....all that to say, along with all the learning that comes with being a professional artist, I am also learning to be an amateur webperson. (Just can't bring myself to say WebMaster)  I think it's been really good for me to stretch my brain muscles and gain confidence; but also it's helped me understand and be compassionate for my friends who don't feel comfortable in this computer age. Everything is changing and it is easy to be left behind, left out, if you don't keep up with technology. Hey, if I can learn, you can learn! If I can do it, so can you! 

​Be a boss and do something techie today!!


2 Comments
    Picture

    Hello! My name is Wendy and I am passionate about oil painting! Whether in the studio or out in Mother Nature, I get lost in the experience of capturing on canvas the moment and the feel of what I am painting. I pour my love and energy into every single piece of artwork and I hope it shows! This blog is a place where I can use words to talk about art, painting, life, faith, things that make me laugh, and things that inspire. I love every response, so don't be shy about leaving a comment...

    Archives

    December 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    April 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013

    Categories

    All
    Artist Workshops

copyright © 2013
  • Home
  • New! Latest Paintings
  • About
  • Paintings
    • Landscapes and Seascapes
    • Cityscape and Figurative
    • Flora and Fauna
  • Events
  • Contact
  • Blog