Ruminations about Colors

Ruminations about Colors

Here I am going to jot down some thoughts about colors. 

Colors are things that we can sometimes take for granted and overlook. But they are all around us in the city. Even walking along a grey street on a grey evening feeling blue there will be colors all around you, yearning to be noticed - yearning to be appreciated. Our world is rich in colors. Bright jewels of green, orange and red traffic lights. The colors of street signs and shop signs and advertisements and the clothes that people wear. (Like this gentleman's jacket, which is the pink of apple blossoms. Or this lady's amazing metallic green coat.)

Looking for color

How many colors do you see when you look out the window in the evening? 

Right now I can see the blue of an evening sky, bright red lights on the tall buildings between our apartment and the lakefront, yellow lights in the windows of nearby apartments, and different shades of grey and brown. No green. 

Talking about color

For my first post - a picture of a chipping sparrow - I asked about the color of the orange (or red) feathers on his head. I called the color "russet." Some writers call that color "rufous." You could say orange-brown or red-brown or even orange-red. 

Depending on the light, the color of the tail of a red-tailed hawk looks pretty much the same as the russet or rufous or orange-brown of the top of a chipping sparrow's head. As does the breast color of an American Robin. But we call both the hawk's tail and the robin's breast "red' rather than rufous or russet. I wonder why? 

People who write about birds can get quite excited about their colors. (More on this another time.) But whatever you think about how birds are named, their names always begin with some form of observation. People notice a bird's shape, its behavior, its colors, its location. I like to make up my own names for birds. So there is the Faux Robin (for the American Robin), the Tiger Sparrow (for the White-throated Sparrow) and the Uncommon Grackle (for the Common Grackle).  

History of words for different colors

Do you know that languages start out with words for only a few colors and then more and more separately named colors are added over time? 

The ancient Greeks, for example, described the color of the ocean as "wine dark" rather than blue or grey-green. Can you guess what the earliest colors acknowledged in languages were?  

Today we have words that make very fine distinctions for colors. For example, we can talk about mushroom brown, eggshell white, aquamarine, sapphire, and hot pink. 

How many different reds (or blues or greens or yellows) do you see inside your home? Or as you walk around  a few blocks of Toronto?

Colors on the pavement

The first time that I noticed fluorescent symbols written on the pavement was when I lived in Manhattan. Walking to work and back I noticed pavement writing all over the place - bright green, bright yellow, hot pink - squiggles, circles, crosses, and sometimes letters or numbers. What did they mean? Why were they there? 

I still don't know their meanings. My guess is that they are there to say things such as "water pipe below," or "cut here," or "uneven, needs to be filled." That is, I think these writings have a purpose, that they communicate important things, and are not simply decorative. 

Do the different colors have significance? I don't know. I could find out, I guess. But I kind of like the mystery. 

Orange is a winter color

In New Zealand everything stays green during the winter. Here in Toronto I  love the contrast between white snow and black branches during wintertime. 

But winter is not only white snow and black-armed trees. Winter is also orange leaves and the southern sky filled with pale orange at midday. 

Winter sky  - seen from the Leslie Street Spit (Tommy Thompson Park):     

A winter's sky in literature: In "The Shipping News" E. Annie Proulx describes a Newfoundland winter's sky - seen as the sun rises - like this:  

A few torn pieces of early morning cloud the shape and color of salmon fillets. The tender greenish sky hardening as they drove between high snowbanks. A rim of light flooded up, drenched the car. Quoyle's yellow hands with bronze hairs, holding the wheel, Wavey's maroon serge suit like cloth of gold. Then it was ordinary daylight, the black and white landscape of ice, snow, rock and sky.

 Questions for you: What colors do you think are winter colors? What do you like about winter?  What colors do you remember as winter sky colors - blue, grey, green, yellow....or something else?