Monday, April 13, 2009

Color Me Beautiful


An artist friend, Sally, and I took a shopping trip to Hongdae (an area nearby). We stopped by Starbucks for lattes and scones and then wandered down a tiny narrow street where one of the largest art stores around hides.

I was in search of some art supplies for my budding artist, Caleb, and Sally was just the person to point me in the right direction.

After securing water color pencils, pastels, and a nice drawing pen, I found myself stuck in the marker section. In fact, Sally had to nearly drag me out the door as I was writing words on the back of a receipt. It was the colors that drew me in at first—all those bright, lovely colors spread out so pleasingly to the eye. But then I realized all those colors had names.

And the names! Words like sea green, willow, lime, milky white, walnut, baby skin, Prussian blue, peacock, cool grey and well I could go on and on.

If you are a writer, you can see how much fun this can become. Such vivid pictures cross my mind as each word is written. I mean, when I say Tahitian blue, aren’t you dreaming of a hot sandy beach with that sexy someone? And think of the smells connected with words like burnt sand. And the tastes mixed in with mint blue.

Check out this website for more colors. And if you are in need even more inspiration, take a trip to your local art supply store. I’m sure you’ll find ideas to color your manuscript beautiful.

Here are some more fun sites:

http://oreilly.com/catalog/wdnut/excerpt/color_names.html

http://phrontistery.info/colours.html

http://www.w3schools.com/HTML/html_colornames.asp

12 comments:

Unknown said...

Ah! So beautiful! I love seeing how writers see writing lessons in everyday life :)

Kelly Polark said...

I like reading the fun color names on crayons and markers, too. And I've never thought to take note of them to use in my stories!!! Great post!

Kelly Polark said...

Wow! Love the colorful website, too! So many wonderful colors and names!

Kimbra Kasch said...

Fun...it is interesting to "see" your inspiration.

Christina Farley said...

Glad you can find it useful. And yes! Boxes of crayons are fun too.

C.J. Raymer said...

Love it!

Just thought I'd let you know that I've nominated you for the "Lemonade Stand" award, for great attitude and gratitude!

XOXO

Kimbra Kasch said...

Over on FB I did the "What Color Are You" quiz - guess I'm coneflower.

Stacy Nyikos said...

I never though to shop markers or crayons for color description. What a great idea!

If you get a moment, please pop by my blog. I nominated you for a Lemonade Stand Award. I really enjoy your website!

Angela Ackerman said...

I love color. I have another website I use when I do my color posts, but those look really great too--I'll check them out.

I just noticed where you live, BTW! How awesome is that?

Christina Farley said...

Thanks Stacy and Christy!

Samantha said...

You had me at Tahitian blue! I'm in desperate need of a REAL vacation, an adventure!

I was an art major and it's nice to be reminded how many colors were there and what evocative names they have. Thanks for the link!

: )

C.R. Evers said...

ohhhhh! I love those names!

Thanks for the links! I love word play tooo!!!!!!!!