Beauty Day 2: Harmony

In order to dive deeply into beauty, I’m starting with the basics. In a simple Google search one of the first videos that caught my eye was this video from BlenderGuru on understanding color.

While I lean toward the belief that creating beauty necessitates a certain amount of freedom, I do need to admit that most art masters arrive at a similar understanding of how to use color to their advantage. Whether through formal training or experimentation, there is no avoiding the fact that some people are born with a natural eye for color harmony and others need to work toward a more structured understanding.

I’m not sure which side I lean toward, but I do know that I know nothing about color.

Part avoidance, part resistance, part fear of exploration — my experience with color is mostly, “I do/don’t like (insert thing here).” I’ve never been able to fully understand or explain why or how things affect me a certain way beyond personal preference. The video by Blender Guru really helped to clarify and demystify why some color schemes can uplift a person or tear them down, and the power that color has in our everyday interactions.

So in my quest to create beauty, it’s time to figure out why I prefer my preferences, and how to develop more informed decision making processes when it comes to creating beauty.

Important learnings for me are:

1. saturation and value are just as important in creating shades and hues as is the actually color being used. I’ve honestly never recognized saturation or value as important factors before, and this helps to inform my preference toward pastels and colors with less saturation.

2. I’m still trying to better understand how value plays a role, but I’m sure that will come with time.

3. When using more than one color, it’s important that nothing is exactly balanced. You should always have an emphasis on one color and use the rest of the colors as accents to support the main color.

In today’s creating beauty process, I’m testing out color theory. And in true office supply geek fashion, the most colorful items I have in my home are post-it notes. This isn’t as fancy as trying to find the perfect picture or making something that is attention grabbing. It’s more about…