Not everyone sees color the same way. Of course, we may have heard of red/green color blindness, but even for people who see the entire spectrum, there is variation in what each of us perceives. And how does one describe what they see? The subtleties between different shades can be minute but they are there, and some may be able to see these differences more than others.
I ask the class how many colors there are and continually say, “higher,” no matter the guess. Eventually, I present one of the Benjamin Moore color fans. I explain that this is only one of several fans like this from only one company producing paint colors and that any combination of these colors will create a new color. The possibilities are endless. This tends to make an impression.
I show two different paintings, one from Keith Haring that has the more “standard” set of colors that we might find in a 12 piece marker set, and then another one by Henri Matisse, which has a variety of different greens to drive home the point of how this plays out in art. After this, I ask the class to create an artwork with color on the mind.
