Location Taken: Trout River, Newfoundland, Canada
Time Taken: July 2012
Mmmm… Diverse ecosystems…
I love seeing a nice mix of plants in the places I visit. Especially a mix like this, where none of the plants are really that weedy, and all of them have interesting colors and shapes. There’s even a bunch that have gorgeous purple flowers!
It’s right on the shore of a lake that has black sand, and while the plants can form small colonies in the sand, they haven’t claimed it all.
You know, that’s one of the interesting things about humans and colors. If you look at the color of the sand in this photo, it’s not black. It’s actually a mid-range grey with a bit of brown mixed in. But, because most of the sand we encounter is of a much lighter shade, and “black sand” sounds better than “grey sand”, we call it black.
And you know, if I made a painting of this place, I would probably color the sand darker than it really is. Since my brain thinks of it as “black”, I’ll start with a darker base color than if I thought of it as “grey”, even if it’s the same color I’m thinking of.
It’s amazing how much language and culture influence how we see color. I’m quite used to seeing pink as quite separate from red, despite it being a cultural construct. Pink is just red mixed with white, just as light orange is just orange mixed with white. But I still see pink and red as separate color profiles while light orange and orange are in the same set.
Which actually can make it tough to figure out what color to make the bright areas when I’m painting red objects. For the other colors, assuming a white light source of course, I’ll just add a bit of white to the color to create the highlights on the image. Perhaps just a touch of yellow as well, to make the bright areas a bit warmer looking to help them pop more. But adding pink on top of red just looks wrong, unless I add enough of another color to make it stop looking pink. It’s actually rather annoying to have to follow a few extra rules because red is considered a manly color and pink a womanly color in my culture, and mixing the two creates mixed messages.
Now if you excuse me, I shall go back to playing my Charr Mesmer in Guild Wars 2. Charr are a feline warrior race, with a proud history of honor and battle, and my Charr is a proud member of the Blood Legion, which lives up to its name. He is, of course, currently dressed in pink clothes.
