Crayons fascinate me, particularly the box of sixty-four. What an array of colors! When I was a kid, a big box of crayons made me fit for any task—whether I needed to color a page in a coloring book or make my own illustrations on a blank piece of paper. Each crayon in my hand was a promise that I could make things happen. Back then, I never doubted that I could.
These days, I don’t use crayons as much as I once did. And some days, doubts creep in that I’m fit for the task. The bane of adulthood. Ever been there? On days when I doubt my proficiency, I think I know what to do instead: open my box of crayons and remember the promise.
Andy of City Jackdaw, here’s a promise: you will see a copy of Charles Yallowitz’s book, War of Nytefall: Eradication on your Kindle device! Please comment below to confirm.
Book cover courtesy of Charles Yallowitz. Photos by L. Marie.
When you think of a product that epitomizes your childhood, what do you think of? To me, nothing says childhood like Crayola Crayons. I loved getting new crayons at the beginning of the school year. Crayons and new notebook paper opened up new imaginative possibilities.
I couldn’t find the small box of crayons I have, so this box of chalk will have to do as a stand-in for childhood wonder.
Thanks to the recent rainstorms, the ground is too wet right now to effectively draw on the sidewalk, but here is a photo I’ve used on the blog before. Some of the kids in my apartment building did the handiwork. I love how the color brightens a bland sidewalk. It was a day brightener for me as well.
Did you know that non-toxic crayons have existed since 1903? I didn’t. I found out when I looked up the history of Crayola and watched a video on it. Click here for that video.
The 1903 crayons
In 1958, the box of 64 crayons was born.
I never lost my love of crayons, mainly because I love an array of colors. Whether I crochet or knit, I love to use colorful yarn. If a pattern calls for neutral colors, I usually switch the colors to those I prefer. I actually feel better when I’m working with colors and when I’m surrounded by colorful things.
Turns out I’m not the only one. According to this article, brighter wardrobe colors make you feel better. Room colors also affect your mood, according to this article and this one. But according to this post at Smithsonian.com, color preferences are not always universal. Past associations with a color and also cultural influences can affect how a color is perceived.
Do you have a favorite color? How do these colors make you feel?
Undoubtedly, you’ve seen color used in a movie or in a book to heighten a certain mood. But sometimes color is used against type for an unsettling effect (like a bright, sun-washed blue sky in a horror film).
Speaking of color in nature, with autumn underway, I look forward to the changing colors of the leaves. Until that happens, I can enjoy colorful clouds in the sky at sunrise or sunset. These photos were taken at sunrise. The clouds in the photo at the right look like a mythical firebird with bright plumage.
How has something colorful brightened your life this week?
The Squeezamal [creature at the right] has found a colorful new friend, Lazy Buns, who doesn’t get a move on without a cup of coffee.
Crayola stamp from somewhere on Pinterest. 1958 Crayons from PopScreen. Other photos by L. Marie. Squeezamals are a product of Beverly Hills Teddy Bear Company. Pop Hair Pets are a product of MGA Entertainment.
National Lollipop Day was July 20. Did you participate by consuming a lollipop? I wish I had! (Never too late to do so!)
Growing up, I was a fan of the free lollipops (which we also called “suckers”) usually given to kids at the doctor’s office or at a bank.
“Here you go, kid. Now go away.”
The freebies were usually Dum-Dums. (And no, I am not making a judgment call.) Or sometimes Tootsie Roll Pops were handed out.
Though I appreciated having a huge lollipop like the kind shown at the start of this post—the kind you can still find in candy stores today—I was never a big fan of them. I just liked how colorful they were, though they made my chin and fingers very sticky after eating one.
But my absolute favorite lollipops were (and still are) Charms Blow Pops. Why are they my favorites? Because of the gum inside of them. What were your favorite lollipops growing up?
Okay, those are tried and true lollipops. Here are some unique lollipops.
Yes, that’s right. Tabasco sauce and scorpions.
No actual chickens were harmed in the making of this.
You know you want these bacon-flavored lollipops.
I love that candy makers thought outside of the box. Would you try any of these? I would try them all, even though Tabasco sauce is not my favorite. I’ve eaten insects (grasshoppers, locusts, ants) before, so my guess is that arachnids probably would be okay too. (I can tell you are giving me a look right about now.)’
Looking at these unique lollipops, I can’t help seeing the correlation to writers who put a new spin on well-known tropes in the hope of creating a new flavor combination in a genre. 😊 Perhaps you are one such writer who feels the need do something new with an old trope. If so, my hat is off to you.
But you didn’t really come here for a discussion about lollipops, right? You came for the giveaway of The Art of Breaking Things by Laura Sibson (below left) and An Impossible Distance to Fall by Miriam McNamara (below right). Click here and here for the interviews.
The winner of An Impossible Distance to Fall is Ally Bean. And the winner of The Art of Breaking Things is Jacqui Murray. Please comment below to confirm, then send address details to lwashin301(at)comcast(dot)net.
Tia is hesitant to tell Henry that the “lollipop” he thinks matches her outfit so perfectly, is really the cap to a pencil case.
Big lollipop found at tensepresent.wordpress.com. Dum-Dums found at dumdumpops.com. Charms Blow Pops found at ebay.com. Tabasco lollipop from Oddee.com. Scorpion and bacon-flavored lollipops found at vat19.com. Other photos by L. Marie. Tia Tigerlily Shoppie is a product of Moose Toys. Squeezamals are a product of Beverly Hills Teddy Bear Company.
So yeah, here’s another color post (click here for the last one), one in which Malik was particularly insistent that he appear, though red is my favorite color and he did next to nothing to contribute to it. Don’t worry—not a quiz in sight. 😉
So here are a few of “Malik’s” (picture air quotes) favorites in his garden of red (not an exhaustive list):
In the visible spectrum of light, red has a frequency of 405–480 THz (lower than that of blue). It is a primary color frequently seen on flags, store and brand logos, superhero costumes, and in nature (leaves, flowers, dawn, sunset).
Yet the color red has some associations that might be seen by some as less positive. For example, blood (though blood also is necessary for life, therefore it has its charm); “The Masque of the Red Death”—Poe’s infamous 1842 short story; “red in my ledger”—Natasha/Black Widow’s assessment of the deaths she caused; phrases like “red with rage”; and others you can undoubtedly think of. Another that comes to mind is one my insurance agent once said to me about red cars: “Red is an angry color.” And this article mentions the red cars seem to get more tickets. I certainly had my share of tickets when I drove a red Honda Accord. But I can’t blame the color of the car on that. Those tickets were my fault!
I’d love for the color red to get a fresh coat of paint in the writing arena—more happy phrases associated with it. (“The red blush of dawn” comes to mind—a lovely image.) Can you think of others? Please comment below. Or, tell me which red items are your favorites. 😄 ❤️
Iron Man photo from nathanrabin.com. Boston Baked Beans from candycrate.com. Red Hots from Walgreens.com. Red Skittles from somewhere on Pinterest. Chicago Bulls and the Chicago Cubs logos as well as the red maple leaf are from Wikipedia. Other photos by L. Marie. Malik is part of the Fresh Squad of dolls designed by Dr. Lisa Williams, founder of the World of EPI.
You might be thinking of blues songs by now or the old Nickelodeon show Blue’s Clues (which is being rebooted for this fall).
I’m thinking of the color blue. Though I have a different favorite color (red), I noticed a lot of great shades of blue around. Take a look.
1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8
9 10
11 12
And of course these book covers:
13 14
15 16
I wish I could’ve found a few more natural items in my area. But pink, yellow, or red flowers abound. Anyway, this isn’t just a photo gallery. You’re probably wondering why each item is numbered. That’s because this gallery is also a quiz. 😊 Which picture above fits each word or phrase below? Either what’s in the photo will complete the phrase or it is a descriptor of an item below. Hope that makes sense. In your head or on a piece of paper connect the letter of each item below (A, B, C, D) with the number of the photo above that fits it. For some items, you’re going to have to look closely at the photos. (Note that the numbers are under the photos to which they belong.) Are you ready? Begin! (Confused? Comment below.)
A. The limit (popular idiom)
B. Sanrio (Google if you don’t know what this is.)
C. Sibling (part of a well-known phrase)
D. Wah. Yay!
Comment below with your answers. I’ll let you know if you’re right! (I have one definite answer for each. But kudos to you if you can make a creative case for alternate answers.)
I’m so tempted to make a color series. But if you have followed my blog for any length of time, you already know that a series is not something you’ll find much of around here. 😄 However, if you would like to see a series like this, please let me know.
New best friends, Henry and Tia, wanted to get in on this blue thing. So, they coerced a pencil sharpener against its will to take this photo with them.
Book covers courtesy of the authors. Blue’s Clues logo from Wikipedia. Other photos by L. Marie.
Who doesn’t love a good quiz?? (If you don’t, just play along.) For each question below, choose the color attached to the answer that best fits you: Pink [P]; Blue [B]; Green [G]; Red [R]; Orange [O]. You can only make one choice for each question. Ready?
1. Favorite season of the year
A. Spring B
B. Summer R
C. Fall O
D. Winter G
E. Any season with televised sports P
2. Movie you enjoyed recently
A. AladdinR
B. Avengers: EndgameP
C. Anything on the Hallmark Channel B
D. John Wick 3O
E. None of the above G
3. Most pleasing shape (in your opinion)
A. Circle R
B. Pretzel O
C. Parallelogram G
D. Square P
E. Diamond B
4. Convenience you absolutely cannot live without
A. Microwave O
B. Phone/computer P
C. Television R
D. Dishwasher B
E. Car G
5. Philosophy that is a good fit for you right now
A. The wheels on the bus go round and round. R
B. To thine own self be true. G
C. Sunshine? I’m good. O
D. Live and let live. P
E. I never met a coupon I didn’t love. B
Mostly Pink [P]? Click here.
Mostly Blue [B]? Click here.
Mostly Green [G]? Click here.
Mostly Red [R]? Click here.
Mostly Orange [O]? Click here.
Rainbow assortment? Click here.
Okay. Maybe you’re ready to hurl stones at me. But did you really think a quiz I made up had deep insight into your psyche?
Or perhaps you’d hoped the quiz would lead to something a little more entertaining, like the Buzzfeed quizzes, which dole out fun facts about yourself or confirm your greatness by comparing you to a popular superhero.
But a quiz can’t really convince you and me how great we are if we don’t really believe that going in. Hence the final destination of the above quiz. I hope you already know who you are—someone wonderful, inspiring, and brave, even if you don’t always believe that.
Quiz image from clker.com. Sunshine from clipartpanda.com. John Wick 3 poster from movieweb.com. Avengers: Endgame movie poster from impawards.com. Other photos by L. Marie.
Happy Good Friday/Regular Friday (if the celebration of Good Friday is not your thing).
Days ago, I watched a YouTube video on the digital color grading for Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movie trilogy (2001-2003). I know. Random. The following is not the video I watched that day. But it provides a really good explanation about digital color grading for film.
Lest you’re sitting there, unable to muster concern about the subject, let me just say there’s been a lot of talk of movie color palettes. While some praised the Lord of the Rings movies for their color palette, others denounced Jackson’s The Hobbit (2012) for being “too crisp and bright.” And while some Marvel’s movie palettes have been praised for their brightness, some DC movie palettes have been criticized as too murky. Even when DC tried to brighten things up with Justice League (2017), some people still criticized them. Movie fans can be fickle, I guess.
In an article by David Geffin, “The Power Of Color Grading And The Benefit It Can Have On Your Work Summarized In Two Minutes” (and yes, all of those articles and prepositions were capitalized by this author, so please don’t feel the need to point out capitalization errors in the comments), we find this truth:
Color is so important because, like lighting, it affects a mood and feel of a piece, and therefore how we interpret the final image.
Geffin includes the two-minute video mentioned in the title that you can check out if you click here.
I’m a big fan of color to enhance mood. But what can you do in a book where the imagination is the only screen you have to work with?
I like to use thematic colors in narration. In my young adult novel with three protagonists, I have a fire wielder, a plant wielder, and one person in between who is neutral. (While he does not wield an element, he has the ability to block magic.)
Let’s say Rosie Bloom (left) is my fire wielder while Macy Macaron (right) is my plant wielder. (Okay, the fact that Rosie has roses kind of messes up the analogy, but work with me here.) Shuri (middle) is my neutral person.
My plant wielder might be dressed in natural colors on the cooler side of the spectrum (green and blue) to make you think of a forest or a river flowing by trees. Emotionally, she’s a bit down also, so the blue palette does double duty for her.
My fire wielder was trickier. As an assassin, I couldn’t put him in warm, fiery colors, because he’d stand out. He prefers the shadows. So, I had to use color in a different way—to highlight his emotion, i.e., through phrases like “the red blaze of his anger.”
My neutral dude was a lot easier. He wears a lot of gray, because some of his actions fall into a gray area morally at times.
Another way to color grade a story is to make sure the colors that emphasize mood are the ones emphasized on a page.
In this passage from The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, what do you see? (SPOILER ALERT. Look away if you don’t want to know something that could possibly spoil a plot point in the book or the movie. I will tell you when to look.)
There were shocked pajamas and torn faces. It was the boy’s hair she saw first.
Rudy?
She did more than mouth the word now. “Rudy?”
He lay with his yellow hair and closed eyes, and the book thief ran toward him and fell down. She dropped the black book. (Zusak, 535)
In this aftermath of a bombing, I see two colors: yellow and black. This scene involves Liesel Meminger who makes a grisly discover concerning her friend, Rudy Steiner. Zusak mentioned two colors that enhance mood: the bright yellow of Rudy’s hair, which shows the brightness of a life tragically ending in death—reminiscent of the black book Liesel drops. Ending with the black book after the yellow hair is like watching a solar eclipse. (END SPOILER)
In what ways have you seen colors used effectively to enhance mood? Perhaps you’ve seen filters and other highlights done well on Instagram or Facebook. Do tell!
Zusak, Markus. The Book Thief. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006. Print.
Color grade image from fstoppers.com. Book cover from Goodreads. Justice League movie poster from fanpop.com. The Hobbit movie poster from flicks.co.nz. Rose Bloom and Macy Macaron are Shoppie dolls made by Moose Toys. Shuri, from the movie Black Panther, was made by Hasbro. Photo by L. Marie.
When I was a kid, I was given a prism to use in one of my science classes in elementary school. I thought it was the most awesome thing ever. (Yes, this was way before cell phones were invented.) We discussed Sir Isaac Newton’s experiments with light refraction. As it passes through one object to the next object, light bends. Newton used prisms in his experiments.
Newton was the first to prove that white light is made up of all the colors that we can see.
In science class, we duplicated Newton’s experiment with a light source, cardboard, and a prism. (Yes, this was back in the day.) I don’t have photos from that experience. But this one comes close.
The white light containing the color spectrum makes me think of something else: a blank page. I see that confused look on your face. Let me explain what I mean. First, let’s switch out the phrase color spectrum and insert words. Now, think of a blank page as something containing all of the words that can be seen—wonderful, colorful words describing vivid images. A prism is needed for those words to be seen and understood. The writer is the prism that helps others see those words.
My mind turns on odd things sometimes. This was something I was thinking about recently. 😀
If the writing aspect doesn’t fit your life, think of the prism analogy this way. Our minds are prisms. We often take whatever is beamed into us and show the world the result. For example, let’s say we hear a lot of negative comments. Such a drab view of life might result in a negative mindset that spills over in our dealings with others. We tell everyone, “This is how life is—drab.” But unlike an actual prism, we have a choice as to what we do with what we’re given. We can either show the drab colors and say, “This is how life is and always will be,” or we can show something else: the colors of hope. Even if we can’t see them yet. By this we say, “This is how life can be. And it starts with me.”
For someone like me who is prone to depression, the latter is a challenge. But I’m still willing to give it a shot. How about you?
I saw this rainbow months ago while standing outside of a grocery store. A rainbow is a nice example of refraction.
Prism image from 924jeremiah.wordpress.com. Refraction experiment image from myscienceacademy.org. It is from an MIT YouTube video. Blank page from imgarcade.com. Rainbow photographs by L. Marie.
While researching sight in horses, I learned that horses can’t distinguish as many colors as humans can. The human retina has three cone photoreceptors while the equine retina has two (dichromatic vision).
One of the articles I read is “Vision in horses: More than meets the eye” by Neil Clarkson for Horsetalk.co.nz. The following line from the article made me sit up and take notice:
The research showed that horses, with their dichromatic vision, cannot distinguish red.
Humans with protanomalous (red-weak) vision have the same issue. And since red is my favorite color, well, you can see why I took notice, especially since the color red led me to research the topic in the first place. While writing a story with shape-shifters, I wanted to know which colors a teen in his animal form (horse) could distinguish. Could he distinguish the color of blood on snow?
I guess it’s up to me whether or not he retains his trichromatic color vision or switches over to dichromatic while a horse. (This is a fantasy book after all.) Since I wound up dumping the snow in the scene, the color aspect became moot anyway. But it caused me to think of how enriched my own world is due to having trichromatic color vision. Since I love bright colors (note the nail polish in the first photo), I have to fight the temptation to make every person, place, or thing I write about brightly colored. But I love using colors as symbols to show the emotional landscape of a character or to show mood in general.
Color choice can be very important when you’re using an objective correlative. If you’re wondering what an objective correlative is, here’s a handy definition from Merriam-Webster.com:
Something (as a situation or chain of events) that symbolizes or objectifies a particular emotion and that may be used in creative writing to evoke a desired emotional response in the reader.
A great post on objective correlatives with a helpful (and color-filled) example can be found here at Ingrid’s Notes. I can wait while you jet over there. I’ve got coffee to drink anyway.
You’re back? Good. Moving on, I also love to use color in an ironic way; for example, a depressed character who has the most colorful hair or wears the most colorful clothing (or both).
Color is one of the reasons why I love superhero ensemble shows or movies—all of those colorful costumes. Yet some of the most interesting heroes are the ones in basic black (or “very, very dark gray”; if you’ve seen The Lego Movie, you probably recognize that line). Here are some of those heroes:
Black Panther (in front) and Lego Batman
Black Widow and Hawkeye
(Still wondering about the “dark gray” line? Watch this video.)
How do you use color in your stories? What, if anything, have you admired about another author’s use of color?
Hello Kitty and Jordie wanted to be part of the color photo shoot, since they’re colorful as well. However, if this post were a magazine, this photo would be one of the alternate covers.
By the way, I mentioned in another post that I was going to make myself a puppy hat. Mission accomplished. And yes, I wear it proudly.
Horse eye from commons.wikimedia.org. Color wheels trotusa.com (which had the same photos from the Horsetalk article). Red wallpaper from love-wallpapers.com. Batman from jeffajohnson.com. Jeremy Renner from Hawkeye from fanpop.com. Black Widow from hdresimler.com. Black Panther from fanpop.
I’ve written about crayons before. Like here.
El Space--The Blog of L. Marie 