I asked people among my facebook contacts why artists claim that green is a particularly troublesome color to use. (I have heard even Wolf Kahn say this at one of his lectures I attended.)
The replies I got were quite interesting. I even got some expert response from a psychiatrist who addressed the question in terms of human perception. Nonetheless, I still don’t really understand why people experience green differently from other colors because it’s just not my personal experience.
One color is like another to me. Except violet. Violet — in my humble opinion — is difficult to get exact. Or put another way, there are violets in nature that you cannot reproduce with exactness. The reason for that distinction is that some flowers offer very keen, vivid violet colors. And that color comes as light entering your eyes. When you try to mix colors, any mixture at all invariable dulls a color just a little — it loses intensity. So to get a brilliant violet hue requires that mixtures be avoided. But as everybody knows violet on the color wheel comes from mixing red and blue …. (The difference between theory and practice.)
In actual practice you need a substance that is a violet color. Pure pigment. That’s if you’re looking for exactness. And the only way you can mix that color is sparingly. And the best way to change it is by putting other colors around it, letting the light alter the appearance of the ensemble. (And you know what color is surrounding violet in nature — guess who.)
Well, whatever.
I thought about the interesting color discussion when I was mixing greens for my bouquet. I decided for my part that the problem of green hasn’t got anything to do with mixing greens. It’s just that some observers don’t like certain greens. They just don’t like them. Whereas if you like the various greens in all their wild fullness of greenery form, then the problem is solved. Green has a PR problem. Cue music.
“It’s not that easy being green ….”
Aletha Kuschan's Weblog 