Shades of Blue

 

It is winter time and its cold! Well considering I am talking about winter in Australia and I do not live in the mountains the cold is not as intense as that of Europe. I lived there for 25 years and was pretty happy with the cold. I even enjoyed it. When I went for holiday to hot places I did need to use the air conditioning for temperatures above 25C. However, since I have acquired the chronic condition of Connective Tissue Disease the body seems to have flipped a switch. Now I start shivering when the temperature goes below 20C and start looking for my winter woollies.

Well with this need to hibernate during the winter months I spend a fair amount of time talking to friends online on all sorts of topics. The other day the conversation meandered into artistic abilities. We got talking about hobbies like painting with water colours and pencil drawings which I have. My friend is a potter and is a professional, not an amateur like me. For some reason the talk turned to use of colour. I was pointing out that I am not very patient and that is a drawback when considering water colour and this was the reasons I picked up the pencil. To get the shades right I would have to wait for the paint to dry before applying more to slowly darken specific areas and this was too time consuming. I was always in a hurry to complete the painting.

Well the meandering conversation brought us to the colours we like and the varying shades of them.  I told her about an idle conversation I had about shades of green which I then wrote up for my blog. My friend said her favourite colour was blue and it prompted me to think about writing this blog about the shades of blue. She uses the blues in the decorations of her pottery which I believe has a beachy theme. I too have loved the colour blue since childhood. Most of my clothes used to have some shade of blue in them. In fact blue is also my husband’s favourite colour. We often talk of the shades of blue in the sky when travelling. When you travel to places like deserts the sky is vast. We also see vast skies when in the countryside. Travelling in Australia also we enjoy vast skies and the changing shades of blue. Along with red and yellow, blue is a primary colour that gives rise to all other colours by mixing varying levels of them. In the rainbow there are 3 shades, violet, indigo and blue at one end of the spectrum. I am particularly not going to label the shades but use examples to evoke the understanding of each shade.

One of the favourite shades of blue is what my husband calls the Simpson sky blue. It’s a soft shade of blue which is light and bright. It is seen often at the start of the day as the rosy light of the rising sun changes to blue of the day. Something I think of that clear pale blue as sharp, the connection of this blue to sharp is pretty tenuous as I think of the knife and steel that it is made from and this to the odd phrase of steel blue. However, in reality I think the blue tinge of steel is slightly darker in shade. The shades of blue are generally dependant on the level of white or black mixed into the primary colour blue. The lightest one is called periwinkle blue after the periwinkle flower which is a very pale blue colour. I would attribute the emotion of gentleness to this colour and also to baby blue. There is another term for this baby blue colour and that is powder blue. This is an English terminology and I often wonder how powder connects to the shade of blue unless in the past there was a talcum powder which had a hint of blue in it.

Then as the day gets older, the sky that is clear of clouds becomes an intense blue, a much darker and brighter shade. It feels rich and gives that cold sparkle of a winter day. While in summer it makes one think of cool breeze off the ocean. As more black gets added into this blue the darker the shade becomes moving from royal blue to navy blue to almost black. Strangely enough these used to be shades of the blue of the ink I used to buy when I was in school. While blue is supposed to be calming and is a welcome colour on a hot summer day I had to change the pale blue walls of my home in UK as it gave the room a cold feeling. The same cold feeling can also be created by blue flooring especially a carpet, as I also had a grey blue carpet. Yes, grey blue is also a soft pastel and is soothing as well. In warm countries these colours are very good to have in the house to keep the cool feeling on hot summer days.

The darker shades of blue can actually feel warmer than the lighter ones. The dark blue of the sky at night without clouds can be calming and warm. This dark sky with stars twinkling and super moon conjures up a velvety feel to the colour. This was the emotion the sky over the Negev desert evoked. The dark background also makes the stars shine bigger and brighter and seems to go on and on encompassing the small human on the surface of the desert. It is only when this star and moonlight is missing that the sky feels truly black. The other time the sky goes to the shades of navy and black is when the thunder clouds gather and sunlight gets obscured completely.

The sky is not the only thing that reflects the various shades of blue the seas also give us different blues. In fact the shades of waters in the shallows are almost transparent as seen in the coral islands and then it starts out with pale green and gets darker moving swiftly into the spectrum of blues. The dark of the deep sea is usually seen as a dramatic shift as the land levels falls off the side of an island. That dark blue can often be the shade called indigo as seen around the tropical atolls.  This spectrum is seen around the coral islands like that of the Maldives. But, like the mixing of grey into the blues of the sky, you have the mixing of greens in the blues of the seas. This green tinge into the waters makes the colour warmer than the paler blues.

The blue is also seen in so many shades in the flowers from that soft periwinkle blue to the deep almost purple of the morning glory. The bright intense blue is also the colour of copper and depending on the amount of copper in the mix the shades of the blue of gems vary. So the blues are beautiful whether alone of in a mix. They highlight the other colours and also change them when mixed.