Commemorating fiery colours with Arizona.
When I started my art training, all those years ago, my medium of choice then was Crayola pencils. I knew exactly, in my mind and heart, which coloured pencil were required for me to express what I wanted to express on any given page of my colouring books. Perhaps, it was due to the many hours spent marvelling and memorizing the names of these coloured treasures. Canary, peach, sky blue... However, two of the names caused me to ponder for longer periods of time: one was burnt orange and the other was burnt sienna.
Now the keyword, in both of them, that caught my attention was the word ‘burnt’. What did that really mean? Why 'burnt'? To me, burnt meant charcoal. Like the steaks my dad cooked once — no, no just kidding. But, seriously the colour of burnt anything was neither of these to me. It wasn’t until years later, on my first trip to Arizona where I saw the Grand Canyon for the first time, that I truly understood.
The Grand Canyon was deeper than deep in colour.
The soil there wasn’t plain, old brown, it was richer and more intense than that. It was raw earth; raw sienna, as the Italians call it, or burnt sienna as the English would say. And this land had an orange tone burnt right into it that was bold, not fruity sweet.
An extraction from my abstract digital painting that is now showcased on the above journal cover.
Whoever those individuals were that worked on matching the colour pigments to their given names sure knew what they were doing. Because not only are they a profound representation for artists, young and old, to rely on when expressing mother nature's array of colours, they are also a demonstraton that whoever uses them will probably have their names fondly burnt into the memory of the user for years to come.
That's all for now.
