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today’s color obsession

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I am obsessed with the subtle color changes in this picture I took at the coast recently.  Make sure you click on it to make it bigger so you can see all of the color glory. I especially love how it looks like the sand cannot decide whether to be brown or eggplantish or here and there a little of both.  Everything is kissed by that golden hue of sunset, made more exquisite by the earlier downpour.  I have notes on at least 4 different shaded solids from this photo and also some testing for mirroring some the the grays with the darker shades.

Since I do live here in Oregon and it does stay gray quite a bit of the year. I decided a few months ago that maybe a gray color study would be appropriate and help me embrace this part of where I live.  I have learned so much and gained a great appreciation and love for the subtle variances that the Pacific Northwest does to gray with cloud cover. It is one of those fine line places that are so intriguing. Because what makes it so magical here is also what makes it seem intolerable.

Overcast, slightly cloudy, misty, there are so many ways to describe the fact that, “ Oh holy mother, it is going be be cloudy and yucky again today”. 

We all have our moments of I am so out of here and off to someplace tropical and warm and of my goodness what is that shining bright ball of light in the sky.  A couple of years ago the Oregonian had a weather writer that I believe got through the winter by finding the most creative ways to describe the days weather.  It worked too, I looked forward to those every single day. He was really funny and never disappointing.  I miss him, bet he lives in Florida now.

So the gray that colors most of the days here softens, reflects, absorbs, enriches depending on the amount of light that is filtered…the depth of shade. 

Today’s Oregon sky is the palest pearly gray with a threatening promise of water falling from it at some point in time (maybe). The evergreens and what little green grass there is are cast in blue. Browns are darker and the lighter shades are a bit luminescent.  Not a bad place to be.

24 Comments
  1. I grew up in a place that was blessed with lots of sunshine. Even in the winter, the sun dazzled off the snow. Gloomy days and white days were unusual and soon passed.

    Then I moved to Oregon and survived my first long, gray, monochromatic winter.

    When the shining bright ball appeared in the sky one day, I was totally and completely gobsmacked by how BRIGHT all of the colors were! Although I had been a painter for years, it was as though I had never really seen color before. I’ve never forgotten that – and never taken it for granted again.

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  2. barbara #

    Odd as it may seem, I experience the beauty/depth/subtleness/richness of colors more when the days are gray or overcast and didn’t realize this until just a few years ago. While a sunny day is my preference (usually), after a string of brilliant fall days here in NE ends and we have an overcast day I am always amazed at how rich the depth of colors is compared to how they were on those sunny days…i’m not sure that one is better than the other but they are totally different.

    yeah, ok, smile i did leave oregon years ago and always groaned at the long gray winters but it’s really a beautiful place and one that I miss ever so much…even in the midst of the awesome Maine snowstorms and their sunny clear cold aftermaths which i just love!!  Now I often wonder at what I missed by my negative attitude towards those endless gray days!!

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  3. I am living in the Netherlands for a couple of months this spring and I know exactly what you mean about learning to embrace the grey. But the dim, filtered light changes the look of the world, making all the other colors take on greater depth somehow. Oh, and when suddenly there is blue sky and sunshine, it is such a total shock to the system. Heh.

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  4. Love, love, love the photo! I so wish I were there now! smile

    I too embrace the gray…being a born and bred Oregonian it is part of my genetic make-up. I think you’re right…I bet the weather writer ran out of words before Oregon ran out of gray, and he’s in Florida now!! LOL!

    I’m looking forward to seeing and knitting with your study in gray!

    Happy Monday, DFG!!

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  5. Sharon T #

    I am waiting for that colorway, Tina – breathtaking photograph.

    I wish I had been there to see that in person. 

    Once I told my mother I was going to paint my house interior in various shades of grey.  Her response was that I must have been deeply depressed.  Not true, Mom (I wish she could yet hear me, but she is gone) it is a color of vast emotions, in various states of subtlety and always on their way to peace.  Nevertheless, I did not paint that house grey.  But there are rooms and rooms in my house now which are grey.  Lovely.

    The colors in that photo are mine, and I wish I had them in colorway glory.

    Sharon T.

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  6. What a gorgeous photo; I can’t wait to see the colorway it inspires!  I must admit that I miss greys terribly.  After ten years of living in the Bay Area, we moved to San Diego, and (as obnoxious as I realize this sounds) I get really tired of the sun.  I’m a gloomy weather person—give me a cold rocky beach with a grey ocean any day of the week.  Maybe it’s time to move to Oregon?

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  7. I so love the grays of our western Oregon skies! I think it’s the reflective quality of the light, filtered through the clouds, that make the greens and other forest colors really pop.  I’ve really been loving the colors of winter. The tans of dead grasses; the dark browns of exposed tree branches; here and there a flicker of deep purple red in vines or barks; the backdrop of blue/green conifers; all highlighted by the ever changing gray-filtered light.

    Now spring green is coming!

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  8. Yvette #

    I love seeing where you inspiration comes from for those beautiful yarns you dye. You are one freaking talented woman.

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  9. Lou/Happystasher #

    Ditto – I would love to see that skein of yarn with these colors captured in it!!

    It’s been rainy and gray here for several days and I yearn for the sun, but until then, I will look for color and beauty where I see it. We have some budding trees, green grass, and some spring flowers popping up so it’s not totally gray.

    I purposely painted my project room a very energetic yellow-green so it would punch my creative button. It makes me happy just to look at it.

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  10. You and I couldn’t have lived in more opposite climes – it’s rarely cloudy here in Dubai!

    Maybe one month a year in total, we get grey clouds, threat of rain but that’s it.  We get sandstorms though which blocks out the yellow orb from the sky but all in all we hardly get colour as diverse as this.

    I’m trying hard to picture the colourway you describe but I’m sure I’m failing miserably at it.

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  11. i’m with sharon and yvette. i love the many colors of grey. here in pittsburgh, we have grey like y’all have grey: lots of shades and variations of it and it’s everywhere. i love how the stark white of snow blazes against it after a new snowfall, especially at night before anyone’s been out in it yet—our whole neighborhood is shades of purple, grey, black, and white and completely silent except for me and my dog’s footsteps. when i visit my company’s headquarters in santa monica, i’m always amazed (alarmed?) at how bright the sun is, but it makes my head hurt, truthfully. i love the lush greens of the midatlantic inland in virginia (where i grew up), maryland, and pennsylvania, but especially before, during, or following a rain, when the leaves show their undersides to the wind and the greys blend the colors. i would so buy that yarn smile

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  12. Amy M/amyjknits #

    A gray color study would be fantastic!!  Your post & photo make me homesick for Seattle & the Oregon coast, which is one of my very favorite places.  We had a gray, rainy day a few weeks ago here (our first rain since November, I think!), and I enjoyed it so much.  It felt like winter in the Pacific Northwest! 

    Since we moved to upstate NY, we’ve heard many folks complain about the winters here being so gray & overcast, and comparing it to Seattle.  No way!  We have many more sunny, clear days here in the winter (reeeaaallly cold, but sunny), and the shades of gray & brown seem completely different to me.  Still variegated & really interesting, but maybe less lush, if that makes sense? 

    Seriously, though – a gray color study would be amazing!

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  13. Mary #

    As a native Washingtonian, I relate to your appreciation of the various shades of sky and sea that our region offers.  Today’s sky alone outside my window is at least 4 shades of bluish grey.  Part is almost white where the sun is poking through; part is almost gunmetal and looks like snow.  Thanks for glorifying this part of Nature’s vast palette.

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  14. Don’t get to see much grey down here in FL, but coincidentally, I’m sitting here with a wound ball of “Stormy Weather” on my desk.  It is beautiful.  Thank you :0)

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  15. SarahSeattle #

    I love the luminescence of the water wet sand which reflects the sunset and clouds. I could go for that series of colors especially if it pools. I like yarns that pool instead of striping. (actually, I like them all, but would like a clue as to which ones pool, so I could choose them first).

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  16. Theo #

    I love Oregon.  That’s all… and I am lucky enough to live here.

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  17. I’m so glad you are doing your homework via the blog!  Hearing your color inspiration is inspiration for so many of us!  A gray series would be incredible!!  Bleck is so not bleck!  When I was at school in South Bend, they used to count the number of days since we’d seen the sun….but those grays were nothing like the grays of the PNW.  I think the gray and the water and the lushness creates such a richer gray!

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  18. Oh what a lovely photo! And yes, grays, eggplanty shades…yum.

    wink

    Can’t wait to see what you come up with!

    (((hugs)))

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  19. Pat Dixon #

    Yes, Gray is beautiful with it’s many variations, it can be sad or glorious in all it’s spendlor..I grew up in Central Washington..traveled the world over..seeing grey in many ways..Spending many years visiting Whigbey Island, visiting my Son’S family..To day I sit here in a rainy day in Texas….Gray shows it’s splendor with warmth and confidence of our World around.

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  20. TracyBird #

    I’ve seen those lovely colors shifting depending on where I stood and where the light hits.  I think the word I want to use is opalescent.  That depth of field based on how the light hits and obscures what is underneath and then shifts and reveals it.  There was a great article in the Oregonian about gray paint last week.  There is a company in the Portland area that takes all of the pigment that gets caught up into it’s air filter and makes gray paint from it every year that they give away.

    They talked a lot about how gray is not so uniform as it seems at first glance.

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  21. Claire #

    Ah, the Oregon sky.  The first place I have lived that is wetter than the place I grew up!  But you have those trees with the moss and the clouds I could watch for hours, not to mention the stars.  So many stars.

    I’m not a poet, but the hills above Scappoose make me wish I was one.  I am going to miss this place very much.

    Love you.

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  22. I love grey. It’s a good thing since I live in Seattle. The sky here holds so much more interest than the constantly sunny and blue one where I grew up.

    My home is done in lighter tones of the colors in that photo. I really hope to see something based on it at SS or Madrona.

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  23. Linda Phillips #

    You make me miss the cloudy, misty, overcast days at the southcoast.  Sometimes the mist is a gray that is almost a pink.  Oh yes, I remember it well.  Not too much wine in my system yet.

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  24. Such a great post. Thank you very much for sharing this blog post…

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