Ep.057 Breaking Down Breakthrough Colour w/guest Tracy Holmes

Have you ever tried to visualize the relationship of colors in three dimensions? It’s not some fancy trick. It’s actually fairly easy to do so with the right tools.

My guest in this episode is Tracy Holmes, the creator of the Breakthrough Colour system. We’re going to talk about what that system is and how the BTC concepts can help you create a better understanding and mastery of color. We’ll also discuss the creation of color palettes as well as discuss the wonderful tools she has coming up to help you take your color skills to the next level.

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Contact my guest, Tracy Holmes:

Sign up for the mailing list: https://www.breakthroughcolour.com/

Join Tracy on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/breakthroughcolour/

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CREDITS:

Cover design by Sage; Illustration by Olga Kostenko

Music by Playsound

Transcript:

–AI transcribed, unedited. Please excuse the copious errors.–

Wear red, yellow and blue are isn’t quite right because yeah, once we put your dent into it, then you know everyone at the dinner table has to move their chairs over a little bit. And now red isn’t sitting across from green in here. We’ve been, right.

On the traditional wheel. Green. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Hello. All my courageously creative and colorful friends out there. Thanks for joining me today on the Sage Arts Podcast. This is sage, your host. And we are going to join my guests and I know I haven’t had a interview for a. While sorry about that. How things fell into place that I had so many lined up for this year and. Then everybody got. Really busy but. But anyhow, I have a guest for you today. A color theorist and educator who is going to talk about. Some of the. Things that we’ve already talked about there that I talked about. I talked at you about in the previous months about color, but we’re going to talk about in terms of a system that she developed and I think it’s really enlightening to think about color in these kind of like new terms and even new forms, because we actually talk about color in three dimensions a lot. That’s the big part of this system that she developed. So I realized in editing the interview that even though we described these components of her. Our system, I don’t think it was as clear as it could have been because both of us know the system really well and I think we just kind of skipped over some things I wanted to take a moment to actually talk about these physical items that she uses to teach color. But if you want to see the materials that we’re talking about because she developed a set of cards and a set. Of cubes that help you visualize color in a three-dimensional space and color in terms of relationships to each other in this kind of thing. In any case, we’ll explain. She will explain that in the interview, but the cards and cubes you can see on her website at breakthrough color and that’s color with the use of CLOUR and these links will be in the show notes or description section of wherever you’re listening to this from. But if you have a moment or if you can look at things while you’re listening to. Podcast go to thesagearts.com, go to the episodes section of the website, go down to episode 57 and you’ll find images of the cards and cubes that we’re going to be talking about so you can look at them beforehand or keep the images out and open when you’re listening to this so it’ll make a little bit more sense. That way we’re visual people. They know it’s hard to actually visualize something that’s being auditorially described to you and not something that you’ve looked at before or are. Looking at in any. Case. Let me give you a description of them. If you’re not able to look at them, the cards and cubes now, the cubes are literally like paper cubes that you built. If you had the original set, the original sets are no longer available. But Tracy Holmes is working on a new set of cards and I assume cubes to go with them. That should be available later in 2024. Cubes are a 3D visualization of how all the colors relate to each other. We’re going to explain that in there, but it’s basically like a. Six cube. She has a set that’s three by three, which is a Rubik’s Cube. Or there’s a 6 by 6. So there’s six colors on each edge and each corner is either a primary color, a secondary color, or white or black. And this is in a CMYK color space. So marries are say, and magenta and yellow and the secondaries. Are red, green and blue, so there’s eight corners to a cube, right? So the opposite corners of the cubes are the complements for each color. So if you have a primary color on one corner, you’re gonna have a secondary which is going to be its complement on the other. Corner and I’m talking to opposite. When you go through the cube, not across the surface and then black and white are also opposite corners from each other and then along all those edges and in between the colors graduate from what they are in one corner and move to become the color in the opposite corner of whichever line, whichever edge you’re following. And for my polymer pupil, this is like a Skinner blend. You start with, say, red on one side and green on the other, and then you mix it until the colors are completely merged in the middle and you will have a graduation of. Color and then the other primary component of the system are the cards. The cards I have found to be so incredibly useful. I use them all the time and the cards are playing card sized cards and then one side it’s a complete Swatch of the color that that card is representing in the upper corner is a three digit number. And that number, and we’ll talk about this in the interview. Actually represents the mix of cyan, magenta and yellow. So like right now as I’m talking to you have card number 342 in my hand, three stands for three portions of Cyan, 4 portions of magenta, and two portions of yellow. It is a relative thing. It is not a recipe. We’re going to talk about that as well, even though I kind of think of them as a recipe. But on the back is actually representation of that recipe thing. That’s not a recipe. With portions you know, so there’s three portions of Cyan, 4 portions of Magenta, 2 portions of yellow on the back of this card. And then there’s also a value scale to show you how light or dark it is. So if you had a couple cards together, you could compare. This is lighter. This is darker. I mean, you can tell visually a lot of the times, of course. But sometimes it’s interesting to actually look how close they are. How different they really are than you think they are. And then there’s also numbers. If you work with digital color. And you’re trying to match colors. They actually have the breakdown for RGB and the Hex code, and if you don’t know what those are, you don’t have to worry, because you’re probably not doing anything that uses them. There are also a few other. Things like there’s. A base hue cube in the upper right hand corner of the backside of the cards and and then a few other things but. Those are the things we talk about today, primarily the color portioning and the value and the numbers on the card. But in any case, those the cards and the cubes and we’re gonna be talking about them a lot. See if you can look at them visually before the conversation because I think that will really. To help, and although we’re talking about a system that’s not available yet and some of you might think, oh, well, I I not gonna get a hold of these. So why do I want to hear about how the system works? Well, the reason why the system was developed the way it was developed is the information that is the most valuable, I think out of this conversation. The why? Why did she choose to do things in three dimensions? Why are the relationship in her system set up the way they are? Well, it’s a way of explaining color understanding color using Co. Other and if you haven’t quite gone on board with the CMYK system, but you’re still curious, you will hear about a lot of reasons why it works as well as it does, and why you might really want to at least have a thorough understanding of the way it works in order to mix color and of course talked about the CMYK system in episode. 53 the big color. Mix up which came out on March. And episode 55 trading color schemes for relationships published on April 5th. So you can go look up those two. And if you haven’t listened to them, they actually are super helpful for this conversation as well. So you, you’ll already know a lot of this information and it’ll just kind of concrete these ideas for you. So that is. A long enough preamble for what has turned out to be a rather long episode, just because there’s so much information we talked initially. To be honest, the first time we that we’ve done this interview twice, the first time it went almost 4 hours, but we felt like it wasn’t focused enough, so we refocused. And managed to talk only two hours this time, and I’ve got it down to about an hour of talk time with Tracy getting to the really succinct information that I think that will help you in your understanding and relationship with color and how you use it as an artist. So without further ado, we are going to vote on over. To that actual interview. So my guest today is Tracy Holmes. She’s a self-taught color educator and creator of breakthrough color, a tools and training for modern color practice, which is kind of a mouthful. But we will get into that. Hi, Tracy, thanks for joining us. Welcome.

Thank you. I am so happy and excited to be here.

Yeah, we’ve been trying to get this done for a little while. We’ve been going back and forth for months, but first of all, I want to define who you are other than what I just said because most of my guests are artists and you’re not directly an artist, right?

No, and in fact, it’s funny, because whenever I mention that I’m a color educator. There people immediately say ohh, what do you do? Meaning they want to know how I manifest my color. Yeah, so you know they want fill in the blank, medium or material or something or they say you know, what letters do you have behind your name? If you’re a color educator, you must be, you know, educated yourself. Right.

And I’m I’m kind of neither of those things, which is interesting because you would think that would make me just about the least qualified person to be a color educator. But I do kind of think, no, I don’t think I know there is a lot of creativity.

And process in exploring color in and of itself. So I don’t consider my work to be solely pedantic or theoretical or whatever I I have as much fun in my little color space with my own color tools that just happened to be.

Like I said, the colors themselves.

You enjoy color for the sake of color.

Yeah. I think part of why it’s so much fun for me is because for so, so long, I didn’t get it, didn’t send it. I didn’t need to. But I also thought, well, shouldn’t I?

Well, you didn’t need to, but your partner, Dan Cormier, is a huge artist.

Yeah, I do have. You know, a front row seat, yeah.

Working close to someone who uses color in his work all the time and also always had kind of a natural affinity for it and intuitive comfort with color palettes and mixing colors and telling stories with colors and all of that stuff. And you know, maybe that was indirectly part of why.

I felt even more sort of excluded from how come this is so easy for you and not for me? Not that everyone needs to be able to to manifest it. In a way that. But.

But it piqued your curiosity, yeah.

It did, and it always felt that something as fundamental as color should be easily understandable by anyone, in the same way that sometimes people say to me or you teach color. That’s interesting. Well, I’m not an artist. I don’t need to know that. Why would I need to know about color?

And I say, you know, why would you need to know how to read and not everybody who learns how to read or spell or speak becomes a great novelist, or it’s just a language.

That helps us communicate with others, and I think that color is parallel to that. It’s just a different kind of language, but I believe it’s as fundamental or as important for anyone to just sort of enhance our our lives. We’re blessed with these eyes that can see and and.

See so much, yeah.

And are. This also need an audience, so you’re either the artist or the you’re the one looking. At the art.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So. So you don’t create visually yourself at all right now every creative outlets.

No, I mean I I love making all the little infographics and, you know, things that I make to to help explain or give examples of of my system and show people, you know how how colors work and play well together and things. And I have, you know, art materials all.

Tell me that are more for fashion than function and in the same way that they’re handy to have. And I’ll dabble with them, but I don’t use them to teach color.

Yeah, right. We will get into that. But let’s get to know you a little better. We’re going to do some fun questions. You know, because they’re fun. So, yeah. Well, first of all, do you have any other passions besides your work that you think helps define who?

It’s pretty all-encompassing. I’m going to be. Honest like you. Know I I continue to be surprised by how much it continues to surprise me.

It’s a system that is very math based, but I will say I almost failed high school math like like that scare you, but it’s more like patterns and puzzles and.

Yes, right. Exactly. Yeah.

Why does this? Happen this way and what if I did this and even in the code system and the structure? Aspects of the geometry of breakthrough color. I’m still discovering things as if I didn’t create it. In the first place.

Yeah, it’s one of those things that the more you know about something, the more that you know nothing because it’s just especially something like this because color people think ohh color there’s like hue and there’s like if it’s dark or light or neutral or not and it’s so much more and I’ve done this before I did it on the blog I did in the magazines and it’s just so in depth. So it’s just all consuming for you it sounds like.

Yeah. Well, I have two dogs and I do yoga every morning and I like to, you know, look in the fridge and make some. Magical meal with what’s available, you know? So yeah. I mean, though the some, some pretty standard things. But I think mostly right now and maybe it’s because I came to this kind of later in life and so I’m catching up. I’m making up for all the time. I didn’t get it and wanting to continue to go into it.

And interpret back out again and make sure that I share this with as many people as possible so they can have the kinds of breakthroughs that I’ve. Them and be more equipped to make color a more important part of their lives.

Yeah. Yeah, that’s great. OK. So you brought up you like to open the fridge and make magical meals. So I have this question I. Like to ask people? What is your favorite guilty pleasure food?

I know you were gonna ask this because I’ve heard you ask others. So there’s a lot of answers, but I love to go to. Movies and get a bucket of popcorn and a bag.

Of goodies now goodies. I think maybe in some places they’re like called good and plenty. Or something. They’re like, and they all sort of.

Good and plenty, though. Yeah, it’s good and plenty of.

Licorice. Yeah, it’s a licorice sort of pellet candy coated, right? So I would dump the bag of goodies into the popcorn.

Yeah. So in the dark, there’s this. You know, you just put your hand in.

You don’t know what you get.

And you get this. And and sweet salty candy mix right now, the the tragedy of this is that goodies are no longer available.

Yeah. Oh, no, no.

I used to buy them regularly and they were also always in the little bag in my desk drawer for mid afternoon. You know, while I’m working at my computer, you can do the same thing with a bag of Smarties or a bag of, you know, there’s another candy. Yeah, but yeah, so popcorn with candy, not candy coated popcorn. Not much.

Yeah. Whatever candies, yeah.

But but both keeping them separate but kind of mixed there.

Yeah, you know, we we haven’t mentioned where you are. I used to call you and Dan, the Canadians in Mexico cause.

Yes. Yeah, that’s fair enough. Yeah. I’m born and raised on Canada’s West Coast and grew up in Montreal. We met in Vancouver, and that’s where we sort of spent the beginning part of our relationship. And then when our son was. Was five. We went to Europe for an extended teaching tour and we were away long enough that it coincided with us sort of planning to move anyway. So we put everything in storage to do this three month Europe trip, intending that when we returned we would just look for a new place rather than.

You know, pay rent for somewhere we weren’t using and also. We thought on the way back we would stop in Montreal and spend some time with his parents while we were in.

Montreal after this. Trip. We got kind of an out of the blue e-mail from a friend who was living part-time almost full time in this little beach town in Mexico and said someone I know is looking for house sitters for six months. Are you guys interested? Well, everything was already in storage. We were living out of suitcases following this Europe trip. We couldn’t really think of a reason not to do it.

So we so off we went to Mexico and eight years late.

Right. Remember that.

Yeah. So I sometimes say we couldn’t think of a reason not to go. And then once we were there, we couldn’t think of a good reason to leave. So we just kind of hung out there for a while. That was home base and now I have a perfectly fluent 19 year old Spanish speaking head, which is kind of cool.

Yeah. OK. Yeah.

What is home right now?

Well, Griffin was ready to return to Canada as he was getting a little deeper into high school. So he and I came back to sort of establish that or try that out. Yeah. And he had done grade one through 8 in this little Mexican town. So we weren’t even. Sure. How that would all work. Right. And then we kind of straddled both places for for a while when COVID not happened, then happened to be visiting up here. So all three of us were together and then we will, but we still have our place there. So we kind of go back and forth. But I would say for me now Vancouver or the Vancouver area is home.

OK. Yeah, yeah.

But you’re still. Spending a lot of time in Mexico, you and Dan and Griffin, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, even as you know, we think about going down there. It’s not like, oh, I’m going to Mexico, like, at some exotic vacation place. It’s like going to that other place that where we live sometimes, you know.

No, you’re going home. That’s fun and that’s. Could be a lot and I know the colors down there were very inspirational I could.

Yes. Ohh yeah, well that’s where I was living when breakthrough color kind of really coagulated together, right? I mean, my my interest curiosity confusion was always there. But it really kind of came into play there and I I absolutely agree with you that I’m sure that.

Yeah, yeah. Right.

Had a lot to do with it. Just living in an environment that embraces color more than I had experienced.

Yeah, well, let’s use that as a transition into your journey to this. Your original career path, for instance, your original career path was not art or color or any of this stuff.

No, and in fact, you know if if credentials count. I have two undergraduate degrees, one is in theater and one is in journalism. And most of my, you know, the first sort of phase of my adult life.

That’s right.

Working life was in theater and specifically in comedy improv, and that’s kind of what I was doing when Dan and I met and. I didn’t know anything about Paul Mcclay. That’s what he was doing and me thinking that what he was doing was really cool. And so I ended up kind of shifting away and becoming more of a support to leader whatever for a lot of his work and encouraging him and then. Paula Mcclay is, you know, color we can hold in our hands. And so it’s a great medium for telling stories with color and.

And it’s it’s part of the material itself, right? You can’t. You cannot have it. Exactly. So it’s not that I ever really needed to have a deep knowledge of color. And I would say, you know, my formal color training probably ended in kindergarten, when it does for a lot of people.

Yes, you can’t not have it.

And we’re promised that red plus blue equals purple, and it doesn’t happen. And you know, all through my school again it was.

More the the theater side of things, music and theater, and and all of that. But even with, you know, when computers became a part of our lives and I was doing things on computers where I had to understand what CMYK was or what RGB was. And even in theater, theater, lighting, and yeah, there were all of these systems.

Theater lighting, yeah.

Three main systems, the red, yellow, blue color wheel stuff that I’ve been taught as a kid that every board book you know for in a preschool tells us certain rules and they they don’t all work. Some of them do, but not all of them do.

And that’s part of the problem with that system, in my opinion, is that it would almost be better if it didn’t work at all, because then we wouldn’t use it anymore. But it works. It it mostly works right? A lot of the standard color wheel. It’s a great portal towards some foundational understanding, but it’s.

The fact that a few little things don’t quite work, or you can only go so far with it that I think for most people puts you in a position where you say, well, that didn’t work, but it’s supposed to. And I’m just learning and my teacher insists and everyone else around me tells me, but it’s not working for me, so it must be my fault it must.

Be. Me. So I guess this isn’t for me. Bye. You know, and and then.

Yeah, it’s frustrating. I remember that art school too it was. Very frustrating for me.

Yeah, because there’s this part of the system that might have worked well and made sense for the, you know, what we knew and what we had to work with in the 16 hundreds, 1700s, even 1900s. But as we move forward, one of the other challenges is the teachers.

Right, exactly. Yeah.

Might even in their own heads be thinking. Yeah, this you’re. Right, small child. This doesn’t work. But I don’t know what. Else to tell you and this is what I was told, so come outside and play.

But it’s because they had the one pigment method before. We have now the ability to make color chemically, yeah.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So the materials had limitations. I also think you know. That the study of color is there’s the science side and the study of color is light. And then there’s. The sort of. Real world side, the study of color as. Pigments. Right. And you can’t have one without the other. And yet the light side, the RGB kind of system, didn’t mesh with the red, yellow, blue system, right?

And so that was my first biggest clue to sort of say they should. They just should, like, there’s something that. I am intuitively believing, fundamentally believing that these two things should fit better than when I learned about CMYK. They fit. Yeah, set and then I started to think. OK, so I’m going to just forget about the red, yellow, blue thing. It never worked for me in the 1st place. So I’m just going to ignore that and see what else I can discover. And I think the other thing that happened and again, disclaimer, I am not a color historian and I don’t claim to be, but. Here’s my tag. Click on it. Mitton puts his prism in his window. It takes the sunlight and it splits it into colors. At first everybody says Ohh, that’s crazy. It’s it’s magic, whatever. But then he he converges them back again with a second prism to show you know it. It is the light itself being split because I can put it back together.

But it’s linear, right? So the linear spectrum goes from infrared to ultraviolet. The part we can see.

And what then happened is he turned that line into a wheel. But it it wasn’t actually colored. It was just words and spaces. So when he says this is blue, what blue is he describing the word that he’s using? What does it relate to? Etcetera. I always tell my students imagine that spectrum is instead of just sort of turning it around on itself and connecting the red end with the blue end or the ultraviolet with the infrared and and biting them up against one another. What should have happened and what must happen is that those two.

Overlap the same way that the rest of the colors overlap when they’re in a line, but if you just put them up against each other, then you think that there’s a color missing, right? There’s that overlapping is missing, and that’s magenta. That was sort of one of the ways that I kind of think it went wrong. Is because the circle only included the rainbow colors, so I think the rainbow is a lovely thing to use to engage young minds and teach them about color, as long as you are teaching about color as light. But if you are teaching about color as pigment and the paints that are in front of them. The rainbow doesn’t isn’t enough because the rainbow doesn’t show where that overlap is. The hues of color, the color part is still definitely circular. It’s continuous. You can, if you think of the color wheel as a clock, you can start whenever you want at. 3:00 or.

And I’ll keep running around and.

Yeah. And you can go clockwise or counterclockwise. You’re always going to circle back to to the beginning. So hue, as an aspect of color is definitely circular.

But the wheel. Is A2 dimensional thing and two dimensions aren’t enough.

And this is for the primary or one of the primary differences between the way most people are taught color and your system. So let’s go in and talk about the breakthrough color system and how it differs from existing color theory teaching.

Sure. I think the the main thing, the first paradigm shift that people have to make is to let go of the red yellow. Blue. Trio.

And it’s so funny because the printing industry has always known this as long as there’s been printing and and they they just never shared it with the artists.

Ohh I know, I know. Well, I think it’s I think part of the challenge is, is teachers are so strapped for resources and materials and everything that they they go to whatever is available to them. And so it’s sort of like, well, we’ll keep producing red, yellow, blue, you know, paint pack, crayon boxes and things.

Because that’s what we’re teaching. If we want to teach cyan, magenta, yellow as a foundational entry point into understand.

Color. Well, I don’t have any good cyan, magenta paints. I’ve got yellow, yellow work guys well, and wherever, you know, but.

You’re not gonna find that at the kids, art. Supply store.

Yeah. So we’re sort of in this catch 22. We keep teaching this older system because it’s what’s available.

And they’re not seeing it as important to transfer to something else. But the weird thing is, is like an art school, at least when I was in art school. And just a while ago, we never talked about CMYK. It wasn’t until I got into print production that I found.

I know. And the thing now that’s so funny with, you know, the advent of computers and digital resources in the way that teachers can download things for their classrooms. I’m gonna download the color wheel. Oh, now what you gonna do with it? I’m going to print out a copy for everyone in my class. So how are you going to print that on my printer open.

That printer tell. Me. What is in that printer?

What’s in there? You are you are using.

This color wheel to tell your students that if you have red, yellow, and blue, you can make any other color you want, and yet you’re. Printing out a color wheel.

That does not do that, right? Yeah. And I also want to be clear. Red is welcome in my color circle. Like the red, we need red. We just. It’s just that the and we need magenta, right. Like Magenta has been excluded for all this time.

You’re. Exactly. Well, yeah.

Because it’s not in the visible linear spectrum, and because it’s not on the traditional color wheel, it’s just kind of been left out. Right. But if we make room for magenta and red, just sort of moves over a little bit and then we still get to have red and we still get to have yellow and blue and those are fine. It’s just that when we place them as sort of an equilateral triad. Yeah. And then we start to use that geometry to talk about.

Color relationships and color schemes. That’s where we continue to get into trouble because wear red, yellow and blue. Are isn’t quite right because mostly yeah, once we put it into into it, then you know everyone at the dinner table has to move their chairs over a little bit. And now red isn’t sitting across from green anymore. And then for is right. And I think it one of the other things that I’ve ended up.

I’m a traditional wheel. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Emphasizing a lot when I teach is that you can learn as much about what a color is by knowing what it isn’t. Yeah, because that’s really what complementary color schemes are all about and it relates. To how our eyes. Work and and that’s another way that breakthrough color. Significantly differs from a wheel. Is that a wheel is A2 dimensional model and breakthrough color is 3 dimensional and not that there aren’t other three-dimensional color spaces out there. There are and. Thank goodness there are, but most of the other three-dimensional color models say and the three dimensions. Bar and they say hue value and chroma or hue value and saturation. So hue being the color part you know value being how light or dark it is.

Right. Alright, thank you.

And then saturation being how you know saturated is it like? Is it a dry sponge? Yeah. Is it a dry sponge with no water in it, or is it soaked up and full of all the color you can get? Right. But I have issue with that too because to me.

Form versus neutral.

It’s not even that complicated to me. When you say something is 3 dimensional, you’re you’re using it to describe a geometrical space. You’re not a form, you’re not using it to say ohh he’s a really multi dimensional person. You know you’re not using it to describe qualities and hue value and chroma are qualities of the color or ways that we can define any color according to those. Yeah, according to those.

And communicate. Yeah, right, right.

Different. Period. To me, the dimensions in the three-dimensional space are quite literally up and down, left to right front to back kind of thing. It’s as simple as that. And So what I did in defining the color space that I teach is I assigned each of the three primary colors and again.

Cyan, magenta, yellow not red, yellow, blue, but. Each of these. 3 primaries gets one of those dimensions. So the three dimensions in the three-dimensional breakthrough color space are cyan, magenta, and yellow.

And again, going back to this, what is a color, what isn’t a color? You can have different amounts of those three colors in whatever call you’re creating, including none.

Right, right, right. Yeah.

Zero matters, yeah. 0 is not nothing. Zero might be everything, because having no cyan in a color takes out a whole part of the gamut right when you have all three, you have all the colors. You have black, or if you’re talking about light, when you have all three, you have full strength.

Aspect of it, yeah.

White, you have white, so when you have three colors as the three dimensions.

And you plot them into the most sort of basic expression of three dimensions, which is a cube. If you think of a graph that’s like 2 axes, you know.

You go up. X&Y, but then if you come up off the page into Z, those are the three directions. That you can travel in the.

If you pictured a room like a square empty room with a white floor, white walls and white ceiling, and you’re just in this room. If you imagine that going from the floor to the ceiling is cyan.

Expressions of cyan.

Yeah, like, there’s no sign that the floor, but the roof is full. And if you imagine magenta, then going from the wall on your left to the wall. On your right. And on the left there’s no magenta, and on the right it’s full strength. And then if you imagine yellow is going from the front of the room to the back of the room, right. So it’s not just. Points on the line like the like. The edges of the graph. You know it’s what the graph makes when it’s intersect. So what happens is by like having sort of sliders and if anyone listening works on computers, the RGB sliders, they’re doing the same thing you’re you’re taking three different things.

And giving each of them its own individual. Emptied the full kind of a mouth.

Yeah, but when you have two, you know, like when we say red plus yellow equals orange, those are just two dimensions. Like two ingredients working together. It’s when you add the third one that things start to get more complex. In my opinion more.

Interesting and unfortunately also more muddy. You know when we say ohh I always end.

Up making mud. It’s like that’s. That’s only a bad thing, because that’s not where you wanted to go.

If it’s not where you want to go.

Right. But mud quote UN quote the the the more muted, more complex 3 ingredient colors are. Really, the colors that everybody. Loves, and they’re also like 99.9% of the colors we actually see. Like when people say I don’t have any cyan paint or polymer clay.

Or, you know, embroidery thread or whatever. It’s like, yeah, because purity is rare, like to start.

With pure science, nobody does.

Well, and that’s why we didn’t have these for so long, because there were people going out to the natural world to get their pigment, you know, from from stones and and plants and animals and yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And even printers, you know, I can replace the the ink in my printer with one brand and then another brand or what’s the paper like or what are the settings like? What am I printing it it you know there’s. So I always tell people look you don’t have to start with those.

Yeah, changes it all up.

You just have to understand that the color space those are just points of many many points in the color space. You don’t have to start with them you, but the what the color space does is it gives you a framework. Then you can start anywhere. But if you understand why that color. Space is built the way it is. Then no matter where you start, and no matter where you want to go, it’s sort of this 3 dimensional road map that can take you there. And did you just hear that?

Yeah, it’s OK.

The first time we want to drive from, you know, my place to your place, and I’ve never been to your place before. I’ll use a map right then. The next time I might still have that map handy. But then eventually I know where you live. I don’t need to use the map.

And that’s where I want breakthrough color to be for people is I want it to be a really reliable map, reliable, not the color wheel that says. Do this. Good luck with that, you know? So it’s a bit of a GPS, but it also has like.

Right. Yeah, yeah.

Attitude. So it’s not just, you know, it’s not just celebration. Yeah, exactly. That’s that’s the word. Yeah. Because of it’s this third dimension. Yeah. But you can start anywhere you want. So. And then also there are two different approaches to.

Elevation gain.

Creating a color space, even a three-dimensional one, you can either plot your colors evenly and what that means is some distances may be longer than others because they use themselves are different to begin with, even though they only possibly.

And. Interact differently?

Yeah. Or there’s. Farther or weaker than others like I if I mix half and half red and.

Though it’s still going to look pretty red because the magenta in the red is so much stronger than the than the yellow right? So so you can either say to yourself, OK, I’m going to take more steps when I’m moving away from yellow so that we can see the change. It’s not so drastic. And then going from.

Magenta to red, they’ll all practically look the same, because the difference between those two colors is yellow, and it’s not that different. So one way to build a color space is to adjust for. Breaks the color, treats them all the same and So what that means is some of the paths, if they’re all the same distance, they don’t change that much and others change a lot. But that’s OK, because I think one way to know how things are different is to treat them the same, right? Yeah. So. The and the cube as an even you know the width and the height and the depth are all the same. Just means that you can more easily find your way around because.

Everything is sort of more organized. It’s more like how many steps am I going to take to get from this corner of the color space to this one? If I take one, it’s going to be a big step visually as well. Like, it doesn’t matter how literally big or small your cube is like, it’s going to be a big visual step. But then if I take smaller steps. The differences at each point are going to be more subtle, and then the thing about having a three-dimensional color space is that you get an exponential increase in the number of colors that you make because you’re going from what I call the color basics cube, which is. Three on each edge. Then it’s 3 * 3 * 3. You get 27 colors in that space, and the color wheel. You can start with three primaries. Then you get 3 secondaries and then you get 6 tertiary, so you get a a stream of 12 shoes.

Yeah. And we should mention that when you’re talking about the three by three, it’s a cube, but you only see it from the outside. But you know, interiorly or cause you have those single little cubes with single cubes together. You could see them all inside.

Yeah, well. In the three by three by three, you can actually see all but one. Of the units, if you if you put your Rubik’s Cube, yeah, you can see on a Rubik’s Cube, which is 3 by three by three. But if you saw it as 27 cubes, you would see all of them except the one in the middle. But as soon as you get to a bigger cube, a four by four or the biggest one that I teach with, which is a 6 by 6 by 6.

Oh, that’s true. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Suddenly you have 216 colors in that color space. But close to half our inside. So that’s when the dimensions get interesting, because I say there’s the front side, the backside, the left side, the right side, the top side, the bottom side and the inside, you know, and the inside the inside is where you’re going to, you’re going to see and find and make.

All the colors that have a. Little bit of all three.

Each they have neutral bases, yeah.

Yeah. And that’s why they get muddy, quote UN quote. They get muted because the primaries are overlapping each other and cancelling each other out and they’re not all able to shine on their own and be bright and vibrant like we’re used to seeing in the sort of outer perimeter of a.

You have a color wheel, right? Yeah, exactly.

But if we know what they are, if we know where they’re from and where they’re going, I’ve so many times I’ve shown students kind of muted mighty color, and they’re like they’re not. Excluded by then later on I’ll show them a color flow or a color palette or color scheme, and that colors in there and then I’ll pull that color out again and I’ll say, yeah, that. What do you think of this one? Oh, I love that.

Excited about it? Yeah.

I love that color. It’s it’s it. It is a book context and it is about the origins of it and where else it could go and when. When a muted color, a more neutralized muted color is next to its base hue. We can see that color, you know, we can see it in there, you know? So that’s fun too.

So I think we’re seeing the difference between the traditional system that we’ve all learned as little kids in the system, like what you have is that we are for one as artists, color mixing is going to be a lot easier, a lot more successful because you’re actually using the true primaries of the pigmented world, right? And then I thought it would be an interesting conversation to also talk about the development of color palettes, because color palettes are something I think most artists find tricky, like trying to decide what works together, why most people just put colors together and go, oh, that that looks good. This is good. These are, you know, and in certain.

Mediums like polymer, for instance, being able to plan a color palette and pre mix is can be really advantageous to the workflow. So your system what you think about your system will help in terms of developing color.

Well, I think that first of all being that there’s two sort of parallel parts to it. One is the cube, which is the definitive. Every color has its place and it it is where it must be because of what it is not because I’ve decided or anyone else has decided. So it it’s the framework, it’s the road map, it’s the. GPS.

But how does it tell somebody about the relationship so that they can develop a palette? Because you know, the pallets are about the relationships of the colors for the. Work right?

Exactly in the same way that a color wheel is supposed to, which is with sort of the geometry of it, right? And the fact that if I am looking at a color.

Cube and I find a particular color and maybe I find it on the cube because I have it on my workspace or it’s a color that a client wants me to use, or it’s a color that I like and I want to know, OK, what colors are close to it, what what colors are related to it, like what, what’s it’s, you know, mom and Dad and it’s sister, and maybe it’s cousin. Like literally kind of related because of the ingredients. What colors have something in common with it, but are also then unique in other ways so you know, I use that analogy like friends or people in a club, you know, to describe what traditional color theory calls a triadic color scheme. Like, even if we think of the primary assignment in yellow or a triad.

Yeah, yeah. Right.

They have nothing in common with the other, but what yellow and magenta have in common is that neither of them have cyan, so that’s getting back to the we also need to look at what a color isn’t, you know, and then at the furthest.

Stream physically as well as sort of metaphorically. The complementary colors are what one color is, it’s complementary isn’t, and you can find your way using the cube just by literally saying, well, this one is 2 over on this edge. So let me go to the opposite edge and go two over. On the other side, you know that kind of thing and what I was going to say before is that.

The cube is just really half of the system. The other half of the system are the cards and every single unit color in every single cube has a playing card sized version. So you can mix and match and play and sort and shuffle and sequence and try and, you know compare.

And all that. Yeah, with the cards. So that’s kind of going into it from a more. Just see what looks. Nice. And then when you come upon something that looks nice, then you can say interesting. Where are these in the colors?

Yeah, it’s like the cube is actually, you can see the relationship between the colors in the cube, but then the cards which I use all the time you put them out and you can see your visual reaction to your combinations.

Yeah, yeah. Or you can maybe say I’m I think I’m close with this color scheme. But something’s not quite working. Let me find the cards and then let me analyze these colors a little bit more. You know, let me see where are they, what are they? What do they have in common? What don’t they? And then that becomes, you know, kind of an advanced version of of the same kinds of math that we do with the color wheel of it’s right. Us from it or it’s you know.

But we should explain the cards too. The cards are like one side is the color and you know there’s, you know, a little thing in the corner to kind of tell you where it is. And then on the backside is kind of explaining the.

Yes, full splotch, yeah.

Color in different modes.

Yeah, it’s. It’s like I really wanted the system to be language agnostic, you know, like I wouldn’t want to talk. That’s why there’s like 400 colors in the breakthrough color system and and only eight of them are named like, the the primaries.

Side magenta, yellow red, green, blue, black and white. Everything else is. I mean, we get into all this.

This is yellow red, which most people would call orange, but it literally is yellow and red, so I call it yellow and red. You know, it’s kind of like, OK, that makes sense because.

But the backside of the cards have it like to me it looks like a recipe, you know, like it’s how many parts of this color, how many parts of cyan, magenta, yellow and then black and white, right?

Well, what actually happens is it shows you the breakdown of of the cyan, magenta and yellow ingredients in the top, but then it kind of sums those up and I and in the middle what I call the saturation summary. Because if there is cyan, magenta and yellow ingredients, then really what there is is black, so we don’t necessarily part the color together using that top bit, because those amounts of each of those three ingredients are kind of. The individual amounts and they they all range. From there may be 0 cell and there may be 100% cyan, but if you if you were to just use that and add them all together, you’d end up with 300%. Do you see it? And like you have to call them, you have to kind of treat them individually to really distill down what it takes to make that color.

Right. Yeah, right.

But they are, I mean like. I used to use Pantone, I mean not literally to buy all those. Yeah, but as a graphic designer. Yeah, I had. I had to use some of that stuff and, you know, but using these colors, it’s it’s a smaller system, but it allows you to shuffle. It allows you to have it in your hand and move them around and quickly cause looking at a cube, which is.

Yeah. And it’s yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Wonderful for the relationship. It’s hard to visualize them next to each other because our eyes do something different to it when they’re. Next to each other.

Well, that’s one of my big problems is the color wheel as a tool too, because the first thing I would say. If I was using.

A color wheel is cut it up? Yeah, because they’re all right next to each other. And our eyes change. Things that are next to each other, yeah.

And once you cut it up, of course, then you don’t have the reference for where they belong.

For where they go? Yeah, exactly.

So you go to. The cube when you need to sort of literally see where things are in the color space, but then you go to the cards when you want to take the ones that you just want to focus on and. With and play around with them. And the thing that’s fun about the cards, too is you can look at the cards and sword and shuffle and play with them, looking only at the color side and just responding to what you love. Or you can turn them over and really drill down into the patterns and the mouth of it.

Ohh, and then there’s those numbers. Those numbers in the corner. So and when we say number just to be clear for the people listening, there are for cyan, magenta and yellow, there’s a row for each of them and there’s five boxes. So if it has one cyan and one magenta and two yellows, that’s kind of.

That’s why I say it looks like a recipe to me. But yeah, each line tells you how much based on like a one to five scale basically.

Yeah. Like if there’s as much cyan as possible, then all of those boxes is going.

Right. But it’s also important and relevant and has an impact on what the color is if there’s none.

If there’s none in there. Yeah, exactly.

Right. So a lot of times, people. I’ll think ohh so there could be 5 different amounts of science because there’s five boxes I see. No, there can be 6 because you’re forgetting 0, which we always forget, right? So the scale of values and not value as in light or dark but amounts quantities is actually a six part scale, but it’s zero to 5.

Max it, yeah. They’re just not on here. Yeah.

And that. Yeah. And that’s sometimes a little tricky for people to grasp because think about it when we’re taught. Numbers as kids. Like we, we’re taught 123. I’m pretty firmly believe that we should be taught.

Yeah, we’re not talk zeros.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because zero is kind of it’s. It’s just as important. You know it. It’s the goal square on the monopoly board like it’s where the stone.

Right. It’s a starting point. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Yeah, one isn’t the starting .0 is the starting point and then you add so the code system for for the set that we’re talking about, which is the 6 by 6 by 6 color space.

And there are 216 cards that complement that each color is named according to where it is in the color space, using that scale.

So, like I’m holding in my hand right now. Card number 142, it’s not the 142nd card. No, the one the one is how much cyan? The four is. How much magenta and the two is how.

Much yellow so.

I really like that system for that because it’s not just a, it’s just not not a number like an order, but it tells you.

But the color. Is by the number that’s in there. Yeah, which is. It’s a coordinate. It’s awesome. Yeah.

It’s a coordinate. It’s the coordinates of the color. Yeah. And they are all describing where that color is in those three different XYZ coordinates.

Right. So if I I reached in here and I grabbed 232, then the relationship is that they both have two parts.

Yes, because two is one of the smaller of the numbers, then yellow isn’t really discernible as yet.

No, it’s not, but this is part of the education of it is that you realize that there’s yellow in here, but you would not think that there’s yellow and that’s not what comes to mind.

No, and and because what the yellow? What the yellow is doing is it’s giving those colors some black because.

Yeah, it’s just neutralizing.

It’s the third. Part of the other two that make black and take those colors a little bit darker. Yet there’s no fives in either of those, right?

So when there’s no five, it means that none of the three ingredients are at their fullest, so there is also room for white. And when you have black and white, that’s when you have the colors in the middle. That’s when you have.

Yeah. And then you have a value scale on the back too.

Yeah. And that’s just to help people put a little more focus on one of the properties of color that we don’t spend a lot of time on, which is that every color has a certain lightness or darkness. You know, what would it look like in a black and white?

You know what? Would it look like if we were to photocopy it or scan it without the color settings turned on, and that can help?

Yeah. And you know, this has got me thinking. There’s this guy on Instagram that Brett’s been watching, who puts down patches of paint, blobs of paint and says and says, what color do you think this is gonna be? And then he mixes it. So he kind of try to guess beforehand and paint pigment can be very difficult depending on what kind of paint they’re using. So some paint.

Yeah. Of course.

As an undertone. Which just means when you spread them. Out thinner the color. Is different than the what they call the mass. Tone when it’s. Thicker and then there are other paints that are basically the same color, no matter how thin or thick they’re laid on. That can be kind of tricky. Plus how much you use this of them.

Well, and that’s why I I’m reluctant to tell people that these are recipe cards because it depends what your ingredients are, right in the same way that if I’m following an actual recipe in the kitchen, right, I open up my joy of cooking or something and I decide I’m going to.

Something if the quality of my vanilla is like perfect, just glorious vanilla and then I make exactly the same recipe, but I use, you know, no name brand vanilla flavored extract, right?

Clean rap from the store? Yeah.

Same ingredient and I put a teaspoon of each into my recipe. I’m going to get different results so.

Recipes are useful to a point, but one of the things that I think is useful is that the system actually isn’t lying to you.

Right. The way that a color wheel that promises purple as a mix of red and blue is lying to you. Yeah, if you’re told or promised that and you try it with your materials no matter what, it’s not going to work. Whereas with a better kind of calibrated system.

You don’t get that purple. No. Yeah.

If that’s your reference and you mix it, you may not get exactly the same results, But then you’ll just say, well, what are my results? Where’s the color card or where in the color space does the color I actually got go? And then by looking at that, you can say ohh, you know what, now that I think about it. My red is a little more yellow than the one that I, you know, thought I had or whatever. So you’re gonna either get to the destination you wanted to go or you’re not, but you’re you’re gonna be able to figure out why you didn’t.

Yeah, it’s informational.

It’s a reference, right? The the other thing most like a color wheel or standard color theory in talking about complementary colors, the examples are always with the pure hues, right? Right. Like they’ll say, you know that that this hue is directly opposite this hue, A hue is complementary, a pure hue.

Like a color without any white or black or. Its complementary color will also be a pure hue, but if you have a shade a very dark, darker hued color, it’s true. Complementary is going to be a tint.

Yeah, with whitening it, yeah.

Right. Because everything one color is it’s complementary isn’t. So if there’s black in your one color, then there can’t be black. And in fact there has to be the empty space of W. Date to to make it a true complementary. Now that doesn’t mean that you can’t then say no. I want complementary colors, but overall I want them all to be shades. That’s the other thing that I do with color schemes and color palettes is rather than rely solely on the traditional terms like. Analogous monochromatic triadic, quadratic, complementary, split, complementary, all of those.

I like to. Say is it linear, radial or circular?

A color flow is linear, right? It goes from one place to another, like even thinking like a Skinner blend in polymer clay, like it 1 edge is 1 color and the other edge is another. So a circular pattern is like a color wheel, right? They all connect to one another in a circular.

None is more important than the other, and you can start anywhere. Go in either direction and you will eventually come back to when you start it. And you know, we wouldn’t necessarily use all the colors in the color wheel in the color.

Palette, but like a triadic color palette, is circular in a way because it’s it’s three colors that are equally spaced, and while we visually connect those in a triangle, we could also connect them circularly. Yeah, yeah. And then the radial pallets I think are.

Moving from one in a circular way. Yeah.

One of the most interesting ones, and actually one of the easiest to experiment with an explorer. Of course there’s picture radio pilot where white. The hub and then the hues are the ends of the spokes. Everything’s radiating out from white, right? So any color can do the hot.

Color. So you. Could. Be in your studio with your paint or your polymer or whatever and you could say I really like this color, but it’s kind of screaming at me. It’s a bit too saturated. It’s a bit too obviously insert brand name here, right? But I do like it, so I’m going to make it my hub and then I’m going to find five or six or ten other colors, including white and black. Their colors maybe you know, or scraps or whatever, and I’m going to put a little bit of that hub color in all of them.

Or I’m going? To put a lot of that hub color. In all of. Them or I’m going to put a lot in some and not as. Much in others. Because different colors have different strengths and so I’m trying to give a. But the point being that suddenly, even though you may have started with a disparate collection of scraps or the last bit in the tube or the end of a package, you can make a cohesive pallet because you’re putting a hub common ingredient in everything and all the colors radiate out from. That and you.

Might never actually use the hub. Itself. In the palette.

It just becomes the commonality and that was actually one of the things I was going to ask you. Yeah. Like, do you have any tips on, like, how easily to make the pilot? Well, there you go. So you pick some colors, you add the one commonality cause that’s the thing that makes a a color palette work, makes a color scheme work, is that there is something in common between all the colors to make them.

It’s just that it becomes a common. Yeah.

And the other thing that that happens too is once you have those colors, then you can, you know, color schemes, successful color. Rarely, treat all the players equally, just like you know there’s going to be a star of the show, and then there’s gonna be supporting characters. So say with a complementary color, you would very rarely and probably not successfully use that. You know light yellow that you pulled and the darker blue that you pulled. Those are two complementary colors, but you’re not going to use them.

Equally, you’re going to say I’m going to, it’s going to be mostly dark. Blue. And then there’s going to be this little pop. Of of yellow, because if they’re equal, they’re just fighting, right? They’re just they’re.

Yeah, there’s, there’s. You’re not. Well, I mean, you could do that if you’re trying to build tension and and if you, if you have a particular message that those colours need to be saying, there’s a hierarchy.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, and think about the difference between, you know, a square of blue and a little dot of that light yellow and a square of yellow and a little dot of the dark blue. Right. The other thing, too is that you could use those two colors equally.

But they wouldn’t visually appear equal because of the strength of darkness or the strength of the blue hue versus the weakness.

For the submissiveness of the lighter yellow and the white, that’s tinting it right? So.

That’s good word, yeah. Yeah.

Right, right. Well, it’s it’s. Yeah, it literally feels lighter visually where the dark feels heavier, right?

It does, yeah. And I think ultimately my advice to anyone who’s sort of struggling with color schemes is learn the rules with reliable tools and resources, and then go ahead and break them. But do that intentionally. And know why you’re doing it, not just saying I love this color scheme, I have no idea how I got it, and I’ll probably never be able to get something. That’s nice again.

That works once, right, but to be able to make it work over and over again, yeah, you know, I always say to people who who confess to being.

Intimidated by color or confused by color, or they don’t have any confidence or you know, they feel excluded by color. I always say like it’s not your fault, just it’s not your fault because probably you were taught.

It with the faulty. But secondly, you just don’t have enough to choose from. If I taught you the alphabet and then eventually taught you how to put those letters together to make words and put those words together to make sentences and phrases and paragraphs in the great novel right there, that’s what happens. You only start with the set. But it’s a good set and you start to know what works and what doesn’t.

But then if I said to the to the next person, here’s your alphabet. It’s missing a vowel and it’s missing 4 consonants. Good luck with that, you know.

Or I tell you that 1 + 2 = 4 and no matter how hard you try, it always seems to equal 3 to you. But somebody told you it equaled 4 and you’re either going to work around that, ignore that part of the color spectrum, or you’re going to walk away and think I don’t can’t do it. Yeah, I’d be frustrated.

Yeah, it’d be frustrating. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

To me, the very first step in color literacy is awareness. Just look just.

Them. Just look at them. Second step is take the colors you’ve noticed and find samples of them in your studio. Look in your closet. Look in your fridge. Go to the library, go to a gallery, look in your garden. Just see if you can find that color so you can throw in your eye just to to find it and to see what else it works with. In your opinion. You know, again there are.

Yeah, there’s more inspiration everywhere. Yes.

Rules so I could tell you exactly like sort of from a visual perception and what works and what doesn’t. I, you know, just start to notice more about the connections between the colors and then double check that with a system that will tell you you think it’s right next door. You think it has blue in it, you think it’s light, but is it just white that’s making it light or is it white? But there’s also black and that’s why.

It’s not as. Fresh as a purely out of pastel tint might be, and then the more you look and the more you.

And vibrant. Yeah, yeah.

Mind. Then make that’s the next step is. Then make something with what you’ve learned with your increased vocabulary. Right. I can’t write a novel if my alphabet is incomplete, or if I if I haven’t already learned words. I could. I’ll only be able to play certain songs if.

I have a a toy piano instead of a grand. I think. I think that’s really what what people need. They need to cut themselves some slack to say I’m not very confident or good with.

Color because you just haven’t played with it enough. You haven’t streamed enough colors.

And and you didn’t. You weren’t. You didn’t have the right tools to start with, though. And Speaking of tools, what is available right now through breakthrough color for people if they want to buy into the system or you’re just basically you’re ramping up to this new.

Yeah, yeah. Will the system. Yeah. And so right now and always really in general, I think the best way to.

Stay in touch with what’s available, because sometimes, like I did something last fall where I made things available to my subscribers only. Right. So just telling me how to reach you like, you know, subscribing to my mailing list or or following me on social, on Instagram or whatever. Just so you’re.

In touch with what I have going on and what I have coming up, I also sometimes will want to test new things, right? And they want to do that with a group of people who are already in my world, subscribe to my mailing list.

And it’s breakthrough color with the. Two versus Canadians and I’ll have the links in the description section or show notes of wherever you’re listening to podcast from so you can grab that as well. OK. So go to breakthrough to color.com to get on your notification list and then whatever you have, could you put whatever is the latest thing that you’re working on on that homepage too. So you can see what it is.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

That you’re you’re offering as far as education because you always have something going on that you’re throwing out there for people.

Yeah. And to and to to make sure people understand that I don’t have a closed door to anyone who isn’t an artist. It’s more like, like I said earlier on, I think that the world is a very colorful place. And I think that color literacy is.

Oh, of course, yeah.

Important. And I even think that color fluency is important. You know the distinction between, well, I know what they are, but I don’t really know how to communicate with them or what to do with with that. I want people to not just be color literate. I want them to be color fluent and to be able to tell their stories and to.

Yeah, right. Yeah.

Hear those stories? In ways. That I never imagined I would. Yeah. But I I do now.

All right. Well, I think we’ve we’ve given everybody a lot to think about. And yeah, do sign up because when those cards come out, I’m telling you, you want to get them. I I’ve used them for everything that my house paint was chosen through using those cards. And I used them when I was doing publications and whatnot. So wonderful system. Well, anyways, Tracy, thank you so much for coming on and talking about this stuff.

It was my pleasure.

Mine as well. OK, so I hope even though that’s a very visual kind of conversation, the subject matter especially. I hope you got a lot out of it and really are starting to see that the complexities of color and the way you think about them, the way you’re going to learn about them. Can really be well supported by some of the tools that are out there. I happen to think Tracys is one of the best. But I think the take away here really is that you need to be able to think of color not in terms of just the color wheel, but that there is so much more. Like if you get a color wheel, one of the complex color wheels like the one that I sell on 10th musearts.com, it’s got the. Standard. Well, it’s not standard. It’s a cmty color wheel with gradations in the center showing how the colors may change, going from whatever the primary hue is, or secondary hue is. Over to its complement and then on the backside there is a showing of shades and tints because when you’re looking at a wheel, they don’t have any other way to show that all in one piece. That the way these colors can change or shift or be shifted by not just. Mixing the complement is which the standard color wheel might be able to do, but also by adding white or black or both or all of them complements and why? In black. So remember when I said there’s this thing about when you get to know something well enough, you start to understand that you know nothing. Or to quote it correctly, it’s to know is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge. That is, a quote by Socrates, and it’s one is always stuck with me because there are many things that you think are fairly simple or straightforward, and then you get into them and you really. Is the more knowledge you gain, the more you understand the complexities of what you’re dealing with and color is really one of those. I could literally spend the whole year on color as a design elements every month, but I thought I’d do this with Tracy this month instead of having like a straight up design lesson because there is so much in this conversation. And I didn’t want to miss out on the. Opportunity to talk. To her, while we are talking color, but yes, she is going to be putting a new set of cards together, an updated version. Towards the end of the year, so do you sign up on their mailing list and be sure that you are getting the notices for when that comes out? I can’t tell you how much I love these cards. And no, she didn’t pay me to tell you that I really I do use them a lot. I really, really use them a lot. They’re extremely helpful and revealing and informative. So hopefully you get a chance to get your hands on. Those cards of hers, when they come out. So yeah, sign up at breakthroughcolor.com Col. our.com and then her Instagram page is breakthrough color. So easy. And or Tracy Holmes, you can look at both. I think both of them bring up her pages. But also you can look in the show notes or descriptions section from wherever you’re listening to this podcast firm. And these links will be there as well. And do me a favor and hit that follow button while you’re over there looking at the notes. And don’t forget to sign up for the newsletter on the home page of the sagearts.com. So you can get the notices for when these episodes are coming out, since they’re more irregular than they had been last year, and then in the meantime, if you have any comments, anything that you need to tell me or any I know criticisms or thoughts or idea. Just reach out to me via the sagearts.com website. Just use the contact page there you can also reach out on Instagram and Facebook just so you can direct message me or comment on the posts and do join the Instagram and particularly that ones much more active for all the little extra tidbits and things I’ll be posting images of the things that Tracy. Was talking about on Instagram. And then if you enjoy this podcast, if you like what you’re getting out of it and you want to give back, you can support it by going to the homepage of the sagearts.com. You can scroll a little ways down and you’ll see a button for PayPal or buy me a coffee and you can donate through there to help support what it is we’re doing here. Like how I say weave and though it’s just me most of the time. But in any case, so I’m just going to leave it at that because this has gone on long enough and hopefully you are thinking about color in new and dimensional ways. But in the meantime, do get out there and feed that muse of yours, it is spring time up here, there’s tons of wildflowers, at least out where I’m at. So go find those colors out in nature. Go find those colors. Wherever you are, feed the Muse, stay true to readiness and then join me again next time on the Sage Arts podcast.

Posted in Show Episodes

SageBV

4 thoughts on “Ep.057 Breaking Down Breakthrough Colour w/guest Tracy Holmes”

susan
May 7, 2024 at 6:41 am

Wow! This was fabulous, especially thinking about color schemes as linear, radial and circular. Loved the interview, thank you.

Reply
1. SageBV
  May 7, 2024 at 5:08 pm
  
  So glad you liked it! She has really thought this all out and it’s fascinating in both the complexity and the way she simplifies it.
  
  Reply
  1. Tracy Holmes
    May 7, 2024 at 8:48 pm
    
    Oh Sage, that makes me happy. I so often hear people (art teachers included) describe ‘colour theory’ as confusing, or they glaze over the parts that don’t make sense, hoping no one will notice. But of course it’s confusing… because it doesn’t make sense! Tweak the system, even just a little, and it becomes clear, and useful. I have recently been describing BTC as the system that starts simple… and stays simple, even when the colours get more complex, so your summary here is appreciated.
    
    Reply
    1. Sage
      May 16, 2024 at 1:04 am
      
      Well, we know why it’s been confusing now. Lol.
      
      Reply

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