Me an' my crayons

Red, yellow, green, blue, brown, black, orange and purple.

Once upon a time when I was young, probably around kindergarten, I was given my first set of eight Crayola crayons. Now, that may not sound like much, but think about it a second. A rainbow only has seven colors but those colors are the visible spectrum - the colors that we see. I remember when the world seemed simple enough that eight colors were enough to express it in. If you look at a child's coloring book, there are no true guidelines for children to use to color with. It's whatever they have available to them - even one color can be expressive enough in the right hands.

I had so many coloring books and blank pieces of paper on which to draw and color - I think blank sheets are best, although to defy the hidden rules of lines and boundaries by coloring outside the lines is true art. I recall teachers and students telling each other (me included) that coloring outside the lines was bad, and doing so showed a lack of fundamental understanding. As an adult I object to that because it creates very rigid thinking, hence the overuse of the phrase "think outside the box." The better phrase to use should be "there is no box" - any object seen on a printed page happens to be lines and curves that are placed in such a manner as to convey a familiar object, nothing more.

While I was writing this and searching the Crayola site, they displayed a book I think I'll pick up that addresses the issues I brought up above, albeit in a different manner - it's called Celebrate The Scribble.

When first grade arrived, I thought I'd flex my color muscles and go for the uber-pack of crayons - yes, the humongous 128 count crayon pack WITH the sharpener! I can still remember the various color names of new colors - raw umber, Indian red, flesh (yeah, I had a REAL problem with that one!), aquamarine, indigo, lavender, maroon, and other spectacular colors. Although I had all of these, I would still revert to the basics primarily because I did a lot of outdoor-themed pictures. Picnics, farms, beaches - all of these could be accomplished with the primary eight. I even made a "mistake" and colored one color over another - aha, a revelation occurred then!

To this day, I still adhere to using the simplest "colors" to convey a complex world, because it isn't about how much, it's about how you use what you have.