Hue Correspondent: Peggy Long
12/15/2008 05:31 PM by Gretchen Schauffler
I love olives and have found that during my travels, olives are rarely olive in color. My love of olives started with the olives my mother placed on the Thanksgiving table … black, pitted and no real flavor … put as a kid, they were fun to eat off the ends of my fingers. Ten olives in my mouth! In Turkey we purchased olives and had a variety of them every evening with cocktails. One that was especially good was mixed with a hot pepper spice. WONDERFUL. From Sicily, we purchased olive oil from this private estate … only was able to bring six bottles home … but it was the most incredible, perfect, incredible olive oil. The Olive Farm (used to be a Turkish import business off of Milwaukie Blvd in Portland, Oregon.) was a wonderful supplier of olive oil. We visited their olive farms in Turkey on one of my visits. They are delightful people (friends of my parents), but the sold the business and are, sadly, no longer.
But, rarely do I see olive colored olives on my travels.
Oh, I know there is Olive Green as a Crayola color—which I consider the bible of colors ever since I was introduced to my first box of 12 Crayola crayons many, many years ago. But, without a picture to show the diversity of olive colors, I’d have to rely on trying to write in color. What an elusive challenge. Trying to paint a picture with words. Luckily, I have pictures!
These beautiful ripening Sicilian olives, still on the olive tree branch, hang their blue-purple heads. But what really is blue-purple? Is it amethyst, lavender, lilac, mulberry, plum, violet. Or is it closer to the crayon color of Indigo. No, I think it’s Crayola’s Wild Blue Yonder with speckles of Midnight Blue as the actual olive is somewhat mottled, giving a faux-marble look and texture to the skin. See, even trying to describe the color of the olive can’t be limited to just a single color. And, unless you have your box of Crayola crayons memorized, these colors might not mean anything to you. Amazing, how color amplifies imagery and allows a scene to become the reality of the reader. Your imagination might be easier at matching the color than my trying to illustrate with words what I think is the correct picture perfect color.
In the second picture, a Turkish olive market, the olives are closer to an olive color, but none are the ‘olive green’ we’d naturally first imagine in our mind. The stains of color support each other and blend in their hues and variations. Crayola colors of Chestnut, ginger, amber, flaxen, tawny, sepia and goldenrod all come to mind when I look at this picture. The composition of colors takes an almost bland looking item and gives interest and depth. And if you look closely at each individual olive, you’d notice the divergence of a single color smearing into many. Nature’s painter was a master of blending similar hues and tints. The subtle shades are like drops of liquid gold, giving each shine that will support the incredible.
Olive olives, I think not, but pull out your box of crayons and see what colors you come up with.
To be a Hue Correspondent Please Send Gretchen an Email
| Textile Help | ||
Hue Correspondent: Meredith Schatz
Color Trends of 2009
Back to Devine Blog
Olive is a great alternative for earth colors. Like the latter, it’s neutral so it can practically go with anything. You have great taste:)
— Expert Painting in Atlanta Ga 02/10/2009 08:58 PM #