very interesting thoughts, Danny, and I have to tell you how much I particularly like the blue (to me) paint tests at the top. I am fascinated by color and have been struggling with the arbitrariness of color. If you haven't read it Victoria Finlay's Color book is great...

Hee! I thought I was the only 9 year old who ruminated about colors and how they look through other people's eyes, but no. Fun to see other things we share, too, including a very recent discontent with the way I use color and a desire to study it seriously. Including rows of squares inked on a page to fill with mixed colors. That old universe, she keeps on spinning -- but it's fun to cross paths with good folk now and again. Glad you're sharing.

I've had the same theory -- ever since my husband and I met we've had the same old argument:
"Hand me the green whatever"
"Sure, here you go"
"No, that's the brown one-- I wanted the green one"
"That *is* the green one"
"No, that's brown"
"You're baked. It's green"

Fast forward a few years later, and his first visit to an eye doctor showed him that he was color blind for browns and greens. After a smug "I told you so", I realized that my theory (a.k.a. your theory) was probably pretty close to reality.

So funny you should mention this today. I was getting ready to paint a white iris blooming in my yard, and was staring at it hard trying to figure out what the color was on the shadow side. It wasn't gray. Was it green? Blue? Bluish with green reflected from the ivy nearby? I kept puzzing over it. And then you write this. It reminds me of that scene in Girl with a Pearl Earring where Vermeer asks his apprentice .. what color are the clouds? They're not white. They're yellow and gray and blue and ...

I, also, have had the same color theory. I always tried to explain it to other people and never found myself very successful. On the other hand, your explanation turned out quite nicely.

Danny, I remember thinking the same thing too as a kid. Not only do you bring up a valuable point in terms of color, but it's also an apt metaphor for emotional language. Just something I think about a lot. My blue, your red, and maybe we both call it orange?

Great post!

As a colorblind artist, color has always been a frustration, and for most of my life - a secondary thought to my art work. You mentioned not quite being able to name the color of something, now imagine facing that with your entire environment.

The funny thing is I can see colors. I can see Red, Green, Yellow in their primary form. The problem I face is not being able to distinguish between colors that are close in tone or at extremely dark or light ranges. For instance dark greens and browns appear the same to me. You could tell me the blue color tests you painted were purple and I wouldn't doubt it. Even the same shade of teal, pink, and grey often look the same. This explains some of the strange reactions I got as a child after turning in various art projects.

So what I am starting to experiment with is mixing colors as I see them (or my best guess) and not relying on what I have been told. To make no assumptions. The results may be a little odd (to everyone else), but I fully agree with your statement that the goal is not accuracy. I can still increase my sensitivity as I see it, and tackle color head on rather than avoiding it.

Me too! Same theory. I wonder how many nine year olds wonder this same thing!

And speaking of colors, what size box of crayons did you have as a child?

I clipped an essay from our paper some years ago on this subject; it's fun to read

Wow! I guess that I too wasn't the only child with that theory. We are more alike than we realize!

hey danny
great theory.. is it worrying that twenty years later i STILL have that theory?! ;)

One more here, with the exact same theory. Great to see how different people all over the world come up with the same idea. =)
Danny, I've just returned from the post office where I finally mailed you the sketchbook I mentioned a while ago. Sorry for the delay!

My favourite bit from colour theory is that there is no black. Synesthesia also blows my mind... do you associate things (e.g. days of the week, numbers) with colours, Danny?

me too! me too!! me too!!!...I remember trying to convince my psych. teacher in High school of the possible truth in the same color theory and ending up only sounding like a pot-head, teenager trying to cause a small uproar in class...ha! ..not quite...you make it sound so possible...believable..why not...

I am fortunate enough to live in a beautiful part of Central Virginia. As I pass the mountains every day, I have found myself trying to dismiss the *WORD* for a color from my mind. Instead of saying, "oh the mountaintop is a beautiful shade of red today", I have tried to say, "Oh I love *that color* on the mountain today" and try to forgot color NAMES.

Also - there is an old but very good, somewhat academically focused drawing book called "The Practice and Science of Drawing" by Speed. He has a wonderful example of a drawing of a face by a child, then how that face would look if the child drew what he SAW versus what he KNEW about a human face. He also discusses how sensory learning by touch needs to more or less be unlearned as we try to draw what we see.

Hope I haven't been too yappy!!

Me too! I will get in line with those who had that same color theory as a kid. Of course, little conspiracy theorist that I was, I also had a suspicion that other countries didn't really exist.

I used to think that very same thing! After seeing a show on dogs when I was a kid, and finding out that they only see in black and white, but seeing MY dog definitely prefer a blue ball that was exactly the same other than color over a red one...I had weird thoughts exactly like this one.

Perception tricks. I love it.

The Forest Lover (Susan Vreeland) is a fictional account of the life of artist Emily Carr. There's great talk of color when she goes to Paris and studies modern theories. Plus sh'e a hero of mine. Great book.

Hey Danny! Good points. Color is totally tricky to me. There are probably so many more colors that human eyes cannot even see. Maybe part of another dimension. Also there are some interesting takes on symbols in "Understanding Comics" by Scott McCloud.

I love color, am very regimented with it, when I buy new colors I swipe a dab off the edge of a piece of Bristol Board. Then I water it down by half and half again. I analyze each of these,taking in if the pigment turns chalky, tips toward yellow or blue. I have my entire palette in swipes across strips of Bistol Board, This way I can see at a glance what I am looking for. Years of this behavior has made me able to know what color I need to grab for and when I don't- the swipe card is right there.

This brings to mind all the thoughts about color and how we see it that I had when I found out my son was color blind in December. He is severely red and green deficient and I spend a lot of time wondering how the world looks to him with those two colors appearing gray. He amazes me in the fact that even though he can't see those colors as I do, he has learned to identify them from the shades of gray he sees. He wants to be an artist when he grows up. I wonder if there is hope for a colorblind artist?

:) That's my favorite original theory. (And I say "original" because nobody tells it to anyone else, we all just think of it and then realize later that we've all thought of it before.)

An art teacher of mine used to tell me "Draw what you see, not what you know." I've always remembered that, whether I have actually been successful at it or not.

whoa! i had no idea anyone besides me ever considered that theory of people seeing colors differently. i, too, remember trying to explain it to other people with no success -- how different it would have been if i was talking to one of you color theorists! this really made my day for tomorrow, as i'm about to go to bed now, and i don't want to lose this big feeling to the past so quickly.

In a Perception class I took at USF (quite a few years ago!), we spent a whole class discussing exactly what you are talking about. The general consensus is that it is highly unlikely that we do see the same thing as others, however some aspects of color (such as intensity and brightness) are probably more universal. However, we took this one step further and discussed if anything we perceive visual is perceived in the same way, and how much (if any) reality there is in what we see. Vision is a very useful tool to us as a species, but it is very limited in the information that it gives us.
~P

I teach color theory at a small college in Oregon. I've been bothered by this idea all term (although this didn't stop me from playing with my students' brains by bringing up the topic). But really: where do I get off assessing someone's grasp of red or blue or green if we truly aren't seeing the same thing? As I told my students (with apologies to Lily Tomlin), "Color is nothing more than a collective hunch." What's cool about THAT, however, is this means there are truly no limits.

Sorry to dissapoint you all but it's not your theory. I read a short introductory book on philosophy and this was one of the points of discussion. It's very interesting though :)

How do you know that everyone else is not just a figment of your imagination?

I came up with the same theory (about 50 years ago) and have chased it down some interesting dark alleys including taste and sound. Then one day I asked mself "What if 'red' to me is 'onion' to you?

Every now and then I get crosstalk. A striking color elicits a slight nausea. Different specific music has color (not all music, some.)

Finally I decided that if red can be onion then it could just as easily be Shostakovich 8th or for that matter yellow!

Photoshop came along and let me make red yellow and so on. Usually the hue shifted images are boring but every now and then a complete reversal of color is exciting.

Wish I could shift sound like that ... or taste.

People who have Chemo for cancer do sometimes experience that sort of shifting with taste. A favorite of my wife's became anathma. We had a favorite bread, she couldn't stand having it in the house, then one chemo was done, she liked it again.

There is an experiment in the adaptability of the brain in which the subject wears special glasses made with prisms so that one sees everything upside down. Eventually the brain takes over and everything you are seeing upside down, suddenly looks right side up. Remove the glasses at that point and everything looks upside down for a while, then our brain flips it back for us.

Would that we could induce that flip with other aspects of other senses. Would that we could learn that skill set as a chosen and controlled process.

The possibility that I see red where you see green is indeed discussed in philosophy of perception. If you're interested in reading what professional philosophers have to say about it, the technical term is the "inverted spectrum" problem.

(But that doesn't mean it's "not your theory", as Tim suggested in an earlier comment. The stuff that gets discussed in philosophy is almost always of this sort -- quite natural thoughts many of us have had, often when we're very young. Philosophy studies the enduring problems, and this is why they're enduring -- everyone thinks about them, whether or not they would describe what they're doing as "philosophical"!)