Understanding Your Color: A Guide to Personal Color Analysis
May 26, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 7 Comments
On the cover of her book, author Kathryn Kalisz writes:
A vital part of your physical composition from birth,
your personal coloring emanates who you are.
In part color analyst’s workbook, spanning color information and application from theoretical to abstract, this beautiful book is essential reading for those interested in the coloring of human beings.
Kathryn spent her life in the study colour. She worked with Munsell Color until 1991, when she chose to devote more time to her artwork in oils, watercolor, and acrylics. She was a gifted teacher of color theory, art, and color analysis. Through the eyes of an artist, she developed a very individual perspective on color, nature, design, and their relationship to every person. These are strongly communicated in her book.
Kathryn’s life was tragically lost in 2010. We are deeply grateful to have her writings to keep us consistent with her vision of colour in the human body and receptive to its meaning in the world that surrounds us. With her knowledge of pigments and insistence on absolute precision in the use of colour technology, Kathryn developed a system of human colour analysis that elevated the field to a new level of scientific accuracy.
What makes Sci\ART different:
- loyalty to how light and colour behave in Nature, the system that coloured humans in the first place; no new colour naming, ordering, or categorizing were conceived or necessary
- a series of drapes whose colours and order of use are uniquely able to reveal the subtleties in human colouring with an astonishing degree of accuracy
- the principle that Season is determined only by which colours perfect the skin; hair and eye colour play no role in the decision; as an artist herself, Kathryn was expert in the difference between what we think we see and what really is (for example, we think we see snow as always being white because our left brain tells us so, but an artist paints its true colour under the influence of lighting and surrounding colours ; we think blue-eyed blondes will be Springs and Summers, and only a draping session where surrounding colour is fully neutralized can force us to see what is instead of what we think should be, and that blue-eyed blondes may exist in any Season)
- the Neutral Seasons; rather than using colours already existing in the True Seasons, Kathryn devised entirely new palettes that are exclusive to each of the 8 Neutral Seasons, and not those of the parent Seasons
- the absence of Seasons which blend the 2 cool True Seasons of True Summer and True Winter, because the product of such blends did not offer any new colours to those palettes that were not already available
- the absence of Seasons which blend the 2 warm True Seasons of True Spring and True Summer, for the same reason as with the cool Seasons, and also to maintain the difference in the pigments that warm the colours for each Season
You will find in this book:
- a discussion of personal color tone and how we see and feel it
- color classification, order, and terminology
- the personalities of each of the rainbow’s colors
- the how and why of simultaneous contrast, the basis of personal colour analysis, with illustrations of the optical effects that create the illusions we see in right and wrong colours
- the 12 Tones of Personal Color, their predominant characteristic, their colors and feelings, and cosmetic colors (please note that these are descriptions, not colour palettes or swatches)
- unique, innovative, and detailed coverage of the personality traits of the 4 True Seasons
- the use of color in your wardrobe and in your home to feel, convey, develop, balance, or counteract many emotions
Purchase
Books can be purchased directly from Spectrafiles owner, Suzanna Greif. (The name Sci\ART continues to refer to Kathryn’s work. The present day supply of swatch books and drapes continues under the new name, Spectrafiles.)
Process : Send Suzanna an email at suzanna@spectrafiles.com. Suzanna will arrange payment from there.
Cost: US$65.50 + shipping
Kathryn Kalisz
On a personal note, I would add that Kathryn’s descriptions of the emotional ‘personality’ of the colours were my first exposure to the idea that we feel colour, and that we feel in colour. In the colours we absorb and those we reflect, we emanate colour like a personal force field, in a version of the rainbow that is ours alone. Kathryn’s ability to transcend the appearance of colour and join its energy with the depth of a human being was my first step into confirming that our colours are part of us, right to our deepest core.
What set Sci\ART apart to me in the world of colour analysis was its reverence for (and reference to) the interconnectedness of all living things. Everything Nature created is literally a part of everything else, like an immense nervous system, sharing the ability to express white light from the sun in various pigmentations, beautiful diversity, and splendid uniqueness. Kathryn saw the world this way too. The Rainbow Warriors video (here on YouTube) was very meaningful for her, beautifully and perfectly depicting what she sought to achieve in her art, work, and life.
A Brown-Eyed Summer
May 14, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 17 Comments
And not just a Summer, but a Light Summer!
Geoff was one of the people I analyzed as part of my training, with Terri there to guide me. Though I wasn’t tuned into people’s colouring back then, his impression seemed very medium and still is in my memory. He had medium-dark sandy brown hair and eyes that seemed twinkly somehow, but light or medium in depth, no idea what colour.
It has been pointed out that if I believe that eyes and hair are irrelevant to Season (and I do), then why do I keep talking about them? Because skin is hard to talk about. In a previous article, Jocelyn Is A Bright Winter, I had watched her at work for years, so I had some idea of how her skin reacted to colour. Geoff and I just met that day, which is the case with most clients.
His Season was Bright Winter. At the time, I had no idea what the significance of that was. He could have been any Season and it would have seemed perfectly plausible. Every one of the 12 Seasons had an exactly equal outcome probability. That precious trust is one of the hardest things to hang onto as experience brings expectation, complacency, and ruts. The beginner is far more willing to wander off the beaten path, too naive to know what the implications are.
As time passed, I often wondered if I would ever have the confidence to a call a medium-colouring person a Bright Winter without Terri standing beside me. Terri had analyzed hundreds of people, probably thousands, having been an analyst since the 80s, first with one of the biggest brands in PCA, and eventually settling more comfortably with Sci\ART.
In PCA, the average is the exception. The general population, the people at yoga class, your family, nobody quite looks like the pictures in books. Those perfect averages are as rare as the patient with a disease who shows up with all the textbook signs and symptoms. At least, I never see them. Most everyone has something that seems not to fit.
Let’s call this lovely woman May. She had been analyzed many years ago as a Summer, in a 4-Season system. It was closer than the other choices, though she did wear some Spring colours, especially the robin’s egg blues. May is remarkably colour perceptive, even to the fine details, and could decide even with the first drapes which was better. She is one of the few women I see who came in wearing her best colours.
We began as Light Seasons always do. Terrible, but terrible in Autumn. We could have counted 15 different problems. Overwhelmed by Winter’s aggressive darks. No surprise so far. True Summer made the skin a bit greyed, but it looked younger and more evenly coloured. True Spring brought an easing of lines and that typical smoothness of skin of this Season, but she was too yellow. Very typical of the Light Seasons. Seen this many times.
And I’m feeling a bit nervous because those eyes are brown and they are not changing, though the skin and eyelids around them are changing dramatically. Eye colour intensity or crispness of outline of the iris don’t change equally in everyone, but as I get to the better Seasons, these factors are usually helpful guides. Contradictions can happen, as the Soft Autumn eyes in skin that has cooled and softened to Soft Summer in a woman in her 60s, and skin always matters most. The eyes won’t change in a face while the skin remains the same, it’s just easier to see in the eye as we refine the very best colours.In May’s case, we seldom looked at her eye colour or sharpness. We did it entirely by looking at skin.
Life often teaches us what we most need to know at the time we are truly receptive. I get challenged a fair bit about ignoring eye and hair colour, and sometimes I question myself. May came along, I believe, to teach me to stick to my guns. If eyes don’t matter, and ANY Season can have ANY hair and eye colour, then it was time for me to put my money where my mouth is.
We knew True Summer and True Spring weren’t right. I kept seeing those dark eyes and going back to Bright Spring. Bernice Kentner of CMAS, whom I hold in highest esteem, has said that a brown-eyed Spring is mostly a Winter blend, and that has been my experience so far. There was no way. May is not crisply cool to look at, and Bright Springs usually are. Those drapes were not only draining, but they looked crazy, like the woman and the colour were separate and had been Photoshopped together.
I thank May for sitting there so patiently, Summer that she is. PCA is like a video game. It doesn’t let you see any level of clues till you’ve mastered the previous level. It holds back knowledge you’re not ready to use correctly. We tried Light Spring and Light Summer a few times and couldn’t choose. I never belabor these moments, I change the energy. We went backwards, tried Soft Summer and the True Summer and Spring again, just to give our eyes more ways of seeing. Then, it was obvious. Light Summer was clearly and obviously the one. Her skin was the absolute youngest, without being yellowed as Light Spring caused. In a 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis system, Light Summer is the person whose inborn colouring is predominantly Summer’s, with a trace of Spring’s clear, light, yellow sunlight.
I wonder if she was a Light Spring as a younger woman. Her skin may have cooled and softened into Light Summer. But a brown-eyed Light Spring is still most uncommon. And those eyes are brown, but fascinatingly so. A blue-eyed Light Summer has a very clear open wreath around the pupil, like this:
See the browner doughnut around the pupil? And see also the absence of lines and spokes and specks and other detail throughout the iris? Very typical of all 3 Summer groups.
In May’s eyes, substitute all the blues for browns and you’re there. Same very prominent open wreath, actually even wider doughnut than the eye above, same absence of strong lines, and of a darker brown than the very slightly lighter brown outside the wreath.
What else was fascinating? Her eyelashes are light-medium blonde, about like the eye above or perhaps a bit lighter, and far lighter than her eyes. Her eyebrows are extremely fair.
Her hair colour is lighter than her natural light brown was in her earlier years, and her natural is now gray. Hair is hidden during the analysis, so imagining her in darker hair would not have made a younger face.
If you can’t buy a brown-eyed Summer, what else can you picture? Nothing I can think of. Try putting other Seasons’ makeup on her. I can’t see it. She is wearing the lightest silvery taupe eyeliner I have. Even through tinted lenses, can you imagine darker without the eyeliner being an obvious dark line on this skin? Not really. May is wearing quite a bit of light gold-peach bronzer and carnation pink blush and lipstick, but the white analysis lights are still on so the skin seems a bit whiter.
Colour Analysis in the UK Update
May 6, 2011 by Christine Scaman · Leave a Comment
A reminder that Sci\ART colour analyst Nikki Bogardus will be in London for colour appointments on June 7 and 8. There are still a few available openings.
You can contact Nikki at her website My Color Rx.
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