No Summer+Winter or Spring+Autumn Blends
July 31, 2010 by Christine Scaman
Hi, everyone. Let’s begin with a hot topic to rev our color motors back up.
In the comments for the article “Handbags for the 12 Color Analysis Seasons”, Donna Cognac, a highly certified color and image professional, said this.
I just wish that you could also address the 4 types that get ignored in 12 type color systems. The types that are a blend of Winter/Summer; Summer/Winter; Spring/Autumn and Autumn/Spring….with the first word the dominant harmony in each type.
In the Sci\ART Twelve Tone System, there are no categories that combine any of the 3 Summers with the 3 Winters, or Autumns with Springs. Most other PCA systems disagree.
Logic would have me begin with Munsell facts, but that’s not the reason that resonates most strongly with me, so I’m going to go evangelical first.
Extensions of Our World
We are children of this planet. Its colors live in us and through us. So do its patterns, its clocks, its and yearly rhythms, from the molecules on up. There is a very strong repetition of the way humans look and how it feels to interact with them, and the Season they represent. They seem almost as extensions of their particular month in appearance and behavior.
If True Winter begins January 1, then
Bright Winter is February
Bright Spring = March
True Spring = April
Light Spring = May
Light Summer = June
True Summer = July
Soft Summer = August
Soft Autumn = September
True Autumn = October
Dark Autumn = November
Dark Winter = December
True Autumn looks, dresses, and behaves as “comfortable, abundant, strong, productive, natural”. Spring, holy cow, does not.
Sure, of course, some people may have both Spring and Autumn characteristics. Some people don’t seem to behave like their Season at all, so the relationship between color and personality isn’t tight. Still, if anyone is going to behave or look like their Season, it’s more often in the absolutes, or True, Seasons, making them harder to merge.
For some, consistency with the planet’s color cycles has no relevance. They might say “If that were true, then why isn’t every color you see in August right for Soft Summer?”
Fair question, but I can only answer it as I see it. Our accord with our Earth’s own palettes and her cycles means that flowing between the 2 warm or 2 cool Seasons doesn’t make sense. Autumn and Spring are on opposite corners of the world’s phase clock. So are Summer and Winter.
Color in Nature
Kathryn Kalisz is the artist who created the Sci\ART system. Prior to her tragic death, I asked her why there are no pure warm and pure cool blends.
She answered,
There is a natural order of color that we cannot and should not change. It follows the spectrum of light (as seen in the rainbow) and when connected at both ends, the color circle is created. In this natural order of color, color moves from cool to warm, or warm to cool. An object never reflects just one single hue, but always three visible tones of the color, from cool (usually the shadow side) through the neutral or true color, to the warm tone where the light hits it. Complementary colors are based on this natural order of color. The 12 tone color system is a natural color order system, which reflects the way colors move in nature.
Color never moves from cool to cool, or warm to warm.
Shopping Well Is Hard Enough
We can talk about how adding to blue to cool must also darken, meaning we move towards Winter as we cool color more. We can talk about how 12 distinguishable tones are sufficient. You could have 40 Seasons but who could tell them apart? Seasonal colour analysis clothing and makeup colour is already hard to match because they’re usually colored in random, market-driven shades. They’re not in the business of making real women look strong and lovely, they’re moving garments off racks and colored powder out the door.
For me, the point is this: No new classification is needed. Sci\ART uses the Munsell system’s 3 dimensions of color. They’re enough. Kathryn created a set of drapes whose colors are calibrated to move through 12 levels of the 3 dimensions of color in all the possible combinations. Straightforward, easy to understand, easy to explain, just like Warren Buffett’s investment strategy.
You get a personal palette that matches YOUR level of the 3 dimensions, no borrowing, no crossing over, no overlaps.
Sci\ART Color Measuring Tools
A.k.a., the drapes. Someone reading this (and disagreeing) might argue that the Sci\ART drapes just aren’t set up to reveal these cool/cool blends. Well, what would that look like?
The cool/cool would be bluer than True Summer, but not so blue as to darken to Winter? And fairly saturated, but not at Winter’s level? I suppose you could create such a palette, but me, I’m not convinced that it’s necessary. Women already have trouble telling Summer’s reds and blues from Winter’s, let alone finding them to buy with confidence. This all has to be learn-able and use-able by real people in real stores.
What about the warm/warm blend of Autumn+Spring? This one, I really don’t comprehend. Autumn and Spring are warmed in completely different ways, one with dull rust and one with clear yellow. A recent client looked to me like he might set this issue to rest. We’ll be looking at him soon.
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23 Responses to “No Summer+Winter or Spring+Autumn Blends”
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Good to see you back.
Did you enjoy yourself?
I will be interested in following this discussion. On a slightly unrelated note, I wonder who decided that muted colors suited the hottest months of the year. >.>
A new way of looking at things, for sure. I thought I might be a Summer/Winter blend, but the passing of the seasons would negate this. As for the why a Soft season would fall into the hottest month of the year, in my area, it can be quite humid in August, and the daylight is beginning to fade. Everything falls under a layer of haze — as opposed to the clear, bright, true skies of July when we have the most light. Also in my region, colors are lightened by rain and spring skies in June, so the seasonal division actually makes logical sense to me. It certainly provides some food for thought, and I look forward to reading the comments.
Interesting article Christine. Using the nature analogy of it going in order of Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn and that they move through one to get to the next season, well in nature this doesn’t appear to always be the case. Seasons aren’t equal length in nature and in the tropics there are not 4 seasons to move through. ie nature will move from Summer to Winter (not through Autumn).
Also Earth and hence the Seasons are not in a line but go in a circular motion on Earth on its axis around the sun. So when the Northern Hemisphere are in Spring the Southern Hemisphere is in Autumn but the closer both move to the equator the more the 2 seasons blend with each other and become less distinctive in their own right so Autumn blending with Spring (vice versa), or Winter blending with Summer (vice versa). Could this not be the case with people’s colouring too?
Personally I think that naming each category after a season is just a useful heuristic to keep things straight in our minds. It just so happened that the person developing the system happened to be familiar with a temperate climate, and the colour seasons happened to match up enough to the colour categories that it became a useful way to think of them. This doesn’t mean we need to read too much into it or agonise about icy pink cherry blossoms in early spring, or that early summer where I live is characterised by saturated red, or worry that a lot of the world experiences winter in a way that has nothing to do with saturated colour (quite the opposite in my experience).
Interesting comment from Tina. I don’t know when, where or if the analogy breaks down. It seems plausible that there might be a continuum from yellow to gold tones in the cause of Autumn and Spring… and a cool-to-gray continuum between Winter and Summer.
But on the other hand, when I was in the tropics there was no continuum of anything. It was more of a perpetual Spring without extremes, except that it also depended on elevation. In the mountains, it was Spring all year round with lush vegetation, dropping into the cooler temperatures at night and back to moderately warm in the day. On the coast, it was hotter like summer in the day time, dropping to Spring-like temperatures at night. Always the same year round except for rainy and dry seasons.
So….how far to take the analogy? There was no Autumn whatsoever, now that I think of it…and no Winter (except maybe in much higher elevations). Autumn is transitional among the four seasons, and where there is no transition, there seems to be only Winter (high elevation), Spring (mod. to high elevation), and Summer (on the coast, low elevation).
I’m not sure if I’ve got it right, cuz I’m new at this,but I see Winters colors as the purest bold, and crisp, Spring as the first warm sunny days (therefore sunny yellow and brite green grass), Summer is cooled down ummm, their colors have been faded by the sun so they are a faded less intense of winters colors, very pale beachy colors, then Autumn is warmed up by all the fall colors warm cider colors, pumkins and fall leaves ect. So I too cannot see how a Winter could leap (so to speak) and blend with Summer, Winter colors are much more bold, stark(?) than Summers. As far as hemispheres well maybe we should just stay in one neighborhood (LOL) or I’ll be truely lost
PS: I’m glad your back, hope you are refreshed, and recharged!
Well, Tina makes a point, and so does Betty.
I think the confusion starts with the analogy of the seasons of the year and the seasons as we know them from PCA.
I don’t want to complicate the matter, so I stick to the four major color groups, consultants work with in the PCA business: the pure/clear colors (Winter), the greyed down colors(Summer), the muted colors (Autumn) and the bright colors (spring).
I agree with Betty and Christine, when they say that a Winter color can not flow into a Summer color.
Winter is clear and Summer is greyed. You can make a Winter color lighter or darker, but the moment this color looses it’s clearness/purity, it is no longer a Winter color. Summer colors are greyed down; you can not make a clear color when the color you start with is a color that is already processed.
Autumn colors are already muted colors: they are pure colors mixed with their complementary color or they are browned, or whatever color was necessary to make it muted. You can make this color lighter or darker, or even more or less bright, but it remains the processed color we begun with.
Spring is a pure color with extra yellow added. You can make it lighter or darker, cooler or warmer, but the fact remains that this was a bright color to begin with. It will always have that extra bit of warmth and sunshine.
There are many ways of processing a color, but in PCA we are used to these groups.
So, it seems to me that the one thing you can not change in these four groups of colors, is the intensity of colors. The brightness/clearness or the mutedness.
Seeing things in this light, I would say it is not logical to let a color flow from Winter into Summer.
But, I also must say that it is not logical to let a Winter color flow into Spring……
By adding yellow, you alter the pure nature of the Winter color.
It is easier to change an Autumn color with a bit of this or that, because this is already in the nature of the hue.
This little theory I have might not been thought through thoroughly; other points of view are most welcome! Lol!!
Christine, I hope you don’t mind but I’d like to take this discussion on a detour (so to speak). Can all 12 groups wear their own fleshtones? I noticed thnat some of the groups get to wear their eye colors successfully, and they are in harmony with their skintones. I also noticed the trend to wear nude lips (although I’m not a fan of that). I have seem a few stars like Angelina Jolie, Sara Jessica Parker and others wear clothing that matches their skintone and I think it looks pretty elegant. Does the Sci/Art system have a skintone for each of the 12 color groupings?
Thanks, everyone, for your contributions.
This theory is certainly just how I see it. It is a temperate climate thing for sure. I live in Canada, basically in the center of the North American continent, so I see the 12 groups played out all around. PCA is a human invention though, and we adjusted a lot to suit ourselves – sort of like forcing the solution you like and ignoring any evidence that might contradict it, also something humans are good at doing.
About the fleshtones, Betty. I might need you to ask this is a different way. My take on “fleshtone” is the overtone of the skin, the color people see, the color foundation you buy. Buy many women in a given Season would not wear the same foundation, and many between different Seasons might wear the same shade. Knowing the true color of your fleshtone is tough, like knowing the true color of your hair and eyes. It’s made of many colors, and very hard for our eye to pick out the exact shades that the total effect comprises. Winters have grayer skin, and their book has more gray choices. Same for Summers and blues. All Caucasian skin in yellow-beige, but if a Winter wears golden beige, she is not at her best. What everyone does look fabulous in is their undertone (see the article on this site “Skin Undertones”). It’s a gorgeous shade in clothing, and if appropriate, a great lip/blush/eyeshadow.
This theory is certainly just how I see it.
And it’s a great theory, Christine! Also, you explain things so very well to us. Thank you!
I have a question for you: is the 12 tone Sci/art system the same as the 12 seasonal CMB sytem?
Is, for instance, a Sci/art Light Summer the same thing as a CMB Light Summer?
Or is a Sci/art True Winter the same as a CMB Cool Winter?
Interesting way to put it, Christine. I’ll tell you the up-to-date way the seasons are described in Flow. There are no more seasons! Everything is explained by a combination of: Cool/Warm + Muted/Clear + Bright/Soft/Light/Dark (or if True, Warm or Cool).
For example, I came out Cool… and the Clear colours looked best on me. I am/can support neither Light nor Dark, Bright nor Soft. I’m obviously not all Warm
So I was called, “Cool, Clear and Cool,” or “Cool and Clear” for short. Here’s the point of difference: that final “cool” indicates that I am somewhere on the continuum between “Cool and Clear” and “Cool and Muted.” They flow together not because they are flowing around the colour wheel, but instead because the colours mostly only differ in relative clarity. I can occasionally wear some “Summer” colours because “That is my flow.”
Do there need to be another four combinations? No. “Warm and Muted” and “Warm and Clear” already flow to each other because they are both Warm, just as “Warm, Clear and Bright” flows towards “Cool, Clear and Bright,” by virtue of being the brightest, most saturated colours.
Then of course, things like personality come in to play (ie, look like a Winter, act like a Summer). But if I went by that, I’d be a Spring/Summer hybrid… which are a set of colours that in reality are FAR too light for me to wear, unless I used them as icy contrast colours
Speaking of contrast… Betty, the different seasons (I can’t remember what I’m supposed to call them, if they aren’t seasons!) need different levels of contrast. Cool and Clears (Winters) would never have a skintone, because it would be too low-contrast. Subtle, toned-down lips work, but definitely would need to be part of a clothing/makeup design that incorporates plenty of contrast otherwise. Softs (Soft Summer or Autumn) like low contrast, so therefore a softer lip colour feels in harmony with their personal colouring. Let me know if that doesn’t make sense.
Ps, Flow is from Ann of Image Innovators (or TAIC within Australia), and she frequently travels to keep her system as up-to-date as she can, hence the movement away from Seasons (which don’t relate to Aussie Seasons anyway: snow? What snow?)
Ellen,
Good to hear from you. I see you’re back from your training, with many windows and doors open
“Seasons” is probably an antiquated vocabulary, but I wonder if it’s easier to remember (for all the wrong reasons). It’s probably just a matter of getting used to something new and more precise. The TAIC word “Flow” appears to be close in intent to Sci\ART’s “Neutral” in some instances. In others, it’s an allowance for variability and still takes into account that hugely important concept of “relative to”.
On one level, color analysts can discuss forever theory, technique, and terminology. It’s fun. We enjoy thinking about the reasons for our differences. Dissecting and understanding other PCA systems is our entertainment.
Hopefully, women and men reading this understand that for their purposes, it might not matter very much which system analyzes them. Nobody is arguing that other systems are wrong. If people get hung up on all the different terms, they might miss the point. The point is just to have it done! The colors that perfect their skin and unlock the key to shopping better are quite similar, whoever generates the palette. There are not enough analysts around for everyone to get their choice. Don’t discard the available ones and hold out for an ideal, and continue shopping wrong in the meantime. If the technique seems sound, the person knowledgeable, and the product you take away has good useability, you’re good.
Whoever we are, whether we call our palettes by Season or something else, whether we work from photos or in person, we can help you look, feel, and present far better than you ever could without this instrument.
“Seasons” is still useful because it creates a shorthand as well as evoking a visual and emotional feeling
I still think of them as seasons, mostly because it’s faster to say “Bright Spring” than “Warm, Clear and Bright.”
Flow is not necessarily neutral, it works on the theory that if you change things about your colouring (mostly hair and eyes), you could change the relative temperature or contrast level and therefore “flow” to another season. I can see pros and cons to either technique
And you know me, I can’t stop questioning
But you’re absolutely right. There is no one true system that should be used. It boils down to this: Do you feel and look good in your colours? Are you comfortable with them? Do you know how to use them? Then, great!
Hi all,
Wow, this is as close to brain surgery as I’ve ever been. LOL.
Seriously though, I don’t get the confusion here. I think it’s all pretty logical, but maybe I’ve missed the point?!
Carole Jackson divides the seasons into 4: Winter (cool), Summer (cool but lighter), Autumn (warm) and Spring (warm but lighter), instead of calling them A, B, C and D. Then came Color Me A Season and Beauty for All Seasons and Sci/Art and several others, but no matter what you call the systems, colors are what they are. The way I see it, any season could flow into any other season.
Getting hung up on the term Soft Summer for example, and equalizing it with August, and THEN saying that a Winter can’t flow into August… You’ve completely lost me here!
Kristina, interesting you say that.
TAIC works differently to SciArt, and they say that if a Winter wants to lighten and soften their hair, they will look better in Soft Summer colours. They may not be the best colours to absolutely perfect the skin, but they will balance the hair if the client wants it lighter and it’s agreed that it doesn’t look too out-of-place on them. Christine can explain the SciArt perspective better than me, but I do know that they focus entirely on perfecting skin tone, which only perceptually changes in relation to the colours around it
So, following that logic, there never is a flow so much as finding your exact place in the warm/cool, light/dark, soft/muted, clear/bright spectrum.
Hi Ellen,
Thank you for clarifying that for me! Somehow I just got lost in all the comings and goings backwards and forward and I couldn’t find my way out. I appreciate your help!
Kristina,
I see you’re bringing your usual indefatigable logic into this
And you’re right, of course. If Sci\ART has basis in anything, it is scientific color description. I appreciate that making tight connections between that and the months makes as much sense as making rigid associations between Seasons to the zodiac signs. It would fail as an argument for demonstrating that the flow concept, or any other color concept, is wrong – which they’re not. Every system has merits. They can all exist peacefully together, and happily so.
But, Ellen’s point is highly valid, as hers always are. The Sci\ART viewpoint is to perfect the skin above all, and the hair and eyes are automatically perfect, because Nature’s blueprint for your coloring is never less than perfect. You can alter it, but within a tighter range than other systems might encourage, to still retain the most perfected skin, and stay true to your inborn overall color tone. OK, so it’s perfectionist and so am I, so we mesh well.
Where TAIC and Sci\ART and CMAS mesh, I hope Ellen would agree, is that we want people to look like themselves, their best selves. We’re all paying attention to all the wrong things somehow, and forgot that it’s ok to just look like us. The rest of the world appreciates the relief of it. We want you to walk into stores and have all the really bad stuff turn invisible. We want you to release the ideas we carry about ourselves, our belief system, that limits us from progressing forward with our own genuine voice, instead of a marketer’s voice, or our grandmother’s voice, or (goddess forbid) our husband’s voice. We want you to know how to resist trends that aren’t for you, shop easier, and spend less to look better.
As a consumer, pick whatever system makes sense to you and has a Colours Book you can work with, and leave the semantic arguments to people who like that stuff. Like Ellen and I, gives us goose bumps.
Hi Christine,
Yes, I simply cannot let you get too tangled up in your semantic arguments, now can I?
I guess I’m a person who likes things to be kept as simple as possible, but that’s a personality trait of mine and I recognize it’s not something that applies to everyone. One is not better than the other. Live and let live. (I was a hippie in my previous life. In this life though, I just have to understand WHY. It’s the Summer in me. 
)
So I guess my question is this: what IS the difference between Sci/Art and the rest of the systems in terms of seasons? Which are the missing ones that the “highly certified color and image professional” pointed out? Because I thought Sci/Art has 3 Winters, for example: Deep Winter (Winter/Autumn blend), Bright Winter (Winter/Spring blend) and True Winter (Cool/Cool, but pretty much a Winter/Summer blend)? No?
Hi again,
I need to specify my question better: What are Sci/Art’s True Seasons?
Ellen says that a Winter who wants to lighten – or, as I’d like to add, who lightens naturally (hair, eyes and skin) – would look better in (Soft) Summer. This to me means that someone who is cool to begin with can flow into another cool, only a lighter version. When you add white to a color it lightens it, but it doesn’t necessarily change its temperature.
A delayed clarification and explanation.
Most True Winters who lighten their hair but keep it ashy will lower their overall contrast level and look better in True Summer. If they lighten their hair with less care, often the red or gold undertones will come out, and if they have brown eyes, their overall look will be lower contrast (Summer) and more Neutral (->Soft Summer). Alternatively, there are just certain colours from within that True Winter palette that they can’t wear,and will instead favour the colours that are more likely to crossover with Summer
@ Ashley: This may have been answered in another comment, but if you really think about it it makes sense that the hottest months of the year would be associated with muted colors. Have you ever seen a heat haze rising off of asphalt? Next time you see one, look through it. Everything behind it is kind of blurry and soft-focus. I imagine you get the same effect in a desert, but being a city girl the asphalt is the example that comes most to mind. I imagine that it’s that same blurry, soft-focus look that soft summers and soft autumns are supposed to look for in their colors.
Hi, I love this post so much, I’m a bright spring and I have a par of high heels in that exact color, bright red patent, love it!
i use to think that I was a autumm, cause my hair is mediium brown and I have amber – brownish – greenish eyes but thanks to you I’m convinced that I’m a bright spring, so now I understand why black looks great on me and grey-taupe eyeshadows suits me.
thanks a lot!