Color Explorers Central

If you like discovering new ways to play with color, you are going to love my latest project. 

I'm gathering up all sorts of color resources into a new website - a virtual "outfitter" site with a curated collection of maps, tools, apps, materials and links to make it easier for you to explore the many worlds of color. 

You can see some of my top choices in the Travel Kit below. Do you have a favorite color resource you would like to add to the list? Please let me know.

Color Explorers in the Classroom

After spending the last year exploring color mixing in light, I'm convinced it's time to redesign how we teach color to kids.

To get the ball rolling, we are beta-testing products for a STEAM based 
color curriculum during the summer art classes at VIBE of Portland.

Color + Kids = Fun!

Color Explorers' Travel Kit 

I am on the road again, this time to Bordeaux, Chartres, Basel and Stockholm. Here's what I packed . . . 

• Kolormondo 185 by Swedish designer Nicoline Kinch. Take it apart and put it back together in less than 5 minutes. Both the globe and the free app are perfect for demonstrating color in 3D.
• Bag of Crayons - I never go anywhere without my crayons.
• Prisms with charts from Goethe plus a few from the Usborne Optical Illusions deck of cards.
• Color Paddle Set - Diffraction gratings and calibrated CMY|RGB gels. An easy way to show that magenta plus yellow makes red.
• CMY Color Wheel from The Color Wheel Company. It's much easier to see color relationships with the covers off!
• RGB Flashlights - The Optical Society of America Color Blox set is the best - and most portable - way I've found for demonstrating the mixing of light. (Note: Myra is using the flashlights to mix green and red light in the photo above.)
• Basic Deck of BTC Cards - The 70 card set of Breakthrough Color cards by Canadian color explorer 
  Tracy Holmes is a fun way to sort 
  color into tints, tones and shades.
• A flashlight app turns an "iPad" into a tiny light table. I laminated theaterGels for a quick subtractive mixing lesson. Bonus: The "iPad" is handy 
  for playing the master level of the 
  addictive gaming app Blendoku.
• Flip Triangle Prototype - One of the products we are developing for the classroom. They connect back-to-back with Velcro to show the reciprocal relationship of the RGB and CMY systems of color.
• Afterimage Chart - just for fun!
• Polymer Clay - for mixing color right in your hands. I use many brands including Fimo, Premo and Kato.
• Schylling Tops with our prototype 
  Maxwell disks for playing with 
  optical mixing. 
• CMY Color Mixing Triangle Prototype - for feedback.

I can fit everything but the crayons into a nifty JOTO organizer. I just throw the 
travel kit, crayons and notebook in my carry-on and I'm ready to go. Now it's off to more color adventures!

Blue Skies of Bordeaux

As I sit outside finishing up the newsletter under a gorgeous blue sky, here are a few thoughts:

I feel blessed and ridiculously lucky to be in such a beautiful place with such 
good friends.

I am blue with sadness for the people of NIce tragically reeling from the terrorism in their city - and feel it hitting closer to home after just celebrating Bastille Day here in France. 

May we all recover a sense of peace.
Maggie