A Suffusion of Yellow
This is the last of four installments of my article about how to study a color with the goal of using it in your craft. I’m using the color yellow as an example for following the method. You can use the same method with any color.
Do you remember when lateral thinking was a new concept? Was it in the 1980s? Okay, well, you may not remember, so please take my word for it that self-help and business success writers wanted us to break away from linear or logical thinking, which sometimes involves being in a rut. Instead of tackling a problem or project in a linear way, they wanted us to take unorthodox approaches to problem-solving.
“Lateral” means moving to the side, or being on a side, or going from side to side. That makes sense in terms of lateral thinking, because you’re seeking solutions off the beaten path.
But the “lateral” part of lateral thinking bothers me, because it implies that your thinking is constrained to one plane. Think of high school geometry. That’s the kind of plane I’m talking about.
For the 21st century, I propose a new dimension in problem-solving. Maybe we’ll call it starburst thinking. You begin with a project or problem at the center, and you reach out for ideas in all directions: side to side, up, down, all around, into the past, into the future.
Or maybe global thinking? Nope, too small. Universal thinking?
It’s not just thinking outside the box, but thinking and researching and paying attention all around the box, inside and out, for a long, long way. Granted, a lot of the time, you won’t find anything in the vast territories you cover. However, eventually you’ll run across a clue, an inspiration, a signpost that will lead you to the idea or solution you need. It may take you a while.
Here are some of the things I did when indulging in starburst thinking about the color yellow:
- Made a list of words associated with “yellow.” Roget’s Thesaurus was the best reference book for this.
- Looked up “yellow’ in the dictionary to find alternate meanings and interesting nuances, like how yellow is associated with cowardice.
- Found other ways “yellow” used, that actually had nothing to do with yellow, like “yellow journalism.”
- Found examples of yellow in nature and decorative art.
- Collected relevant quotes from whatever I was reading or hearing, that pertained to yellow.
Let’s start with the thesaurus, which had a long list of yellow colors and pigments:
Dutch pink
English pink
Italian pink
Acid yellow
Amber
Apricot
Barium yellow
Brilliant sulpho
Butter
Cadmium yellow
California green
Flax
Mikado yellow
Milling yellow
Olivesheen
Orpiment
Yellowness:
Flaxen
Ocherous
Ochery
Gild
Aurify
Aureateness
Lutescent
That brings us to “a suffusion of yellow.”
Douglas Adams wrote The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. Dirk Gently, the main character and a self-proclaimed holistic detective, buys an I-Ching calculator. When he calculates anything where the answer is greater than 4, the calculator displays the phrase: “a suffusion of yellow.”
What an interesting idea. A saturation of yellow. A pouring over of yellow. I saturated my mind with words and images that had to do with yellow, and went from there.
Now it’s your turn.
