The sky was on fire tonight with even a double rainbow!

San Francisco was host tonight to the most electric rainbow i have ever laid eyes on!  In fact it was a double rainbow!  I did not know that that was actually anything other than ice cream!  It looked like it was on fire.  I have not seen a weather event bring more people out of their houses to witness.  They were everywhere… at least the smart ones were!  It was just spectacular!  I hope you enjoy!

San Francisco was host tonight to the most electric rainbow i have ever laid eyes on!  In fact it was a double rainbow!  I did not know that that was actually anything other than ice cream!  It looked like it was on fire.  I have not seen a weather event bring more people out of their houses to witness.  They were everywhere… at least the smart ones were!  It was just spectacular!  I hope you enjoy!

I thought that house in that commercial looked familiar!

As i have shared this (one of my absolute favorite) commercials (ever!), by Sony Bravia that took place right here in san francisco, i noticed a shot that looked really familiar. Turns out this is at the top of my block one street over on Andover… See if you can spot the familiar shot!

(… you may have to click on a link below to get to the video again… sorry!)

(&, Katiekins… this one is for you!)

Just because it is a color wheel, doesn’t mean that it is a good (accurate) color wheel! You would be surprised how many bad ones that are out there.

THE GOOD…

These are fairly good examples of a decent color wheels.

 

THE BAD…

 

 

 

 

For the untrained eye, all of these color wheels look, well, like a color wheel does… or maybe we think should look.  However, not all color wheels are alike.  Infact, it is a lot harder to find a really good color wheel than one would think.

It may take actually making a color wheel yourself for one to understand just how tough making a really accurate one can be.

The places that i find get into trouble the most are between the yellow and yellow-green first.  It is really quite difficult to get yellow to step smoothly into green due to it being the lightest color in value on the color scale.

So, not too surprisingly the other place i often find gets botched is in yellow to yellow-orange. Again, it is so easy to just take it from yellow into a much more valued yellow-orange.

Sometimes they do great throughout the whole green to orange section but then comes blue and it goes all choppy again.

In a color wheel, no one color should look largely different in value to either color next to it.  There should be no big steps from one color to another and no big blocks  that stand out apart from the whole wheel.

This is my little lesson on choosing the right color wheel.  You never know when you might need this kind of in depth color wheel knowledge!   Go ahead… show up your friends now that you know what a good color wheel should look like!  It can become a game like it does me… the search for accurate color wheels… Like spotting a dodo bird almost!

My second favorite Sony Bravia Ads. This one is called paint.

Sony Bravia Paint

Since today is my birthday AND i re-installed a new system OS, i thought i would celebrate by posting this Sony Bravia add. Not as cool as their paint and their balls adds, but equally as beautiful! I think you all will like this one too. Enjoy!

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Link

FM 100 Color Hue Test

This is one of the proudest moments i have had in a long time.  It has been a few years since i scored 100 on any test.  I did this tese a few years ago and was sure i had aced it.  Wrong!  It is much harder than it looks.  However, several years later and with more study and focus, i finally proved to myself that color or the eye for it really is one of my gifts. (not exactly lucrative but it is better than nothing!) …Now if i just knew how to parlez having a 100% correct eye for color (out of 100 points i got 100 points) into a more $$ stable profession than fine artist, that would suite my geriatric years a lot better!  

 

Anyway, take the test!  It only takes a few minutes and it is fun.  Plus, you may learn something about your own vision that you were unaware of too.

Sony Bravia commercial. All hand done stop motion.

Here is one of the last Sony Bravia commercials that i am going to post.. Maybe not the very last but we are winding down. I am also including in this posting the link to the making of this add. The behind the scenes allows one to see just how awesome these commercials are!

Enjoy!

To finish up my celebration of color… Here is the first one for day two of the Sony Bravia adds.

Not only are these adds a feast for the mind. Like getting your color fix as a drug feeds the brain, so does color! But, the production that goes into these adds is incredible!

Sony decided that they wanted to go a totally different route than the other TV manufacturers were doing to advertise the vividness of color on their Bravia tv. All of the commercials in this series are actual. No CGI no animation.

I believe that is what i love so much about these… they are clever, beautiful and just plain cool….

I leave you to the Sony Bravia Pyramid add. Enjoy!

The most beautiful color commercial i have EVER seen! Watch it! Cant feel too bad after!

For those of you that know / follow me, you may have discovered just how obsessed with color i am. I always said that i am not a very good drawer, i am a good color pusher when it comes to art.

Well, ladies and gents… I bring you the most luscious, brain watering display of color i have yet to find. I watch this Sony commercial a lot. It never gets old or dulls in effect. It is like eating cake… Never tired of eating cake!

Well, welcome to some mind cake. Hope you enjoy!

I just realized that i do not think that i have shown one of my paintings to you.

I am a fine artist.  This blog has taken a new lead for the moment but when i think of myself, i think of myself as an artist.  I have studied in a lot of mediums.  Some of them being ceramics, ceramic sculpture, sculpture, color, drawing, painting, print making, mixed media and paper arts etc.

If i am going to be exposing who i am to you… the world, i think it is time for me to share some of my fine art works with you.  It is what i identify with the most so to know it, helps you know me.

I will also give you a little bit of background on what influences my art.  I was a makeup artist for over a decade.  I used to be OBSESSED with beauty.  I didnt and still dont understand it.  It is a real love hate thing, but i loved using makeup as the paint and the face as the canvas.  Kevin Aucoin HUGELY influenced these early years.  His untimely death changed me a little bit.  I lost my idol.  He was the one that took it out of magazines and into fine art.  (check out The art of Makeup, Making Faces or Face Forward).  I also had some really bad tastes in my mouth regarding the dodgy-ness of the beauty industry in SF at the time.   I got tired of busting my balls to get screwed out of $ and prints. I am a 1992 high fashion addict that watched corporate buy up all the great cosmetic brands and turn the industry into a cattle heard.  I was pretty heartbroken.  I wont go into all the reasons i moved out of makeup and into fine arts, but the influences that drove my makeup art, i believe, still transfers into the new mediums.  So much to the point that i have done 2 paintings using cosmetics as their mediums.

But when it comes down to it, i am really just a big color pusher.  I am not great at drawing at all.  fine line work is really tough for me. However with practice, I have found that it does get better.  Color pushing never needs practice.  It is like going into a candy store.  It is NEVER a bad thing.  There is nothing wrong that you can buy in a candy store.  Candy is great.  Color is just as great.

So, beauty, color, early 90′s high fashion and emotion as well as texture texture can usually be seen in some form in most of my pieces.  However i do try and do pieces that are outside of my comfort zone here and there. Not successfully always, but it is still an important exercise to do i think.

Anyway, here is a few of my pieces.  I hope you like them!

Oil on canvas.

Watercolor and nail laquer on paper

Resin and copper mounted on Redwood.

Hydrocal mounted on redwood.

You can see more of my stuff if you want by following the links below…

http://www.fine-art.com/artsearch.asp?keywords=emelie+koshland&priority=1&artistStack=n&ynLimited=m

http://www.artwanted.com/emelie

The world of Synesthesia… Quite an amazing phenomenon!

When i was deep in art classes at SF City College about a 8 or 9 years ago, I took this fantastic class on Color.  I had been waiting patiently on this class which was up at the main campus (all of my other classes were down at Fort Mason campus) but, i wanted to take this class so bad i took it and my ceramics class up there 2 days a week and went to the other side of town the other two.

In this class i learned oh so much.  Fascinating stuff about light and pigment and color and vision and all kinds of other things.  A really interesting class to say the least.  At the end of the semester, we were assigned to do a oral with visuals presentation about color of some nature.  It was a really cool thing to see how many different topics 28 people chose.  Everything to the history of auto paint to mine, the drama of makeup.

One of the presentations was on a phenomenon i had never heard of and it got me!  It stuck me in that place of curiosity that sticks with me for many many years.  It was this amazing thing called Synesthesia.  It is a disorder (i hate using that word because it makes it seem like there is something inherently wrong with them which there is not. It is just different.)   It is a phenomenon where peoples sense wires are crossed so one may hear color or taste shapes.

The person doing the presentation said at the end that she had read the book and had no room for another so she was donating it to any of us who may want it.  I WANTED IT!  I luckily somehow got the right number or the long straw or however it worked out, i dont remember exactly, but i got the book.  The book was called The man who tasted shapes.

I happened to be talking to a friend about this topic and decided to let the scientists and doctors explain what almost a dozen years helped me to forget (the little details which are really needed when trying to explain something as complex as synesthesia.

And full circle i came when i found out that the one video i chose was an interview with that very same doctor that wrote that book all those years back.  A lot more i have just found out has been discovered about this condition which makes it even more fascinating to me.

 

Footnote: It is kinda interesting to know that it is widely agreed that Waisly Kandinsky, the abstract painter, was most assuredly a synesthete.

Anyway, i will let the doctor explain it to you best. with this video.  Pretty interesting i say!

I just love adorable candy stores! And i’ve sure got one for you!

Miette Candy Store is bringing delight to Hayes Valley

Dont you just love a candy store that is as good to look at as the candy its self?  I sure do.  They look like a little sugar wonderland contained in a room.  The really cute ones i think really do make the candy taste better.  It is oh so alluring regardless.  I find it hard to not be drawn to the window like a magnet which then as if hypnotized up the 2 small steps and into this place of color and sugar.  I find it impossible to leave without looking at all the awesomely packaged and displayed bite sized treats and even more impossible to leave without buying something.  It seems almost a crime to leave this little gem with all these sweet tasties without taking a little piece of it with me.

Bravo to Miette Candy Shop on Octavia St. in San Francisco.  It is as visually striking to see as the contents is yummy!  It is a little step into your childhood imagination of the perfect little candy shop.  They carry many imported candies as well as some of the classics.  I love that they really do awesome window displays for all of the desired holidays.

They have another shop that is more focused on pastries down at the Ferry Building which i have not been to but seen pictures of some of the things that come out of that shop and WOW.  Beautiful confections!  I believe another store is scheduled to open shortly in Berkeley Ca. as well.

(these two lovely ladies are the  owners of Miette.)

Thank you Miette!  Your store reaches deep into a happy place in me just by walking by!  You help make San Francisco a true delight!

It is time… I would like to share with you some of my own photography.

I hope you like my slideshow.  All photos were taken as is on a digital point and shoot camera.  NO photoshoping of any kind.  What you get is what you see.  I am just one lucky girl to have such a beautiful canvas to live within!  Enjoy!!  Any comments are surly appreciated by the way… .

These old Sicilians KNOW style!

These old timers are true, living fashionistas!  Their way of life in the Sicilian town of Agira is filled with color and incredible style that they make their own.  I love this video because it reminds me to add some color to my own life.  A bit of bright  yellow or pink or blue can brighten not just your own day but the day of those around you!

Live life in color and with a little bit of your own style!

This is one of the best color tests i have ever seen… or done!

I came upon this color test online.

http://getlostblog.wordpress.com/2011/12/19/test-your-color-ability/

It is quite a bit longer than the other ones i have used in the past.  I really thought i got 100% but not even I pulled that.  I came close though with a 7 out of 99.  A score i can live with but would have rather gotten 0 since i pride myself on my color training.  Try it and tell us what score you achieved!