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Monday, September 09, 2019
The Origin Story Of Earth Umber – The Overlooked Earth Tone You Should Be Using
Rosco Spectrum: Yes, Earth Umber is a color that a scenic artist could easily mix on their own, but for someone that typically works at small schools with limited assistance, I think this paint – which is only available from Rosco – offers enormous value.
Well, I most certainly didn’t expect to be reading and invested in a shade of brown today. Upon reading this article, I recognize the value of the shade of brown, Earth Umber. There have been plenty of situations where I or someone else I know has needed to create an organic shade of brown, but the shades presented are always too plainly bright or dark, never a happy medium shade. It was always like settling for the sad, overly one-or-another shade of brown in the box of 64 crayola crayons (featuring crayon sharpener), where you would most expect to find the perfect color for any purpose, then be sorely disappointed when you just use the "Fuzzy Wuzzy" shade or creatively-named "brown". Or, for example, when my high school did The Beverly Hillbillies, we had to paint a log cabin set, and due to the shade of brown we bought, we had to mix various paints to create a new pallet of browns alone, and even after that, the cabin wall turned out looking very “high schoolers painted this”-esque. Thankfully, we eventually resorted to painting the set black and white to create a black-and-white TV set vibe, but the problem still stands. The war rages between too bright and too dark shades, but wait! Here comes the mediator of conflict, the cool kid on the block: introducing Earth Umber (cue applause as Earth Umber stands Center Stage and bows)! Really, though, this is a very useful shade of color, whether it be in paint or in color-dropping digitally. Wonderful organic shade, and will most definitely will look into it when approached with my next organic or natural-looking project (especially now that I realize they make crayon colors of it too now!!!).
Brown. I mean ok, I just read an article about the importance of this specific color brown? But seriously it is very interesting to realize that it is very hard to create a natural, dirt color, brown. I don't do a lot of painting but the few times I have we have always needed brown, we never had brown paint, we tried to mix up color, and it always turned out greyish or leaning towards a primary color (like the article says). You don't truly appreciate something until you don't have it (<deep) I really like the range of Umber that Rosco's Off-Broadway brand carries. It really shows you how different shades of brown come across and each has very distinct differences. Paint also makes me very excited to learn about color theory and just different colors in general. I haven't thought much about colors since my 7th-grade art classes. It was interesting to hear about how the creation of this color was an accident, and I wish they had kept the name dirt rather than Earth Umbre. It was also interesting to think about the jobs that go unnoticed in theater. Someone is paid to know what specific colors look like (that's not all she does but that's a really interesting skill that she gets paid to have). Technical theater is more than just designers and technicians! Olaf I' sorry about the crayons?
I read this article a few weeks ago on Facebook and was so disappointed by it. I think it must have been such a lovely atmosphere for an audience to be reacting together like that, something that as I understand it is a goal of the artform to create those sort of the moments. To have someone who decides to rob everyone else of that kind of magic makes me question why he’d come to the theatre in the first place. Also I don’t appreciate the devaluing of the artform in itself by him saying, “it’s just a play”. To be fair I will say that when my peers or I am stressing incessantly over the completion of one of our assignments to bring into perspectives our own value in order for us to re-evaluate our priorities. However as someone who is a part of the industry and knows that we’re trying to create reactions and investment from the audience that dismissing it in such a way is disgraceful. Just a play to someone is inspiration to someone else and perhaps his lack of connection shouldn’t allow him to dictate to an entire room of people how they should react and feel. (Not to mention what he robbed from the performers for the rest of the show)
This article was strangely heartwarming. Brown is in and of itself sort of of a diametric color. On one hand, it is cozy and warm and chocolatey, as they say. On the other hand, it is at times considered an ugly and plain color. I will admit, most of the time, I find brown to be unremarkable. I've painted my fair share of sets in my four years of high school and seldom do I remember when the brown got painted even though I know for certain that I had a hand in it. There was never any paint being mixed and the end product, when loaded in, always looked a little bit off from what the brown should have actually looked like, be it as a like tree trunk or as lumber used in a house. I am glad to see someone so appreciative of something as simple and commonplace as the color brown, which is so often taken for granted.
I am crazy about paint, and even crazier about color. (to preface this response, I’d like to add that one time I gave a 1-hour presentation about the usage of the color red in a short Sylvia Plath poem). I adored everything about this article, and every reasoning behind the need for Earth Umber is completely true. Dennett describes that a color like this could be mixed, but for something that she and many others need so frequently, why wasn’t the color already in existence? In my experience, brown is an extremely important color in scenic painting. Brown can have so many undertones. Warm brown. Cool brown. Everything in between brown. Mixing browns is so hard, and after working all summer in a paint shop with every set calling for a large variety of brown, I had already grown to appreciate brown. I think it’s wonderful that Rosco was able to create such a staple brown color, and it really surprised me that it didn’t exist already! I also absolutely love that the final color was created by an accidental mix of pigments! I definitely could’ve used Earth Umber this summer when dirtying up some stucco on Mamma Mia!
5 comments:
Well, I most certainly didn’t expect to be reading and invested in a shade of brown today.
Upon reading this article, I recognize the value of the shade of brown, Earth Umber. There have been plenty of situations where I or someone else I know has needed to create an organic shade of brown, but the shades presented are always too plainly bright or dark, never a happy medium shade. It was always like settling for the sad, overly one-or-another shade of brown in the box of 64 crayola crayons (featuring crayon sharpener), where you would most expect to find the perfect color for any purpose, then be sorely disappointed when you just use the "Fuzzy Wuzzy" shade or creatively-named "brown". Or, for example, when my high school did The Beverly Hillbillies, we had to paint a log cabin set, and due to the shade of brown we bought, we had to mix various paints to create a new pallet of browns alone, and even after that, the cabin wall turned out looking very “high schoolers painted this”-esque. Thankfully, we eventually resorted to painting the set black and white to create a black-and-white TV set vibe, but the problem still stands. The war rages between too bright and too dark shades, but wait! Here comes the mediator of conflict, the cool kid on the block: introducing Earth Umber (cue applause as Earth Umber stands Center Stage and bows)!
Really, though, this is a very useful shade of color, whether it be in paint or in color-dropping digitally. Wonderful organic shade, and will most definitely will look into it when approached with my next organic or natural-looking project (especially now that I realize they make crayon colors of it too now!!!).
Brown.
I mean ok, I just read an article about the importance of this specific color brown? But seriously it is very interesting to realize that it is very hard to create a natural, dirt color, brown. I don't do a lot of painting but the few times I have we have always needed brown, we never had brown paint, we tried to mix up color, and it always turned out greyish or leaning towards a primary color (like the article says). You don't truly appreciate something until you don't have it (<deep)
I really like the range of Umber that Rosco's Off-Broadway brand carries. It really shows you how different shades of brown come across and each has very distinct differences. Paint also makes me very excited to learn about color theory and just different colors in general. I haven't thought much about colors since my 7th-grade art classes.
It was interesting to hear about how the creation of this color was an accident, and I wish they had kept the name dirt rather than Earth Umbre. It was also interesting to think about the jobs that go unnoticed in theater. Someone is paid to know what specific colors look like (that's not all she does but that's a really interesting skill that she gets paid to have). Technical theater is more than just designers and technicians!
Olaf I' sorry about the crayons?
I read this article a few weeks ago on Facebook and was so disappointed by it. I think it must have been such a lovely atmosphere for an audience to be reacting together like that, something that as I understand it is a goal of the artform to create those sort of the moments. To have someone who decides to rob everyone else of that kind of magic makes me question why he’d come to the theatre in the first place. Also I don’t appreciate the devaluing of the artform in itself by him saying, “it’s just a play”. To be fair I will say that when my peers or I am stressing incessantly over the completion of one of our assignments to bring into perspectives our own value in order for us to re-evaluate our priorities. However as someone who is a part of the industry and knows that we’re trying to create reactions and investment from the audience that dismissing it in such a way is disgraceful. Just a play to someone is inspiration to someone else and perhaps his lack of connection shouldn’t allow him to dictate to an entire room of people how they should react and feel. (Not to mention what he robbed from the performers for the rest of the show)
This article was strangely heartwarming. Brown is in and of itself sort of of a diametric color. On one hand, it is cozy and warm and chocolatey, as they say. On the other hand, it is at times considered an ugly and plain color. I will admit, most of the time, I find brown to be unremarkable. I've painted my fair share of sets in my four years of high school and seldom do I remember when the brown got painted even though I know for certain that I had a hand in it. There was never any paint being mixed and the end product, when loaded in, always looked a little bit off from what the brown should have actually looked like, be it as a like tree trunk or as lumber used in a house. I am glad to see someone so appreciative of something as simple and commonplace as the color brown, which is so often taken for granted.
I am crazy about paint, and even crazier about color. (to preface this response, I’d like to add that one time I gave a 1-hour presentation about the usage of the color red in a short Sylvia Plath poem). I adored everything about this article, and every reasoning behind the need for Earth Umber is completely true. Dennett describes that a color like this could be mixed, but for something that she and many others need so frequently, why wasn’t the color already in existence? In my experience, brown is an extremely important color in scenic painting. Brown can have so many undertones. Warm brown. Cool brown. Everything in between brown. Mixing browns is so hard, and after working all summer in a paint shop with every set calling for a large variety of brown, I had already grown to appreciate brown. I think it’s wonderful that Rosco was able to create such a staple brown color, and it really surprised me that it didn’t exist already! I also absolutely love that the final color was created by an accidental mix of pigments! I definitely could’ve used Earth Umber this summer when dirtying up some stucco on Mamma Mia!
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