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Hey, we’re back with a new year full of color theory goodness.

Thanks for not-minding that I took a week off. I’m proud to report that I spent it watching trash TV, reading, sketching, and playing Death-Monopoly. I did deep clean the bathtub jets so it wasn’t a total waste of time.

Here in Vanilla Beans, let’s pick up where we left off back in December— we’re still working our way through my list of frequently used colored pencil colors.

First, we talked about white…

Just before Christmas, we covered the grays…

Now let’s get to the real question: Why are there so many blues and purples on my list?

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BLUE PING-PONG BALLS

Every artist in every medium has a core group of around 30 colors.

Core colors are daily-use colors and we them in every medium. I actually get a little jittery when I don’t have mine around.

The printable list is in the Vanilla Bean’s Free Download Library. Use the link and password here. It’s also listed again in the usual place, midway down this newsletter.

Remember, these are MY core colors. Your core will be different. It’s all based on taste, style, and how you do what you do.

Now, if you’ve taken a few of my classes or watched me color over the years, you’ve probably noticed a distinct lack of blue in my work.

That’s because I color a lot of food and flowers. There’s not a lot of blue in the kitchen or the garden.

So then you might be scratching your head right about now…

If I don’t color blue stuff, why is my core full of blue and blue tinted colors?

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CURRENT PASSWORD: RubberDuckie

Look up.

92% of you just realized how nasty the ceiling fan looks…

Sorry about that. I meant, go outside and then look up.

Now January may not be the best time of year to teach this lesson. I’m in Michigan and if I look up right now, I’m gonna get an eyeball full of snow.

But some of you lucky ducks may actually see the sky.

Which brings us to the question every parent dreads: Why is the sky blue?

This is where my dad helpfully explained about God’s heavenly swimming pool which may explain why I’m wearing waterwings in so many photos. Be prepared, that’s my motto.

But really, why is the sky blue?

The sky is blue because of a quirky physics thing with the earth’s atmosphere.

The sun sends out every color of light, from infra-red to ultra-violet. The atmosphere then rejects the stuff that’d fry us to a crisp. The atmosphere also gives a hall pass to the rainbow spectrum colors. C’mon in!

But blue is unique.

Blue sits in the magic zone.

Something in our atmosphere really, really, really likes blue.

So instead of taking a straight trip from the sun to your face, blue lightwaves get bounced around like crazy ping-pong balls.

Boing, boing, boing.

When you’re standing outside on a sunny day, there’s a million-bajillion blue lightwaves bouncing off you and everything around you.

Boinging blue lightwaves, flying everywhere.

That’s why when we look up, we see blue. Boing.

But it’s also why cast shadows look bluish gray. Boing-boing.

And it’s why shady areas on objects tend to look cooler too. Boing-boing-boing.

All the other lightwaves are taking orderly trips from here to there, but blue?

Blue has the zoomies.

When the light gets dim, we can always count on a few bouncin’ blue lightwaves to feed us some color information.

It may be a red apple or a pink petunia but the shady side will always carry some blue.

We notice the blue more on white objects but the blue is always there, adding a cool temperature to areas where the sun don’t shine.

Which basically means that everything we color has a blue side.

30% of my core is blue or blue-adjacent,

Not because I’m coloring blue items but because I’m shading items with blue.

Blue isn’t the goal, it’s an ingredient.

Yes, I run fancy classes where we occasionally shade pink with green but most of the time, I’m using blue or the bluish side of the color wheel to shade stuff.

And here’s the weird thing… by me telling you this?

Now that you’re aware of it, you’re gonna see more blue around you.

The more you look, the more you’ll see. Pretty soon, you’ll be buying blue colored pencils by the box too.

Meet my Blue Crew. They’re not all blue but they’re on the blue side of the color wheel and have strong hints of blue in the mixture.

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This is my number one, most used color: Prismacolor Indigo Blue. We call this “Magic Indigo” in classes because it’s a transparent pencil, perfect for shading any color.

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If Magic Indigo is a little too much blue or if I’m coloring something that’s actually blue, I switch to either Derwent Lightfast Purple or Violet. “Magic Purple” and “Magic Violet”.

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And here’s my lastest love, Peacock Green from Holbein. I’ve been pushing with this Magic pencil for the last year.

“Magic” simply means a transparent pencil which doesn’t block the colors below it.

This is important because you just spent hours coloring something with Copic Markers, we don’t want to erase all that gorgeous Copic color under opaque pencil.