Noticing Summer practice - Week 1/8 - Theme: COLOR
First week we focus on color and how it translates to all our senses this summer. Read for prompts and inspirations.
Maybe it started soon after his arrival during one of those grinding lunches when he sat next to me and it finally dawned on me that, despite a light tan acquired during his brief stay in Sicily earlier that summer, the color on the palms of his hands was the same as the pale, soft skin of his soles, of his throat, of the bottom of his forearms, which hadn’t really been exposed to much sun. Almost a light pink, as glistening and smooth as the underside of a lizard’s belly. Private, chaste, unfledged, like a blush on an athlete’s face or an instance of dawn on a stormy night. It told me things about him I never knew to ask.
André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name
I can’t imagine a better way to start thinking about summer and color than this quote from André Aciman’s novel Call Me By Your Name: Italy, long hot summer days, filled with delicious food, dolce far niente (the sweetness of doing nothing) and sensual erotic tension. You may have seen the movie based on the book directed by Luca Guadagnino (the one that made Timothée Chalamet famous). I fully recommend this and other films from his Desire Trilogy (I Am Love (2009), A Bigger Splash (2015), and Call Me by Your Name (2017)) if you would like to dive into summer imagery.
At the same time I would like to emphasize that you don’t need an Italian villa to create wonderful summer memories. This practice is all about noticing what’s beautiful, magical, and worth remembering in your day to day. It’s about having all your senses alert and finding inspiration in what otherwise might have been dismissed, forgotten.
For that reason I suggested keeping things simple: a notebook, a pen, your phone - all the things you have at hand at all times, to use the little time you have during the day and don’t let the inspiration slip away.
The prompts
Color immediately brings everything visual into mind, but I want to invite you to awaken all the senses, not just your sight. Think of these questions when you document your everyday this week. Each of these can be applied to any medium you choose (writing, photography, video, sketching etc).
1. Colors and color combinations that you gravitate towards during summer
Look around your home, among items you own, at a daily walk. What are the hues, the temperature, the saturation. If you were to design your summer palette which colors would be on it?
2. How do the sounds and smells you witness during summer translate into color
Do they change depending on the time of the day/night? If you have any memories connected with a specific sound/smell from previous summers - what colors do you remember surrounding you at that moment?
3. Is there any type of food you associate with summer - what color is it?
Does the color impact its taste for you? If possible, try to eat/drink it this week and document the colors and how it made you feel.
Below - beautiful essay by Carmen Maria Machado, a writer I highly recommend reading, on tomatoes. Don’t get discouraged by the beginning, it is about food (and people too, of course):
4. Color of a summer touch
Throughout the week, when you touch something pleasant, notice what color is it. Observe if, by any chance, there’s a dominant color.
Let me know what are your inspiration for the theme color in the comments, how do you approach color this summer?
It didn’t turn out particularly aesthetic, but I still wanted to share what I made this week.
My child was at a birthday party, and my husband and I picked him up together with his best friend. We had the slightly silly idea of walking the four kilometers from the party back to our house. (To be fair, there’s a lovely path along a creek, with a playground where you can stop for a break.)
The kids, exhausted after the birthday scavenger hunt, quickly lost their motivation. That’s when I opened a rainbow in my Canva app and suggested that we find all the colors of the rainbow together along the way. The two of them ran ahead, pointed out colorful things, I took a photo, added it to the rainbow, showed them the result, and we were all so proud.
I had so much fun paying closer attention to colors this week, and I’m already looking forward to next week’s prompt!
love this so much!!!