why orange makes you brown

We raced around Stoneridge and managed to not only find a better dress (that was closer to silver than coppery silver like the last one) for less cost, we also found a fabulous pair of attractive black heels! I've been looking for a pair of black heels for a long time, an essential to any wardrobe.

The theme color for the silver anniversary was Coral, which is a pink/orange color that varies alot. Apparently, no one can really agree on what coral is supposed to look like. My cousins wore the brighter darker orange color dresses while the bridesmaids had the lighter orange.

I took a color class about 2 years ago and I'm only now really understanding some of the things the teacher mentioned in terms of color compatibility and coordination. So, Saturday I had fun puting it to good use.

Everyone's skin regardless of ethnicity or race has a level of orange in their skin. All those capillaries running through the skin cells provide our lively orange tint. One of the bridesmaids commented that the dresses make everyone look browner. This is because when you juxtapose color, one will dominate and although they may both contain the same color the dominant color will make the eye practically erase it from the one next to it. So Filipinos have orange, brown skin, but when placed next to coral which is obviously orange, then the eye and brain registers that the face is brown.

So we tried this idea again. My sister's fiance who is caucasian has blue-gray eyes. He was wearing a nice dark blue Barong Tagalog style shirt, which brought the blue out in his eyes. In this case, there was enough distance between his eyes and the shirt for us to accent the blue in his eyes. When the colors are separate, say I look at a bright red wall, then my eyes are activated to pick up red wherever I turn at least for a few brief seconds. If you have a picture of a rainbow, the colors in the rainbow will pop out differently depending on the color of the frame and/or matte around it.

However, when he sat in a high back blue chair, his shirt melted into the chair and his eyes looked like a pale gray.

Brown in and of itself is a tricky color as it can be created by mixing all primary colors (red, blue, yellow) together at varying levels plus add in white or black (the neutral colors) and you can have very complex levels of brown. Which is why some browns don't look good on some people depending on the varying levels of the component colors.

I realized that the reason green never looked good on me before was because my hair was so long. It increased the amount of black, brown and blue that connected between my face and body, but that red and purple always looked good because it melded well with the color in my hair. Now that my hair doesn't dominate as much as it used to, I can now wear more green, but only certain shades.

My sister and I have been discussing colors in depth as she and her fiance decide on the wedding theme pallette. We've seen the gambit of color themes as we've run through all our family weddings (lilac, coral, blue, red, green). When the slideshow was shown during the wedding anniversary reception, we could actually identify from which wedding the pictures were from based on what colors people were wearing. My sister definately does not want red as a main color and the hubby has advised no green as it reflects a greenish hue on the face for pictures making everyone kind of sickly looking. And in the meantime, her fiance, who is also an artist, has pulled out all his color wheels.