Personal Color Analysis (PCA) was birthed around middle part of the last century, when skill based art training and the visual language we know as fine art was decimated by the modern art movement. PCA came into being and was largely thought of as a magical process by which it’s pioneer, Susanne Caygill, made pronouncements about her impressions of people …
You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know Until You Know What You Don’t Know
A new design from my private label, Bourbon Couture. I bought the silk chiffon years ago, long before I became a color stylist. Will I wear this print? Yes. But like anything, once you know what you don’t know, it’s impossible to go back. So, I’ve trained myself to analyze everything I wear and here are my thoughts: This design …
The Winter Appearance Design In The The Painted Portrait
Color analysts are familiar with the phenomenological effect our inherent coloration has on our optical lens. This is a fact widely accepted in academic Fine Art painting circles. After years of training, art students become self-correcting and begin to use their own color preferences in the color palettes and subject matter which mark their own “style”. It is at this …
Case Study: Viola Davis
The annual Academy Awards affords color analysts the best and worst eye candy of the year. Often there are beautiful gowns on beautiful women. But sometimes I remember the gown better than the person. This is because either the color and/or style is too far removed from the person’s native coloring and seasonal archetype. One of my favorite actresses is …
Preparatory Drawing For Essence Portrait: “The World Is You Pushed Out” Neville Goddard.
I’ve discovered in my work as a portrait painter and Personal Color Analyst, the painted portrait is an abstraction of a person in much the same way a Personal Color Analysis (PCA) palette is a concise design concept of a person. In classical painting, a drawing like the one below, is made preparatory to painting so as to separate the …
Seeing Color Is Not Natural; It Is Learned
In classical painting ateliers, it is taught that “color is not natural; color must be learned”. In Personal Color Analysis the idea that seeing color is an organic event still prevails; either ya got it or ya don’t. This is a holdover from the aftermath of the Modern Art movement of the last 100 years: the modernist propaganda that “skilled …