Colour My World Brown

From Wikipedia

Oh brown, you are the colour of one of the most popular foods in the world (chocolate) and the colour of crap. And the colour of my beautiful boys' eyes and hair. You are deep, comfortable and soulful, but let's be honest, you are also a little boring. You are also the colour for this month's Colour My World Challenge.

I was kind of dreading this month because I know what a challenge this will be for me. But as some of you wonderful folks reminded me on Wednesday, sometimes all it takes is a change in perspective. Boring brown or luscious chocolate? Mmmm, chocolate...

From Wikipedia - The brown and orange
disks of color are objectively identical, in identical
gray surrounds, in this image; their
perceived color categories depend on what white
they are compared to.

So what do we know about brown? Well, according to Joen Wolfrom in her book, Adventure in Design, "brown exudes the feeling of simplicity, endurance, stability, home and nature."

Did you know it's the favourite colour for a lot of men? The Japanese do not have a specific word for brown, but rather use more descriptive names like "tea-color". In India, it's the colour of mourning. Oh, and if you dream of the colour brown, you will be lucky with money. 

Brown is not a hue on the colour wheel, but forms the darker shades of red, red-orange, orange, yellow-orange and yellow. It's made by mixing black or grey with orange, red, rose, or yellow.


Dark brown is a good substitute for black and can be used as a neutral.

So I guess it's not such a bad colour after all, is it?

Here are a few online resources to read up on brown for yourself:

• Sensational Color
• Wikipedia
• About.com

So what would you do with brown as your challenge colour?

Right now, I'm thinking of trying a curved quilt-as-you-go technique with values of brown or maybe do an ode to chocolate, my favourite food. We'll see...

Have a great weekend, all!