Learning to Learn

I feel like this learning period has been a bit of a disaster. I think I had a good start, but the chaos of moving and then life just getting super busy this week (and again in two weeks time) has stalled things more than I'd care to admit.

Topic: James Baldwin Deep Dive

I continue to make slow progress on the essay collection I borrowed from the library. I finished Notes of a Native Son, which started with literature reviews and was largely lost on me, then continued on to tell stories of his time as a black American living and traveling in Europe, which I found much more interesting. Because Notes of a Native Son was originally published as its own essay collection, I am going to consider that I have read my required one essay collection.

I am continuing on to Nobody Knows My Name, which was mean as a direct follow-up to Notes of a Native Son. It has opened with two essays on growing up in the ghettos of Harlem, how Harlem has changed over his life, and how people in ghettos feel about "the projects."

Topic: Personal Color Analysis

I went through my closet and my fabric stash and took draped photos of myself with as many of the colors Rees suggests as I could find.

Many people say that people intuitively gravitate toward their best colors, so I tallied how many of the recommended test colors I found in my closet for each season.

Curiously, I had no spring colors, not for any of the spring subseasons. I had five summer colors (one each for light and soft, three for true summer). Five autumn colors (two true autumns, two soft autumns, and one that was sort of between a deep and soft autumn color). Two deep winter colors, but none for other winter subseasons.

I still, after ten weeks of color analysis reading and videos and testing and draping, have no idea whether my undertone is warm or cool. I'm leaning toward warm. But like an almost-neutral warm. Or an almost-neutral cool.

I don't think I'm high enough contrast to be a deep/dark season, nor do I think I'm low contrast enough to be a light season. I'm not decided warm or cool toned, which rules out the true/warm/cool seasons. That leaves me with the soft or bright seasons. I definitely gravitate toward softer colors more than the brighter ones, but that doesn't mean they "harmonize" with my features more.

I think the next order of business it to try draping in the seasonal pallets for just those four seasons and to see which seasons I have more of in my wardrobe.

Topic: James Baldwin

Things got hectic during my move, but they've settled down now and I've had time to read more from the collection of essays I borrowed from the library.

The first group of essays in the collection is "Notes of a Native Son." The first few essays were hard for me to follow because they were essentially reviews of media from that time which I am completely unfamiliar with. The next few essays have been personal narrative essays about his time in Europe in the 40s and 50s, which I've found more enjoyable.

I've found his writing style to be very much reflective of his style of speaking (have I talked about this in a previous journal?). His sentences are long and meandering, and I often have to re-read them to make sense of them. I'm not sure if this is a result of my lately-unexercised longform reading comprehension skills, a difference of time and culture, or just a particular quirk of his writing.

Topic: Color Analysis

This also has been pushed to the side, as I reached the evidently unavoidable draping phase of seasonal color analysis just as I was moving.

In Rees' book, she has you use undertone, contrast, and saturation to narrow down which of the 12 seasons you might be. Then she suggests a few key colors to drape for each season to test your theories.

In the next week, I intend to collect fabric from around my house to start draping colors. Once I've exhausted my own collection, I will be raiding my parents' house.

I chose these two learning topics for May and June because I knew it would be a busy month for me. I underestimated just how busy it would be (I'm moving) and overestimated how much I would be able to get done (way less than expected), so I have made the decision to lengthen this learning period by an additional month.

I originally intended to do this as part of my Zyla "true colors" section, but the more I read about people finding their colors, the more I saw people saying not to do this color-picking thing, because the colors would be much less saturated than your "true colors" should be.

So, having determined my "true colors" already, I decided to color-pick anyway, because it's still sort of adjacent, and I thought it would give me some useful information toward finding my color season.

I used the same three selfies as I used for the color draping quiz.

The top left corner are colors picked from my skin, with the top row being colors picked from a pink-er, more flushed area of skin (my nose or cheeks).

The top right are colors picked from my lips. My lips were very pale in one of the selfies, which you can see in the center column of pinks.

The bottom left are colors picked from my eyes. The top row were all picked from the dark outer ring of my iris, while the second and third row were picked from the larger middle section. I'm actually kind of surprised by how cool these greens are! Not surprised by how muted the saturation is, though.

Bottom right is my hair. Sometimes very warm, sometimes very cool, always very confusing.

One of my assignments/ways to try to find my color season was to do a "bubble-head" exercise. I would take a selfie (or multiple selfies) in indirect natural light, cut them out so you could only see my face, and fill the background in different colors to see what looked good with my complexion.

This process was made easier for me when I found a website called Vivaldi, which I could upload my selfie to, and it would guide me through pairs or triples of colors to determine first my undertone, then my season, and finally my sub-season.

Since I'm viewing this color analysis thing as an experiment, and a good experiment requires repeatability, I decided to try the same quiz and the same selfies from different devices (screen differences) and from different places (lighting differences) and also sent everything to my sibling to do and see what they got (different screen and lighting, PLUS different color biases than I have).

Attempt 1

My first attempt was done on a laptop in an office.

I got three different results - soft summer, deep autumn, and soft autumn.

Soft summer has a cool undertone and light value, while the two autumn sub-seasons have neutral-warm undertones and dark values. All three seasons have a muted chroma. Interestingly, soft summer and soft autumn are considered "sister seasons," which is a concept I will have to investigate further.

It was honestly really difficult to choose between colors sometimes! I honestly think I have a very neutral undertone, which complicates matters, and I think the gold vs silver issue is given too much weight. You're only going to have that much metallic reflection if you wear a metallic blouse or really chunky jewelry (neither of which I do).

Attempt 2

The first attempt was done on my laptop in an office. My second attempt was done on my phone in a dim room. I used the same website and the same selfies.

This time, I got soft summer (cool, light, muted) with two of the selfies, and cool summer (cool, "leaning light," "leaning muted") on one.

Maybe it's the screen differences, maybe I've just had more "practice" seeing the colors, but I'm starting to think I may actually lean cool in my undertone. I do have blue/purple veins, which is considered an indicator of cool undertones.

I still wonder about how my own feelings about color (independent of how they look on me) are affecting the outcomes. Do muted colors really look good on me? Or do I just dislike neons and pastels?

Sibling's Attempt

I sent my sibling the quiz/website and the three selfies I used and asked them to go through the process for me.

Very curiously, they got deep winter (cool, dark, bright) for two of the selfies and bright winter (neutral-cool, dark, bright) for one.

I was kind of surprised, because I had more or less ruled out the winter seasons! I like the colors in the pallets, but I felt like the colors were too saturated and stark on me.

The Good People of Reddit

Having reached no conclusions, I took a risk and posted digital drapes of all 12 seasons on all three selfies, suggested that I suspect I have cool-neutral undertones, and asked for opinions.

Their opinions were even less conclusive.

I got ten comments in less than 24 hours, mostly leaning toward warm/true autumn and warm/true spring. Very surprising, considering I thought I had cooler undertones! People mostly pointed to my eyebrows and hair as a sign of my undertone, which I think is kind of silly considering it's supposed to be about your skin's undertone.

There were at least one vote each for bright and light spring, soft autumn, and soft and cool/true summer.

No one suggested any of the winter seasons, light summer, or deep autumn. One commenter said I "can eliminate winter and light/deep subseasons entirely as you don’t have the depth/lightness for those," which I think I agree with and which corresponds with (most of) the votes I got.

Conclusions

Well, conclusions about my subseason are still frustratingly elusive! The lack of decided warm or cool undertones are making it very difficult.

I think I will have to disregard my sibling's assertion that I'm any kind of winter, and I think I agree I agree with that Reddit commenter that I can rule out the darkest and lightest seasons as being too dark/light. So I'm of middling brightness.

Am I more muted or more middling in terms of saturation? I prefer the more muted colors (soft autumn and soft summer), but some people like the more middling colors for me (warm/true spring, warm/true autumn, warm/true summer).

So I'm... very middling, I guess.

Topic: Color Analysis

I have closed out the Zyla portion of my color analysis journey and am moving into the 12 color seasons! I picked up the Rees book this week and have been playing around with a digital draping thing online.

I was worried that my own feelings towards colors might be distracting me, so I made my sibling try it and they got a very different result! I've posted to a color analysis subreddit and we'll see what they say. More on that in an assignment post, though.

Topic: James Baldwin

It's been a month since I started If Beale Street Could Talk. It's a seven hour audio book and I still have almost 45min left. I'm a bit embarrassed.

I'm turning away from his novels for a moment and have just picked up a collection of his essays. The book itself is not excessively large, but it is printed on 800 pages of that tissue-thin paper usually reserved for Bibles. I don't think I'll get through the whole thing, but that won't stop me from trying!

Yesterday I watched a short clip of James Baldwin on the Dick Cavett Show from May 1969. It starts with a re-hashing of the question about whether or not Baldwin is "optimistic" about the future of Black people in the US. He has been asked this, I think, in every interview of his that I've watched. And once again, he turns it around to talk about the future of the US as a whole, not just African-Americans.

He also mentions two very different-sounding ideas, that are nonetheless both true. The first is the idea that "I don't want to be given anything by you, I just want you to leave me alone so I can do it myself." The second idea is that maybe Black people in America don't aspire to the same things, the same accomplishments, the same kind of greatness that white Americans do. And aren't their ideals still valid?

When Cavett asked about the Black leaders who "scare" white Americans with their rhetoric about "burning the whole thing down," Baldwin points out that the idea only scares white people because it is new to them. He references an old spiritualist song, which was originally a slave song, about tearing down a metaphorical building. He also exposes the double standard of how when groups of white people fight violently for their freedom, they are considered heroic, but when African-Americans take up arms to fight for their own freedom, they are considered scary or extremists.

My reservations about Zyla's theories were not serious enough to stop me from going through the exercises to find my own "true colors." The process was, I'll admit, harder than I thought, and took not one field trip to the hardware store for pain chips, but at least four.

I mentioned, in my review of the book, concern over picking colors from my eyes. From a distance they look sort of mossy green (depending on the light) but up close they are mostly a sort of seafoam green with a golden brown ring around the middle. I decided to go with the color-as-seen-from-a-conversational-distance.

I generally like the colors I "found." They are cooler than I expected (cool-toned, not more hip and interesting), rich but slightly muted.

My "essence" color is a pink-ish cream. My "romantic" color is a sort of cool, dusty rose. My "dramatic" color is a surprisingly saturated, almost cornflower blue, but slightly darker. My "energy" color is sort of mossy, while my "tranquil" color leans more toward lichen. (I think his poetic color descriptions have gotten to me.)

My "first base" is sort of a dark blue spruce. My "second base" reminds me of dark chocolate. My "third base" is almost the color of an old penny.

Based on Zyla's color name groupings and brief descriptions ("Cool and Relaxed," "Mixed"), I believe I fall into his "Summer" season. I'm not sure I fit into his description of a Summer personality, but I'm not super on board with the appearance-and-behavior-are-linked idea anyway.

I'd say my "Summer" "archetype" might be the "Classic Summer" - or at least it fits better than the five other summer types. Zyla suggests muted cool tones, low-contrast outfits, lots of drapery, light perfumes, and avoiding animal prints or industrial hardware.

I'll admit that I don't object to muted cool tones, and I prefer lighter scents for daily wear, and I do tend to avoid animal prints (though that's just personal preference, not because I think I look bad in them). I like a bit more contrast in my outfits (like a medium level of contrast), and I really hate drapey clothes like cowl necks and anything ruched. I'd even go so far as to say that I like a bit of structure in my garments. I suppose that's also personal preference though, and maybe I would look good in draped clothing. But I wouldn't enjoy wearing draped clothing, so I'm not going to.

"Color Your Style," previously published under the title "The Color of Style" is a book by David Zyla where he instructs readers on finding and wearing their "true colors." It is interspersed with anecdotes about how finding their true colors has helped his previous styling clients find success in life.

The first part of the book leads readers through examining their skin, visible veins, eyes, and hair to pick out eight "true" colors. He calls these colors your "essence" color (white, from the skin), "romantic" color (red or pink, from the flushed skin), "dramatic" color (blue, from the veins), "energy" color (from the iris), "tranquil" color (also from the iris), "first base" (black, from the ring around the iris), "second base" (brown, from the hair), and "third base" (khaki, also from the hair).

Zyla says that strategically wearing your "true colors" for certain kinds of events can help influence how the people around you feel toward and react to you.

After guiding readers through finding their "true colors," Zyla explains the ideas of "seasons" and "archetypes."

Guided by the popular theories at the time, he recognizes four seasons, though he places as much weight on personality as on personal coloration.

His descriptions of the colors for each season are poetic, and therefore somewhat subjective, but he provides the names of famous painters whose color sensibilities match what he envisions, and he also names several celebrities who he has determined fit into that category.

Like many stylists of that era and now, Zyla recognizes the need to break down those four seasons even further. He chooses to break each season into six "archetypes." Much like his seasons, these "archetypes" lean heavily on personality. He doesn't go into specifics about the colors for each archetype (which would be difficult in a black & white printed book anyway), but he does recommend levels of color contrast, fabric types, patterns, and textures, as well as suggesting additional painters who use applicable colors and celebrities who fit into the "archetype."

In the shorter second section of the book, Zyla makes gratifyingly down-to-earth recommendations about how to shift your wardrobe toward your "true colors" and how to make the most of the items you already have. He suggests when it is (or isn't) appropriate to wear certain colors, what kinds of garments you can get in certain colors so that they become easy-to-wear wardrobe workhorses, and more.

I have largely mixed feelings on Zyla's book and theories. I think the correlation of physical coloration and personality is a bit woo-woo for me. I cannot in good conscience believe that our personality is tied to our physical appearance because that idea has been the root behind the rationale of so many theories that have been used to discriminate against people in the past.

Now, obviously Zyla isn't trying to discriminate here or say that any appearance or coloration is bad. In fact, his description of each season and each archetype is overwhelmingly positive! It just rubs me the wrong way.

I think his ideas about picking colors from your appearance is an interesting one, and I enjoyed going through the process (more on that in another assignment), but I have more bones to pick.

Let's start with the first color you find through the exercises - your "essence" color. The "essence" color is supposed to be a smoothing and mixing of all the colors in your skin, something that harmonizes with your skin. He says that it is your version of white.

Sit with that for a minute.

Why is your skintone your version of white?

I think it would be more inclusive - and, frankly, more accurate to the way he suggests wearing it and incorporating it into your life - to say that your "essence" color is your version of "nude." And also I would group it as a neutral or a "base."

I take no issue with the romantic color or the dramatic color, but then we start pulling colors from the eyes.

I have green-hazel eyes. When I pick colors from my eyes, should I pick from the main, seafoam green part of my iris or the bright golden brown ring around the middle? Alternately, do I pick colors based on the mossy green shade my eyes appear from a distance, which is how most people see them?

I take no issue with the other colors specifically except to say that I worry that someone with brown/dark skin might end up with a pretty monotonous color pallet. The Zyla subreddit often claims that you're not color-picking from your appearance, it's more of a vibes-based thing, but it doesn't say that anywhere in the book. I'd be curious to speak to a black peron or other dark-skinned person who has actually had a consultation with him and see what colors they got.

As for the seasons and archetypes, I'll be curious to see, as my exploration of personal color analysis continues, how Zyla's seasons compare to the other color season theories.

He certainly seems to break each season down into more subgroups ("archetypes") than most theories do (six versus three). And with his recommendations for pattern, texture, and even garment styles, it feels like it starts to bleed into the Kitchener essences a bit.

Topic: Color Analysis

Some progress has been made this week with regards to colors. I've determined all my Zyla "true colors" except my second and third basics. And I want to re-do the eye color ones.

The hazel eye thing is still throwing me off. People in the (largely inactive) Zyla subreddit often say that you aren't "color picking," it's more of a vibes thing. So I think I should use the colors my eyes look from a distance, not up close. Up close my eyes are mostly cool tones, teals and aquas and seafoam greens. But, presumably because of the yellow-brown ring right around my pupil, my eyes look like a warmer green from a distance - more mossy and grassy and olive.

Also, I finally decided to check out the seasonal archetypes of Zyla's book, and honestly? I'm just going to skip it. The seasonal archetypes talk personality, silhouette, patterns, and textures. Not colors, which is the point of this exercise.

I did decide to start on the non-Zyla color seasons though! I found a website that lets you do a guided bubble-head style color quiz, which was basically one of my assignments.

I did it three different times with three different selfies taken in indirect natural light and got three different results. More on that in the assignment write-up. I'm also worried that my personal color preferences are affecting my results, so I'm sending the link and the selfies to my sibling to see what they get.

Topic: James Baldwin Deep Dive

Yesterday I watched a conversation between James Baldwin and Kenneth B Clark from June 1963. Baldwin starts by talking about his own past, growing up and going to school in Harlem, New York. He and Clark point out how, in a way, things in NY's school system had regressed. Because when Baldwin was in high school, the public school system had at least one black principal. In 1963, when the conversation was filmed, there were none.

They move on to talk about the Student Nonviolent Movement, and then about Malcom X and other black Muslim leaders who preached the idea of black superiority. Baldwin finds fault with the idea of black superiority, because the superiority of one group of people always means superiority over some other group of people, which is how slavery and segregation got started in the first place.

From there, they take a moment to discuss Martin Luther King Jr and his message of nonviolence and loving your oppressor. Baldwin speaks well of MLK, but says that his idea is one arrived at after a lifetime of religion, serious belief, and strict morals. Baldwin says that it is simply not a relatable ideal for most black Americans, even if it is admirable.

When asked if he is optimistic or pessimistic about the future of racial equality in America, Baldwin states that the future of black people in America is inextricably linked to the future of the country as a whole. Much like in the video I watched last week, he says that white Americans need to examine their own thinking and their own history and question why there was a group of subjugated people at all and how that was made possible. The implication, I believe, is that white people need to find the faults in the racial beliefs they were raised on before America could truly become desegregated and achieve racial equality.

Topic: Color Analysis

I have to admit to making no progress this week. It's been harder than I thought it would be to pin down my energy and tranquil colors (from my eyes). They're saturated, but not bright. I intend to make another trip to the paint chip section of the hardware store this weekend to work on those and my second and third basics (from my hair).

Topic: James Baldwin Deep Dive

I'm a little over halfway through If Beale Street Could Talk, which I was hoping to be nearly done with by now. I'm enjoying its conversational and occasionally train of thought-style prose, though there are moments I wish it wasn't so slow-paced.

This afternoon I watched this video, a conversation between James Baldwin and Nathan Cohen that was televised by the CBC in December 1960. Baldwin's conversation point about how racial integration would be achieved in America boiled down to one main point - that Americans think of life in binaries - "black or white, good or bad, straight or crooked" - but, as he points out, "life is not like that." He says that racial integration cannot be fully reached in America until each American, on an individual level, takes the time to examine their tendency toward this binary way of looking at the world.

Earlier in the video, he talks about the flaw in how white liberal Americans are approaching desegregation. He says that white liberals want to help black Americans, but, in an example about a black student and a white teacher, "he doesn't want to be helped, he wants to be accepted." The white liberals are still placing the black people they want to help into the category of the other, as someone not like them, and until white liberals can examine this need to group people and things, these systems of binary thinking, desegregation will not truly work.

Guess who forgot to journal on Friday!

Topic: Color Analysis

I read all of David Zyla's book (well, I've skipped the archetype part for now) in a day and have started collecting paint swatches. It is... much harder to find a good match than I expected it to be.

I've had a lot of thought on Zyla's methods and how it might result in a very limited pallet for people of color (but more on that in a later assignment). My current, personal issue with his methods is the colors I'm picking for my eyes.

I have hazel eyes, and from a distance they look a very warm green. Up close, however, the majority of my iris is a very cool green - almost a seafoam green color - but there's a golden brown ring right around the pupil. Do I pick based on the distance color or the close-up color? And if I pick the close-up colors, do I pick extra colors because there are two distinct colors in my iris?

Topic: James Baldwin Deep Dive

Learning Goal: Get acquainted with acclaimed writer James Baldwin's work.

Curriculum Resources

https://guides.library.cornell.edu/Baldwin/plays

https://guides.library.cornell.edu/Baldwin/videos

https://baldwincircles.humanities.princeton.edu/james-baldwin-resources/baldwin-book-list

Required Reading - Novels (Pick 2)

Go Tell It On the Mountain, pub 1953

Giovanni's Room, pub 1956 (very sad)

Another Country, pub 1962

Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, pub 1968

If Beale Street Could Talk, pub 1974

Required Reading - Essays (Pick 1)

The Price of the Ticket: Collected Non-Fiction, pub 1985 (Contains Notes of a Native Son (1955), Nobody Knows My Name (1961), The Fire Next Time (1963), No Name in the Street (1972), The Devil Finds Work (1976), and others)

James Baldwin: Collected Essays (edited by Toni Morrison), pub 1998 (Contains same big name as above; unsure of differences)

Optional Resources

Blues for Mister Charlie, play pub 1964

The Amen Corner, play pub 1968

Jimmy's Blues and Other Poems, poetry collection pub 1983

Going to Meet the Man, short story collection pub 1965

Assignments

Weekly journals (Due Fridays by 5pm)

Learning Goal 1: Understand what color seasons are and how they relate to personal style and fashion.

Learning Goal 2: Identify my personal color season and how to relates to my current wardrobe.

Resources

Books (only 1 required)

Color Your Style: How to Wear Your True Colors by David Zyla (purchased)

Personal Color: The Definitive Guide to Finding and Wearing Your Best Colors by Anuschka Rees (Available via H Library)

Other Resources

David Zyla's YouTube Channel

David Zyla's Pinterest Boards

Anuschka Rees "Colour Analysis" blog posts 1, 2, 3

Ellie-Jean Royden | Body and Style's YouTube Channel (videos on color analysis, some with a focus on color seasons and David Zyla's theories)

Assignments

Review David Zyla's book with an explanation of his methods and key color theories (Due May 29)

Field Trip(s) and Exercise: Collect paint swatches to compare to my colorations. Narrow them down to my pallet, according to Zyla's methods (Due May 29)

Reflect on my personal colors, season, and archetype according to Zyla's book. Include how I feel about the pallet, and how my current wardrobe compares (Due May 29)

Write an article introducing and explaining the concept of color seasons (warmth/coolness, contrast, bright/muted) (Due June 26)

Field Trip and Exercise: Get paint swatches to do an at-home color analysis.

Take a few selfies in natural light and take color samples from my hair, skin, eyes, and lips

Do a "bubble head" exercise (digitally cut out a selfie to remove the background and see how it looks on pallets/swatches for various seasons)

Create a graphic/pallet of my recommended colors based on my color season (Due June 26)

Reflect on what the books and other resources suggest my color season is, how I feel about those colors, and how my current wardrobe compares to those colors (Due June 26)

Weekly journals, to be posted by 5pm Friday

End-of-Topic Reward

It's been a minute, hasn't it?

I completed all the lessons for the GA4 certification. I've taken the exam twice and haven't quite passed yet. You need an 80% to pass, and I got a 74 and then a 72. I will continue to take it.

I got behind on the "listening to Music" lecture series, too. I've watched 20 of the 23 lectures. I technically have time to watch the last three next week, so I'm not giving up hope yet.

I forgot my weekly journal last week. If I'm being honest, I've been phoning it in a lot this month, in many areas of my life.

In Week 3, I watched three of the four "Listening to Music" lectures I wanted to watch, but I listened to five lectures this week, which catches me up for my goal of four lectures per week! I'll start with lecture 13 next week, which means that I'm about halfway through the class/series.

I sort of burned out toward the end of my last 2-month curriculum due to general life stuff, so I'm taking this learning period easy and only doing two topics. (I'm also keeping it light due to having several events and three overnight trips planned for this period.)

And for the sake of burnout recovery, I took Week 1 of this learning period off. I'm not concerned about losing time, thankfully.

Topic: Listening to Music

This is a 23-video lecture series from Yale which they uploaded for free to YouTube! I've long wanted to take a class entitled "Talking About Music for Dummies" to help me put into words why I do/n't like a piece of music, and this is the closest I've gotten so far.

I just finished the fourth video/lecture in the course. If I listen to three or four of the lectures every week, I'll be on track to finish in Week 7 or 8 of my learning period!

So far I've learned several interesting facts and some vocabulary. For example, a piece of music is only considered a sing if it has lyrics! (Though maybe not every musical work with lyrics is a song?) And while many people consider "classical music" to be a genre, it is actually an umbrella term for genres like sonatas, concertos, and symphonies.

Topic: Google Analytics Certificate

This one should be easy to finish early. I finished the 101 section, which was mostly the basics of how to set up a GA account and a broad overview of what kind of data they collect.

I've technically done this certification before, but that was a few years ago, and my certificate has expired. I'm glad I'm redoing it, because while most of it has been boring, I did learn that there's a way to track GA data for apps, not just websites.