What Makes a Color Feel Full Spectrum, and Why It’s True of You Too

Color becomes beautiful when every hue shares a little of itself with every other hue on the palette. That same principle applies to a creative life. Becoming full spectrum, by adding in everything you love, is what makes both your art and your life feel truly alive.

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What Makes a Color Feel Full Spectrum, and Why It’s True of You Too

The cornerstone of color is making colors work together, and it comes down to one simple move. Take a small amount of each color and put it into all the other colors. Blue into red, yellow into green, everything into everything. That sharing is what creates harmony.
 

The Perfect Yellow Isn’t Really About Yellow

Look at a single color in a painting, say a yellow. When it’s done right, it can feel like the perfect yellow. But it’s perfect not just because of the yellow itself. It’s perfect because that color references every other color in the painting. It belongs. It’s in harmony, and everything around it works.

When a color feels full spectrum, it means it holds many other colors inside it, the full spectrum of light, of color. Take a blue. If it’s just cerulean blue with a little black and white, it’s dull, it’s flat. If that same blue hosts all the colors inside of it, even just a tiny amount, it becomes full spectrum, and suddenly it feels alive. That’s why color in nature moves people the way it does. It’s never one note. It lifts you up.
 

The Same Thing Turns Out to Be True of Us

We become full spectrum in the exact same way color does, by adding in everything we love. Books we disappear into. Museums that change how we see things. New experiences, the colors we’ve never mixed before, going out and searching for more. And when we do, something happens. We change. We become richer, more full spectrum, and people can feel it.

When someone is full spectrum, there’s more energy, more enthusiasm, a sparkle that comes through. Even a small shift toward feeling more alive changes the kind of art that gets made. It can be felt, and so can everyone else who encounters it.

Confidence follows too. It shows up in the way work gets posted, in the willingness to share it publicly. It shows up in the brushstrokes themselves, in the resilience and sustainability of an entire creative practice.

Becoming full spectrum in yourself is the key to art becoming full spectrum. Just like that yellow, no one was ever meant to be one note either.
 

Going Deeper This October

That’s exactly the process being taught at The Art of Business Immersion, October 13-15.(opens in new tab) When art, life, and business are brought into full spectrum together, everything changes, not just what gets made, but how it gets shared and sustained.
 

Where to Start Today

You don’t have to wait until October to begin. You can start today. Just decide what you want to include in your life, and what you want to exclude. Start there, in your art and in your life. Get that even a little bit closer to what’s truly right for you, and everything gets easier.

What’s one thing you want to add to your palette this month? Leave a comment below and let me know.