Expressing Your True Colors – Arden Reece

In this exploration of color, we start with the simple question: “What is color?” We’ll look at the scientific meanings — from how we “see” and experience color from the perspective of our most basic biological needs, to conscious color symbolism and associations, to our personal relationships with color.

In this module, you will:

• Understand how color plays a big role in your mind, body and soul.
• Learn how color can trick your perceptions and senses and the secrets for seeing and using color.
• Explore your own personal relationship and collective history with color.
• Identify the hue, value and chroma of a color and understand how it is created.
• Learn how to create harmony and balance with color utilizing the color wheel.

In this module, we’ll delve into color psychology and a discussion about our personal relationships and subjective histories with color. We’ll explore how chroma and personality collide, and we’ll take an extrovert/ambivert/introvert quiz and learn about the five color personality types.

In addition, we’ll study images individuals and their artwork to illustrate each color personality and their combinations. And, you’ll learn how your coloring affects your personality, career choices and how others see you, using Kandinsky, Marcel Breuer, Chagall, Itten and other artists as examples.

In this module, you will:

• Identify the positive and negative meanings of your most favorite colors and learn what they say about you.
• Learn the history of personal color pioneer Johannes Itten of the Bauhaus and his unique contribution to the world of color.
• Understand how extroversion and introversion play a large role in your color personality.
• Discover your color personality (sharp, deep, subdued, dynamic, animated) and how to integrate your core and sub personalities.

Our hair, skin and eyes contain pigments that produce uniquely coded colors. We’ll take a look at human coloring and discover some of the latest research on human skin tones by the Pantone Color Institute. You’ll identify all the colors seen in your hair, skin and eyes and notate them on your Color Blueprint. Your Blueprint is unique to you and will guide you in mapping out your Essence and Magnetic Colors and your personal color harmonies. We’ll discuss visual perception, successive contrast and Itten’s seven color contrasts and how they relate to your personal colors, especially the concept of warm and cool. You’ll also see how human coloring fits on the color wheel and learn why the Munsell color system is the preferred method in color notation.

In this module, you will:

• Learn how your subjective color preferences and personal colors align.
• Identify all the colors that create your unique coloring.
• Utilize the Munsell and Human Color Wheel.
• Begin developing your Color Blueprint by adding colors that match your hair, skin and eyes.
• See how value (light to dark) plays a role in your coloring.
• Determine your dominant color temperature.
• Learn how to “see” others and how to effectively collaborate with them creatively (in both relationship and home design).

There are 12 core colors that enhance and complement your own coloring known as your Essence and Magnetic Colors. Itten wrote that “women/men look best when they wear their subjective and complementary colors.”

Your Essence Colors are your subjective colors and your Magnetic Colors are your complementary colors. Essence Colors match and enhance your coloring; they open the door for conversation, evoke trust, form bonds and show the “real” you. This module will give an overview of the 12 core colors and then delve into further study of the six Essence Colors with various images and examples for each.

In this module, you will:

• Use your Color Blueprint to identify your Essence Colors.
• Discover your lightest and darkest color and why black might not be part of the equation.
• Discover your Soul and Spirit Colors and when you should surround yourself with them.
• Identify your Approachable and Trusting Colors and learn how they influence others.
• Learn what your Vulnerable Color is and why you should wear it.
• Explore the various personal color harmonies and what they mean.
• Create your Restful Color through harmony exploration.
• Experience wearing one of your Essence Colors.

Your Magnetic Colors are complements to your personal colors in your Color Blueprint and elevate your presence in the world. As the yang to our Essence Colors, your Magnetic Colors are powerful and create strong, positive impressions and associations. They can be balanced — either through harmonizing with your Essence Colors or softening with your neutrals.

In this module, you will:

• Align your color personality with your Magnetic Colors by utilizing the Human Color Wheel.
• Discover your Heart and Intellect Colors and how to best use them.
• Uncover your Inspiring and Vibrant Colors.
• Explore your Fearless and Vitality Colors.
• Determine your best neutrals: warm-cool, warm, cool, silver-warm, silver-cool.
• Create space for expressing your authentic self with neutrals.
• Experience wearing one of your Magnetic Colors.

We’ll delve deeper into the characteristics of our coloring: texture, pattern, sheen and luminescence. We’ll review pattern/ground, textures and shapes seen in our face (eyes, nose, skin and hair) and how we can utilize their secret messages for selecting the right elements and metals that support us in our life and work. By the end of this week, you’ll have a full color blueprint unique to you, which identifies your personal coloring, your Essence and Magnetic Colors, neutrals, harmonies and the right patterns/textures and elements/metals for you.

You will learn to:

• Map the characteristics of your facial features and uncover their hidden meanings.
• Identify your supporting metal (silver, gold, bronze, copper, brass) and where to incorporate it in your life.
• Integrate your learning of texture and pattern and how to use it to feel supported.
• Discover the right elements (earth, water, fire, air, ether) that align with your color blueprint and personality.

Color is incredibly powerful. Our Magnetic Colors elevate our personality and our Essence Colors support our authenticity. Surrounding ourselves with our unique colors can heal our environments and create harmony. We can wear our colors, we can decorate with them and we can meditate with them.

In this last course session, we’ll discover color healing through visualization and breathing. We’ll learn that the colors in our Color Blueprints are as important as the colors in our auras, and we’ll delve into why some of our Essence Colors are part of our aura and how we can integrate all our colors for living a full and joyous life.

In this module you will:

• Discover how proper use of your colors can help elevate your self-esteem and confidence in how you show up in the world.
• Learn to love and appreciate your body and the work of art that you truly are.