Tags
black, brown, color, color blind, cream, eyes, fabric, father in law, gray, green, grey, mother in law, neutral, pigment, red, white
Gray or Brown?
Take a good, hard look at the subject of this photo. What color would you say it is?
This is a closeup of the fabric I used in making a book bag years ago. I carry this bag with me to work and when I’m traveling in the car. I say the bag is brown. When I ask one of the children to fetch my brown bag, they say, “Oh, you mean the gray one.” No, I mean the brown one. They say gray. (Hubby just said, “It’s gray,” right over my shoulder as I’m writing this.) Brown, gray, brown, gray. They tease me unmercifully about this.
I call it brown because the predominant color my eyes see is brown. When I look at the fibers closely, I see that there are black threads, brown threads, and cream threads. My eyes must be picking up the brown and cream, whereas the eyes of my family members are mixing the black and cream.
This sense of difference in eyesight between one person and another is not unusual, except that we don’t think about these differences until we talk about color. Hubby’s father is red/green color blind. He sees reds and greens as blacks and browns. I forget this when I give him instructions like, “Click on the red button.” He didn’t realize he was color blind until he was in high school and his girlfriend (eventually wife) sat him down with a pile of bath towels and asked him, “What color is this one? What color is this one?”
A week ago, Young Son and I were discussing the color of his jacket. I called it sage-y green, but he thinks it’s gray, and then teased me unmercifully once again about my color perception. I told him that I had done very well in my college color theory class, thank you very much, and said that I could mix up a color to match his jacket. He shot back with, “You don’t have to know what a color is in order to match it.” He had a point. Although I maintained that I would start with a dab of green, mix in a whole bunch of white, and then add a tish of black to achieve his jacket color. For me, green was the deciding factor in identifying the color. Eldest Son said that if we were going by amounts of pigment, why wouldn’t we call the color white, because that would be the most abundant color. True, but for me, color boils down to the primary and secondary colors first and neutrals second. A true neutral is such an even mix of pigments that one can’t tell what the base colors are.
So then, what’s your assessment? Is the bag brown or gray? And if you think it’s gray, is it gray or grey?
The Woo Woo Teacup Journal 
Brown…
It is possible that from a distance the brown herringbone “reads” gray… but I’m with you and I’ve seen this bag it’s brown. Maybe all their color perceptions came from your Hubby’s gene pool…a pool that is aqua to them but seafoam to you and I…
Very interesting. Sounds like you are sensitive to tone and hue, while your husband and kids are sensitive to shade.
I mentally note it whenever someone challenges my color sense. It drives home that color, like touch, smell, hearing and taste, really are subjective and are not the objective norms that we are taught.
Cheers!
I’m going to go with brown, but it’s probably a light brown due to the presence of the cream color. It’s hard to tell though, because what you really have is a heather made up of two dark colors and one light color. So, really, it’s neither brown nor gray. From far away, though, I would probably say brown, because nothing in that photo suggests gray to me (sorry, hubby of woo-woo).
I’m pretty sure gray and grey are interchangeable, so we can call the whole thing off on that point. 😉
I said brown. I asked the hubby and he said brown too.
Odd that we agree since we usually don’t when it comes to color. He always says my eyes are blue and they are green (a fact we needed to get straight for our INS interview :-). When we were dating he said the walls in his bedroom were green, I said they were blue.
Oh and I say gray and hubby says grey, but he’s Canadian and that’s how they spell it there :-).
Yer all crazy…..it’s gray!
pssssst……..I’d appreciate it if all you posters wouldn’t tell the better half that I really think it’s brown and only say gray to tease her. Thanks. 😉
Aha! The secret is now out! 🙂
Wonder what my kids really think. Are they just teasing me?
BROWN. No doubt about it “in my eyes.” Maybe they all are just yanking your chain!!
I’d call it a brown herringbone tweed, but that’s because of my degenerate home economist upbringing.
I was also taught that hue trumps tint or shade for defining a color, except in the case of some of those bizarre grey-not-greys like ashes of roses or gunmetal grey.
And I say grey, not gray, (unless I’m speaking of Dr. Henry G.’s classic anatomy book) because I think it’s prettier. ^_^ According to the dictionary, the first is the preferred British spelling and the second is the preferred American spelling.
Oh, Gris, Ashes of Roses is such a lovely color name. You’ve stated it so well – hue trumps tint or shade in color definitions. That’s it exactly.
I, too, prefer grey over gray for spelling because it IS prettier. Must make me a tad British.
Don’t knock your home economist upbringing. It has allowed you to describe the fabric perfectly. Nice job.
And thanks, everyone, for agreeing with my color assessment. Now, if only I could convince the children . . . .