Color me happy

…I have more tubes!* And not just any tubes…the happiest, most colorful, smile-inducing tubes I’ve yet to find anywhere. They are made by the wonderful Rutan of Rutan’s Delight, and I can’t wait to collect more of her work.

To say I needed this is an understatement. :-)

I’ve got a thing with color. A few years ago, when I was almost done with grad school and miserable as all get-out, my dad took me skiing in Breckenridge. I love Colorado, and I loved Breckenridge and the snow and the town and the scenery…just gorgeous. But what I remember the most about that trip is my discovery of Laurel Burch**. I came across a set of her cat salt and pepper shakers in a store, and the colors and the design immediately caught my eye and made me smile, something I’d not been doing much of then. I went back to the room and looked up “Laurel Burch” on eBay, hoping to find the shakers (no idea why I didn’t buy them then, except for most likely thinking they were too overpriced, lol). Not only did I find—and eventually buy—the shakers, but I found an entire line of stuff by her. It wasn’t so much the artwork itself, although it’s very whimsical and fun and I do love it, but it was the color palette that she used that got my attention.

The fact that color could work so strongly on me made me curious, and I went looking up “color therapy” and things like that. I learned a lot, and color does indeed affect us more than we realize. Ever since that trip, I’ve paid attention to which colors speak to me, and I try to surround myself with them.

What drew me to pixel art the first time I saw it (a couple of years ago, I think it was) were the colors first, then the cute graphics. Even today, I can spend hours surfing pixel artist sites, looking for images that inspire me. One of the artists I found was Rutan, because her color palette most closely reminds me of Laurel Burch; not that they are the same, but they both use the bright vibrant colors I love. It has taken me until a couple of months ago to start delving into making pixel art myself (I’ve staunchly maintained for so long now that I am NOT an artist/CAN’T make art, although I’ve always wanted to do it, that it has taken me awhile to get up the nerve to “just do it”), and I am slowly collecting tubes and making sigs as I am able.

Today’s acquisition of a set of Rutan tubes is just as exciting for me as when I got my first piece of Laurel Burch stuff. Lots and lots of Rutan-based goodies to come (and will soon start appearing in various left-side widgets—two are up as of tonight, heh—and on my Pixels page). :-)

*”Tubes” are graphics files containing many pieces of pixel art, each piece used to combine in various ways with other pieces of pixel art to create sigtags, websets, etc. The term “tube” comes from the files’ original use in Paint Shop Pro, where you can use “picture tubes” (a tool in the program) to help create images.

**As I was trying to find a link to a picture of the salt & pepper shakers, I found out that Laurel passed away in 2007!! I didn’t know! Wow, now I’m a bit sad again…