Color It Black

Of all the good things that I can attribute to darkness I guess, it is the silence.

It is only with silence that you can communicate with yourself thus having a dark hard times can lead you to finding yourself.

A person could be literally black in color but we never have to judge his personality as he appears to be. It doesn’t mean that a jolly person could look good but we never know what dark past he has been through.

Darkness is the absence of light but it doesn’t mean that a place where the rays of the sun won’t be able to reach is far-off. 

The word itself dark has some kind of negative connotations. Just as the black or white and negative or positive and or happy or sad.

When you see a word dark, what comes into your mind? 

Darkness for me is associated with black, negative, wrong, failure, bad and all words denoting the word dark.

In colors we use dark or black to add some intense or extreme feeling to an artwork or project using color. 

My previous job before I was engaged with the BPO industry was hard labor and it was about colors. I was an offset printing operator, more like an artist because I kind of mixed colors if the client wanted a specific color that the machine won’t be able to come up with.

Those are the times that I learned how to mix color using Process and Pantone inks. I learned that red is a combination of magenta and yellow. Pink is magenta mixed with a small amount of opaque white.

I did not study fine arts but I have several units in drafting back in college. I was kind of dull about colors but when I was connected in the printing industry, I never thought I’d be good at looking at how a print out would be so dark or light. I was in that kind of job for 13 years including two years working overseas with the same industry.

One day my old boss gave me a job to print, she gave me a sample print out as my guide to produce the same as the sample color. The sample color was a solid brown. I was just starting in printing back then when the job was given to me. Would you believe me that I have consumed and wasted two kilos of mixed cyan, magenta, yellow and black but I couldn't copy the color sample out of my own mixture.

I wasn’t aware of how things were done back then as I was just a noob. No one also taught me what to do so it was kind of a challenge of how to come up with the same color as the sample. 

It was indeed a not so dark experience about a dark past with colors. 

However I did not give up until I perfectly got the correct mixtures of colors to come up with brown. When I say brown, you don’t think of a single solid color because there are a lot of mixtures to get different types of brown. For example the color brown that the client wanted was a mixture of 30% cyan, 100% Magenta, 100% Yellow and 40% Black.

The reason why I couldn't come up with the desired color was that I put too much percentage of black when it should only need 40% of it.

In life we can use colors to represent emotions and experiences. Red can be attributed to vigor and strength. It could also mean anger or excitement. Whereas blue could represent sadness while black of course means gloomy or hard times.

These are only my personal interpretation of color with regards to human feelings and experiences. 

We do have our own dark past or dark side. Some people have already overcome it while others are yet to come. There are people who wouldn't like talking about it and wished to erase it on their memory.

I always mention in several of my posts about the hardships my family have been through and I consider them dark and gloomy.

There was once a story about a man whose family members died in an accident. He was the only survivor. During the funeral he seemed to be happy and some people and relatives noticed him. A friend asked the man who was quite curious about him as if he was happy on the day of the funeral. He asked the man why he looks happy instead of crying or becoming sad knowing that all of his family members are dead. 

The man replied, “My friend, you see that my life is gloomy now, why would I make it more gloomier?”.

Thanks for reading. Ciao!

This is my participation in Writing Prompt #4 by @JonicaBradley which is about Darkness. If you seem to have hard time in thinking of topics to write, try participating in Ms. Jonica’s weekly writing prompt challenge. It is a good practice to write.

Here are the rules:

1. Write about Darkness

2. Write 100% original content

3. Write at least 600 words

4. Tag  @JonicaBradley

5. Have fun

This is now the fourth week of writing prompt challenges. Below are the previous writing prompt challenges by Ms. Jonica for you to choose.

Writing Prompt #1: Freedom

Writing Prompt #2: Motivation

Writing Prompt #3: Similarities

Feel free to check my previous posts:

Smile Was Enough As Gift

Forget About Your Girlfriend But Not Your Wallet Password

Pretend: Good Or Bad

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Lead image source

Photo Credits:

Matthew Henry

Denise Chan

engin akyurt