Color Guide

This is my symbolism for various colors. The majority of it is based on other guides I researched - but guides I resonated well with and that matched my own understanding. So a lot of this will probably sound like other sources. Although this is in the style of aura colors, I also use this symbolism for my other readings, including guide portraits and intuitive art.

RED
Represents blood. A vibration of action with the ability to either attract or repel. Nature's warning color. Can indicate high levels of emotion or even "heat."

•  Pure, clear, brilliant red represents a passionate, sexual, competitive individual who is full of energy. Leadership, new energy, vitality, bravery.
• Crimson - optimistic, challenging, eager for success, recklessness.
• Bright candy red indicates courage, or an achiever... entrepreneur type.
• Deep, clear dark red is associated with root chakra. Grounded energy, adventurer, physical orientation.
• Clouded red or deep red flashes against a dark background represents negative energy and symbolizes deep-seated anger.
• Cloud of scarlet shows irritability
• Dull & heavy crimson represents selfish love
• Brilliant scarlet against a light background denotes noble indignation 
• Maroon... stamina, fighting spirit, strength

ORANGE
Outgoing, warm, spontaneous color. Sociable personality. Based on reproduction.

• Orange indicates passionate, creative, and adventurous personality. Sexual passion, ambition.
• Bright orange indicates good health, vibrancy, living life to the fullest. An overabundance could indicate overcoming addiction or desire.
• Orange-red means confidence, great personal and creative power. Healthy ego.
• Orange-yellow indicates creativity, intelligence, perfectionism. A love for science and mentally challenging projects.
• Dull, muddy orange shows pride and ambition.
• Muddy shades elsewhere in aura can indicate emotional imbalances such as excessive pride, vanity, or worry.
• Orange around the head can represent laziness.
• Pastel shades can indicate the person has aspirations or is searching for new spiritual paths.

YELLOW 
A mental color, also relating to the spleen, the chi energy source. Most often seen around the head.

• Yellow often indicates person with intelligence who has warm and playful, generally cheerful personality. Intellectual energy.
• Brilliant yellow represents spiritually inspired person or spiritual awakening. Playful spirit.
• Mid yellow - new information and knowledge. High awareness, the ability to manage, scientific mind. Approaches life mentally.
• Light/pale yellow shows emerging psychic and spiritual awareness, optimism, positive excitement about new ideas. Clairsentience manifests as a clear yellow - almost white - glow.
• Bright lemon-yellow relates to struggling to maintain power in personal or business relationships. Fear of losing control or respect.
• Dark yellow with tinges of brown indicates a student who is feeling pressured. Studying has become a chore.
• Dull yellow... selfishness. Mustard or sickly shades are associated with cowardice, deceit, or immaturity. Muddy tones indicate problems with addiction.

GREEN
Comfortable, healthy color of nature. Color of growth and renewal, and healing. Doctors and psychologists have lots of green in auras. Bright shades indicate lots of healing abilities.

• Bright emerald indicates healing or new growth.
• Forest green indicates natural healer or healing. Lots of this green is more "healer."
• Dark clear green shows responsibility, ambition - one who is likely to work for material wealth and luxury. 
• Yellow-green shows creativity of heart. Communicative. Spontaneous and direct manner or even a balance between heart and head.
• Jade... forgiveness and self-acceptance.
• Lime green = inflated ego.
• Dull, muddy green points out envy and jealousy, resentment, feeling like a victim, insecurity, sensitivity to criticism.
• Turquoise... ultra healer indicator, or someone who helps others find inner truths. "Truth of the heart."

BLUE
Calming and peaceful color. Intuitive. Expressive, loves to help others.

• Lighter shades generally reflect good imagination, creativity, good intuition, psychic ability
• Soft blue indicates peacefulness, communication and clarity
• Royal blue indicates highly-developed spiritual, intuitive, or clairvoyant abilities with a very generous giving spirit. Open to new possibilities.
• Sky blue... teacher or someone who is learning something.
• Teal-turquoise indicates self-realization, compassion, or ultra-healer (if large amounts)
• Clear, rich shades indicate high intuition or psychic awareness
• Shafts of blue rising from head indicate someone in the act of creating/inventing
• Indigo... visionary. Interest in ESP. "Old soul" type.
• Deeper shades indicate loneliness.
• Dark blue - even cloudy - indicates person who doesn't trust future and can't face truth, often because of a desire to take control.
• Muddier shades can indicate blocked perceptions, worrying, oversensitivity, and fear... usually of self-expression or facing/speaking truth.

VIOLET
Spiritual color, indicating someone with deep connection to spirit or pursuing path of active spiritual growth. Reveals psychic power and attunement with self.

• Light mauve... soul-searching nature
• Mauve/lavender... more gentle soul. Sensitive. 
• Purple/violet - what's stated above plus humility, service to humanity.
• Red-violet suggests a driven nature toward goals that may conflict with ethics. 
• Muddier shades can reflect erotic imagination, or an overbearing person with a need for sympathy. 

PINK
Represents a loving person or a sensual person who appreciates the finer things in life. May also indicate artist.

• Psychically gifted people have pink auras.
• Light, bright rose shows unselfish love; linked with violet: love for humanity
• Clear, light pink may indicate clairaudience.
• Pale shades... new love, softness, feminine energy
• Mid pink.. deeper love, joy, passion
• Fuchsia - "soul mate" love
• Magenta - "twin" love, mastery, loving nature
• Dark, murky shades reflect immature, dishonest nature

GOLD
Philosophical nature, wisdom of sacred geometry. Activated spiritual energy. An inspired person. Enlightenment, divine protection and guidance. Strong connection to the "I AM" presence. Dark brownish yellow plays on straining while studying, or learning everything at once.

GREY
Bright, livid grey linked with fear. Heavy dull shades show depression (in head space). In physical, may represent stress or malfunction.

• Dirty grey overlay indicates blocked energies or guardedness.
• Silver indicates abundance or awakening of cosmic mind.
• Sparkles of silver may indicate pregnancy.

BLACK
Usually a warning sign, but can indicate an area of illness or mystery. 

• If muddied/cloudy, indicates weakness or possibly depression.
• In thick clouds, hatred and malice.
• Also blockages, deep and lasting depression.
• Spots are pending/active illness.

WHITE
Signifies pure pranic energy, truth and purity of spirit. Purification, cleansing in smaller amounts; great spiritual awakening in larger amounts. Also indicates presence of guides, usually in flashes or sparkles. 

BROWN
In lighter shades, represents connection to nature/the land.

• Mid brown may indicate self-sacrifice or determination.
• Deep brown... down-to-earth, practical nature.
• Dirty overlay indicates holding on to energies, insecurity.

RAINBOW COLORS
Stripes, like sunbeams, from head, hands, and body indicates reiki healer or someone with other-worldly nature. Star connections.

Inspiration

By Christiane Vleugels, pixiecold @ dA, and jialu @ dA

Fresh Ideas

So after having a few revelations about who I am and what I may be doing "wrong" (so to speak), I came up with a couple of fresh ideas for my next batch of art readings.

For one, I want to change the style of my aura portraits. I'm not satisfied with how "simple" they are, and I want to add a bit of a creative flare to them. I'm wanting to work on two different types of aura readings: a lower-layer one and a higher-layer one... meaning one that  focuses on the more physical stuff, like emotions, thoughts, blocked areas, etc., and one that focuses on the higher information, such as life plan, etc. I was very inspired by the illustration from my previous aura post - I'd like to do something similar for the higher-layer portraits, and then something more raw and textured for the lower-layer ones. So I guess I'll experiment with that when the time comes. I think a more textured look - like with brush strokes - would be more visually appealing than the glowy effect, even if it does make it seem more... realistic. 

Now, my main idea was for spirit portraits. Before, I would just sit down and begin drawing whatever was coming through. But the thing is, I hate my style, and I need a lot of figure/portrait practice. I was supposed to do that over the summer. Guess what happened, though? I ended up focusing almost entirely on spirit/psychic art, which meant I wasn't observing from life. 

So this is what I'm going to start doing. I'm going to tune in, get a general idea of the entity or energy coming through, make a list of the various symbols and whatnot, and then use references to create an actual work of art that is much higher in quality than all my previous portraits. 

It's going to take a lot more time, yeah. But I'm going to be a lot more satisfied with these readings if I do them this way. I don't want to rush them, or have them be "work." I want them to be meaningful - to have a significant impact on a person and his/her path. At the same time, though, I need to be careful not to take on too many requests. This always happens when it comes to art... I can work relatively fast, but every time I open  up slots, I get like 20-30 requests on SF alone, and then I start feeling bad because I know people are excited and it's taking me forever to get to them. It all just ends up making me feel guilty and loony.

At first, I was hesitant about the whole "using references" thing for spirit art, but you know what? Screw it. I'm an art student, and using references is how you bloody learn. I don't claim to be a professional, and I'm obviously enrolled in art school, which means yes, I need practice and reference material whenever I can get it. It's not like much is changing - I'll still tune in to identify the energy and acquire the symbolism/colors associated with it; I just want these to be more like works of art and less like 15-20 min digital speedpaints that look wonky here and there because the artist still doesn't have a proper understanding of anatomy. If anything, this is even better for the sitter. If someone has a problem with it, then they just shouldn't make the request.

Like I mentioned before, though: I don't want to start these until I finish my card reading list... and there are still 13 people waiting for readings. I probably won't start the art readings for another couple of weeks for that reason, since I'll be in Louisiana from next Wednesday to the following Saturday (or Sunday).

I should get on that. Lol.
 

The Layers of Aura

by rebelbam @ deviantART

A while back, I was doing some research for this little spiritual research journal I'm working on, and I came across a site that listed the 12 layers of aura. I found that this perspective - and its descriptions - went along with what I now believe about the aura. See, I feel that all information pertaining to our life and life story resides in the aura as the particular "instance" of Adonai that we are. So when I tune in to people, I feel that I'm tuning in to everything in their aura - not what some higher being or snippet from the "Akashic Records" tells me. 

Here's my understanding of these layers:

•  Layer 1: Physical/lower etheric. Associated with awareness of physical - bridges the material body to the higher bodies. Seen as grayish-white outline. Associated with root.
• Layer 2: Emotional body (lower emotional aspect). Associated with sacral. Perceived by third eye.
• Layer 3: Mental body (lower mental aspect). Associated with solar plexus, and the vibrational thoughts and mental processes of the ego.
• Layer 4: Astral body. Expression of physical, emotional, and mental level, and associated with heart. Bridge between denser vibrations and higher ones. The layer in which all energy must pass through when going from one world to the other.
• Layer 5: Etheric template body (physical aspect). Associated with throat. Blueprint of lower etheric, and where matter is shaped into the physical aspect. Where sound creates matter. Balance and restoration of physical illnesses in the lower etheric requires healing work at etheric template level.
• Layer 6: Celestial body (emotional aspect). Associated with third eye, as well as processes of enlightenment. Composed of light and gives access to higher qualities of feelings, thoughts, and manifestations.
• Layer 7: Ketheric or Causal body (mental aspect). Associated with crown. Contains the life plan and reflects all experiences related to the incarnation. Purest form - link to Creator. Can't be experienced from limiting viewpoint of ego.
• Layer 8: Memory body. Associated with karmic memories, the time continuum. 8th chakra.
• Layer 9: Soul body. 9th (soul star) chakra. Interfaces with our divine oneness. Occupies minute space on physical plane.
• Layer 10: Integrative body, also known as "Traveling path" for dream body. It can access data from genetic and soul heritage and contains imprints of our purpose. Integrates chakras and spiritual energy. 
• Layer 11: Eternal body, where physical is transformed into light body.
• Layer 12: Universal mind body. Ultimate connection to divine consciousness.

So yeah. I'm not all into the fancy names, but I do feel that everything we need to know is already part of us. I used to swing for the whole "let me contact a higher being for that information" thing, too; however, within the last few months, my perspective has changed. Therefore, I need to adjust my readings to fit this perspective.

Process

At the present moment, this is how I generally go about producing these art readings:

I begin by tuning in to the sitter. If I have a picture, I'll usually use that to help me. But if not, I'll just visualize the person in front of me and determine what his/her energy is like. 

I'll then ask for whatever it is I'm supposed to be drawing/painting. If it's a guide, I ask to see the guide whom the sitter needs to know most about. If "higher self," I ask to see what this self would look like if it were human. If it's aura, I ask to see aura, and so on. For portrait readings, I will usually get a loose idea of what I'm supposed to be painting, and more details come through as I work. For aura, I see the colors in parts, usually starting with the left side, clockwise until I reach the head. I don't see the whole aura at once. For channeled readings, I usually begin with a color. Sometimes, I get an idea of what I'm supposed to be painting; other times I'm just nudged to begin drawing with no direction. 

The rest of the painting process is very intuitive. This means that - unless I'm doing an aura reading - I have no reason to stop and "look within" to see what I'm supposed to be drawing next. I just keep painting whatever I feel needs to be painted. This can include colors, symbols, certain shapes, certain defining characteristics in facial features, and so on. On a rare occasion, I may find myself blocked, but this has only happened a couple of times. 

When I finish, I try to glean any last impressions I receive from the work. I usually have a general idea of what's been painted (unless it's aura - then it's a lot of observation and interpretation of color relationships), although acquiring details is something I'm not too strong with yet. However, I'm much more confident now than I was when doing art readings last.

As far as the actual painting goes, it's about half auto-drawing and half already knowing what to paint. And it's all pretty natural. When I first began spirit/psychic art, I was very rigid because I had this idea in my head that I had to satisfy the sitter. This specifically pertained to spirit guide portraits, because I was painting them the way the stereotypical "new age" view depicts them: Native Americans, Greeks, monks, etc. However, after a few months of exploration, I came back to them and realized that I would paint them my way - with lots of symbolic colors and whatnot. It was then much easier to have these energies come through.

I have to say I'm excited to begin practicing these again. I'm hoping SF, tumblr, and FB will have some willing volunteers.

Introduction

As an introductory post, I wanted to document what's going on at the present moment.

The image posted here is the first guide portrait I did after deciding to start guide portraits again. See, back in fall of 2011, I was nudged to begin practicing, so I took some requests from Spiritual Forums, and was trying to see these guides (or angels) as other people see them: wise old Buddhist monks, Native Americans, beautiful, Celtic women, Greeks and Romans... and I didn't like the majority of them. Of course, my technical skill with a tablet was lamentable, but the portraits were still satisfactory. Odd anatomy issues and whatnot, but still satisfactory. 

It wasn't what I wanted out of these portraits, because I never really saw these beings as other people did. The guide picture here was the first "official" guide I discovered - an androgynous energy who came to me in a dream disguised as an attractive, expressive young man with shaggy blond hair, blue eyes, and a humble but powerful aura. When I woke up, I knew his name was Spike.

I don't really work with Spike anymore. A few months ago, he revealed himself to be Shiva, which took me 2-3 weeks to digest and finally accept. But then my perspective shifted, and I began going straight to Adonai (my name for the creative energy people know as Creator or Source). All "guides" I worked with dissolved as mere faces of myself - forces whose job it was to deliver me to where I am now.

Of course, this doesn't really affect my current process when doing spirit/psychic art. If I'm doing a guide or angel portrait for someone, I simply tune in to their aura and determine what types of "beings" they're meant to be seeing and connecting with. In my current view, everything is recorded in the aura. I don't exactly resonate with the idea of some set of beings or Akashic Records in the unseen dimensions holding all the answers. But that's just me. I can't control what resonates and what doesn't.

I have primarily worked digitally over the past year, using Paint Tool SAI and a simple Bamboo Pen tablet. Why? For a few reasons: 1.) because I wanted to work on my digital painting skills; 2.) it's a lot quicker; 3.) I'm attending art school and prefer to save my traditional supplies for that; 4.) I can utilize brighter, more accurate colors; and 5.) because I've really only seen 1-2 other spirit artists who utilize digital media in their spirit art. Plus, I didn't want to have to go through the effort of shipping all those traditional drawings.

However, I've recently wanted to begin working traditionally, as well, because I understand that some people will feel it's more valuable. It's something more organic... less artificial. I have had reports of people receiving my digital work and using it as wallpaper, or printing it out and hanging it on their bedroom wall, though. I'd be more inclined to work traditionally if I worked at an office or some kind of fair; that way, I don't have to worry about shipping, the work getting damaged, etc. 

I'd love to work at an office. I'm hoping to work at Phoenix and Dragon, which is my favorite metaphysical shop in metro Atlanta. The only thing is, I'm not sure if they'll even accept me, because I'm young and really only have a year of experience under my belt. A little over one hundred readings, but only one year of experience. And "psychics"... well. They all put the emphasis on how many years they've had to practice, because people want to make sure they're accurate as possible, right?

But here's the deal. The majority - I'd say 97% - of the portraits and art readings I've done for people have been accurate. I've hit many nails on the head, and even freaked a few people out with some eerie details. However, at the present moment, I don't get a lot of... detail. Or interpretation. See, the metaphor I use is that I'm just as good as a pencil. The pencil doesn't know what it's drawing. It just draws. It can get an idea of what's being drawn based on what's coming out on paper, or what its owner is feeling about the drawing, but ultimately, all it's doing is drawing. I'm that pencil. Everything just flows through me onto the canvas, and I have little description or interpretation to offer for that reason. 

Aura portraits are a little different, though. I can interpret those because that's just all energy and colors reflecting certain moods or imbalances. I'm not dealing with personified energy or trying to give advice or answers. I'm just seeing what's there for me to see and interpreting it based on what the colors are and how they interact with other colors. I could write essays on aura readings.

But guide portraits and channeled readings? Those are tricky. I mentioned this on my personal blog a couple of times: I would really like to be able to interpret my work fully. Because you know what? Every spirit artist I've looked up is able to do that. And a handful of them are multi-talented... able to hear spirit and channel through writing, etc. I don't want to compare myself to these lovely artists, but what good am I if I have to rely on other people to interpret something that I created myself? See, I have a small group of about five lovely ladies who help me interpret portraits and channeled readings when I do livestream sessions. I love them to death, and I appreciate all the help they've given me; however, I still mourn the fact that I can't give details to these people who so nicely ask.

You might wonder: then why not just practice more? Why not believe the details will come to you?

Practicing more is logical, yes. I do intend on practicing more, of course. But a few months ago, someone said something to me that had a big impact on the way I viewed my art. She said: "Your art carries messages that are essentially the 'bare truth.'" She went on to say that for this reason, I often didn't want to show the art to the sitter because I was afraid it might be true and would upset them (this is accurate). And also - that my art carried exactly what the sitter needed to see/hear, even if I didn't know what was being presented.

So this is why I'm conflicted. I don't know if my skill will improve to the point where I can interpret my work, or if I'm forever to be the "pencil." I guess it's kind of naive to assume that with only one year of experience, I should be pro, but I don't care how long I've been doing this. I care how much I've done. And according to my folders, I've done over 100 art readings - 98% of them for members at Spiritual Forums, and all for free. Countless times, my sitters have suggested that I charge for them. But I kept ignoring that suggestion because I didn't feel ready, and I thought: if I'm going to charge for these, I want them to be bloody beautiful. Because I'm still opposed to charging for information that is essentially advice. Then again, this is a service. What I do - or plan to do - is no different than any other artist taking commissions, or even a counselor giving life advice.

It takes effort to create good art. It takes even more effort to create good art that has a significant impact on the one receiving it. So with all that in mind, I don't know how else I might help this gift aside from practice. I'm not exactly in a good financial state to be spending over $100 on development classes or face time with mentors/people more experienced than me. I need my money for art school and supplies. 

I guess I should start asking around.