Friday, October 25, 2013

Friday Inspiration - Color Theory


A few weeks ago I posted a link to a color challenge hue test and told you all I'd tell you what I scored the following week .... oops.  I was traveling at the time and by the time we arrived back home, I totally forgot!  Anyway, I scored a 4 - and thought it was very interesting that the four I missed were all in one area.  Which seems to suggest that this is an area of color I'm less able to discern differences in!  Hmmm ... and it's even one of my favorite color areas!


One of the best classes I had while studying for my BFA was the class in color theory.  I still use it frequently in designing my work .... however, it was quite awhile ago and I've become lazy in which parts of what I learned I still use.  And the parts I don't use got pretty much forgotten!  So while looking around, I came across this fantastic color theory tutorial on Janet L. Ford Shallbetter's website.  She has great explanations and examples and it reactivated all that long ago knowledge I once had.  If you want to learn new ways to pump up the effects color has in your work (whatever the medium is), I highly recommend spending time with this!  

And after you work your way through the different sections, Janet has links to some color planning tools that I'm already making good use of.  The first is Janet's Palette Picker.  It gives a nice way to see how different colors you're thinking of using look together - and by manipulating the numbers on your first color, can work for planning monochromatic schemes.


And I love Eric Meyer's Color Blender!  You take two colors, input how many colors you want to get from the first to the second, and voila - it generates them for you!  I've had way too much fun playing with this ....


The Color Scheme Designer gives you color possibilities to use in different color schemes.  You pick the color scheme you want, rotate the black dot on the color wheel to the color you want, and the color scheme is displayed on the right.  I had it figure out colors for a complementary scheme for me!


Well, I'm off to continue working out an embroidery idea using the Color Blender!

Happy Creating!  Deborah

3 comments:

  1. Well scoring a 4 is pretty pretty good! I just took the test and I scored 23. But I think seeing color on a computer screen when they are so close was a bit harder for my eyes. It was quite an interesting test though.

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    1. I was also wondering about the computer screen factor - this would probably be a lot easier with a printed (but not necessarily a print out of the screen!) version. But so much harder to score!

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  2. I collected so many interesting things from your site especially its discussion. From the tons of comments on your posts, I guess I am not the only one having all the enjoyment here. Keep up the good work.

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