Getting Along Together

This is a study of colors that play well together. Well, hopefully.  I started out using circles, ovals and stars as templates and then put them together as something complex enough that I could use multiple colors and have them overlap in different ways. I held it up to the window and traced this design onto several index cards.

This was my monochrome sample. I started with mid blue and added white to head in one direction and a bit of black to head in the other.  Because the colors are similar the result seems fairly cohesive to me. I didn't really plan where I would put which color, except that I wanted to emphasize certain shapes and had to think like a map maker, not having two adjoining shapes be the same color. I always left bits of white for contrast.

This was analogous, running from yellow green to blue-violet (which almost looks red-violet, so may be pushing the analogous thing a bit far. Had this been an embroidery and I been choosing yarn I would have made the colors closer together, I think.

Complementary, yellow-orange to blue-violet, including various shades of same. Like the first one, the reduction of colors seems to help with cohesiveness, because it's such a busy little design I assume.

Triad, yellow-orange, blue-green, red-violet. I thought I wasn't going to like this one at all until I had finished it. Again I used different shades of these colors for variety and so the exact same colors didn't meet.

Tetrad, partly to use up the large supply of these colors that were left. Red-Violet, blue-violet, yellow-orange and yellow-green. Pale shade of yellow-green for the background

I still have one card left, perhaps I will try a split complementary next.

I think when I use stamps and Gelli plates with fabric I don't spend a lot of time planning out the colors. I start to use some, add other colors and just keep working, using up whatever I have already. When I work with floss I tend to use analogous colors, with maybe a small bit of an opposite, complementary color for emphasis.  Since I have a lot of thread colors I would be much more subtle....sometimes, too subtle, perhaps. It would be fun to pick out a tetrad of floss/bead colors and have at it.

I had fun with the interactions of the various shapes, especially where the circle, triangle and rectangle overlap and that set of ovals that looks kind of like a spring coil. The shapes seem to move and twist in and out of each other. The stars make me think of outer space and planets. I think the blue and yellow one holds together the best, with the smaller details in the lighter value color. The contrast of the white in each example draws my eyes ultimately to the spring shape.

---

NOTE: This study is from an online design class I am taking with Lyric Kinard called The Artist's Toolbox, part 1. Information on the next offering of this class can be found here: https://app.ruzuku.com/courses/34574/about.