Tips on color

How colors blend and harmonize is truly a work of art. When you see colors in nature, they rarely or never are boring. That’s because the right colors harmonize so well that your brain is actually stimulated just by looking at them, making you want to look longer.

Selecting colors for your next stamping project doesn’t have to be hard.
First, you must understand the positions of colors on a color wheel and how they relate to each other. There are primary, secondary and tertiary colors. All non-neutral colors fall into one of these 3 categories. Primary colors are bright blue, red and yellow colors. Secondary colors occur when you mix any two primary colors. They are bright orange, green and violet (purple) colors. You get tertiary colors by mixing a primary and a secondary color. Most common names for tertiary colors are orange-yellow (apricot and marigold), red-orange (rust and guava), red-violet (orchid), blue-violet (amethyst), green-blues (teal and turquoise), and yellow-greens (celery and chartreuse and olive).

Colors selected from a color chart or wheel, can be any tint or saturation. Therefore, the colors SU blush blossom, SU groovy guava and SU really rust are all different saturations of the same tertiary color “orange-red” (which makes for a lovely monochromatic look, by the way). However, I would classify almost all other pinks as a primary red color.

The colors I used as dots in my color wheel illustrations are the RGB codes for some of SU colors. This was done just to show you where some of those colors would be placed on the color wheel. For example: SU taken with teal is a perfect blue-green and is a tertiary color. SU orchid opulence is a red-violet and also a tertiary color.

However, SU more mustard technically falls under the primary color yellow.
Metallics: Copper is a red-orange tertiary color. Gold is usually a yellow primary color. Silver is a true neutral.

NOT all wonderful and pleasing color combos fall into one of the categories below. An example of a color combo that works well, and does not fall into one of the categories below is Red, green and yellow. Red and yellow are both primary colors and green is a secondary color, yet when combined in just the right way, can make a beautiful project.

7 color theory color schemes (color palettes).

Monochromatic: One color is used, however, 2 or more lighter or darker versions of that color create the color palette.

Example: light blue (SU Bashful blue), medium blue (SU brocade blue), dark blue (SU Night of navy)

Analogous: all colors used, except neutrals, are adjacent to each other on the color wheel.

Examples: Blue (primary), teal (tertiary), green (secondary)

 

Complimentary: 2 colors that are directly across from each other on the color wheel. Will end up being either a primary and secondary color, or 2 tertiary colors.

Examples: Green, Red or  yellow-green and red-violet

Split

complimentary: 3 colors are used, 2 of them being on both sides of the complimentary color of the first color chosen.

Example: Blue, apricot (yellow-orange) and rust (orange-red)

Triadic: 3 colors that are equally spaced on the color wheel.

Examples: Blue-violet, yellow-green, red-orange

 

Tetradic: 4 colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel, however, their locations make a perfect rectangle if lines are drawn between the points on the color wheel. This scheme is the hardest to harmonize. If using this scheme, you MUST pick one color to dominate, therefore subduing the rest.

Example: violet, blue-violet, yellow, orange-yellow

 

Nature: These are colors schemes that don’t fall into any of the 6 theories, but have a harmonious pleasant look anyway.

Examples: Kris’s color stripes blog is a great place to find nature color schemes. A photograph of nature or everyday life is posted, and RGB color swatches are lined up underneath them for your viewing pleasure! I have been inspired for color palettes by many photos on this blog.  Most of her photographs make me want to stare for HOURS, and that tells me that they are harmonious color palettes.

Finally, some little extra tips. You generally want to select 1 but no more than 2 neutral colors with your color selection. Use a contrasting darker color somewhere in your project in a minimal quantity. In some cases, select one color in your color scheme to be dominant, therefore having a larger amount of that color and the remaining colors having less. You may choose to do all or only one of these tips. Where you place your colors also plays a huge part in an eye pleasing harmonious piece of art. You must use your eyes to do the testing. Your brain will either be pleased by the harmonious colors or not.

There is much more on the subject, but this should be enough of the basics to get your creative color juices flowing.  Here is a Download color_wheel_su_colors.pdf chart I made categorizing all the SU colors. 

Perhaps this has been helpful, or maybe you already knew some of this. Whatever the case, I hope you have not been too bored!

Happy stamping!  ~Laurie