BlogHer - Color Inspiration Everywhere... - Comments

web tools and color

Tricia S — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 09:43:15 -0500

These are great links Debra. Thanks. I also need to learn to play with color. I recently found a couple of helpful web tools:

Random Stripe Generator
experiment with colors and see how they look side by side.

The Color Scheme tool is made to generate colors that work together. You can play with the color slider and generate various combinations.

Tricia (cheekyattitude.com)

Interesting, Kalyn..

debra roby — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 09:27:36 -0500

When I had my colors done, I was a Winter, though I went through a long "autumn" color inspiration in my work.

I'm wondering if a lack of color drive is one reason that my own work has ground to slow recently.

Debra
A Stitch In Time
Deb's Daily Distractions

Have your colors done!

Kalyn Denny — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 08:43:59 -0500

I know it's not trendy like it once was, but back in the 80's I had my "colors done" by a professional colorist. (No idea what kind of training this job required, but she was good!) They put various colors of fabric by your face and you make repeated choices ("this one or this one") until they are able to assign you a "season." For me it was really dramatic. I'd been wearing a lot of the wrong colors, and when I started wearing the autumn colors that suited me best, the compliments came rolling in.

The color categories were:
Autumn (dark warm colors)
Spring (light warm colors)
Winter (dark cool colors)
Summer (light cool colors)

But more relevant to this post is that the color thing seems to transfer over to other parts of your life too. After I became aware of what colors suited me, I realized I preferred those colors around me in my house, car, and even for things like luggage or the color on the outside of my house. If I was a crafter, there's no doubt I'd chose autumn colors.

Kalyn Denny
Kalyn's Kitchen

Color Inspiration Everywhere...

debra roby — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:31:12 -0500

For one full year my personal art work expressed my obsession with the color and texture of eucalyptus trees. The bark, peeled back to show subtle green-grays, ochres, peaches; the leaves, crisp and olive or dessicating and rusty; the curves and lines. I sought out the visual experience in every park within miles and compulsively worked to recreate the colors and textures in fiber. I painted white fabric in grays, rusts, ochres and sages; I cut; I pieced; I quilted textures, I appliqued. I exorcised my obsession in several quilts that year. Haven't used these colors since.

Understand, for the artist or crafter color is sometimes a difficult decision and other times the driving force in their work. With any craft, however, color is one of the important design elements. Bloghers love to share their color stories and obsessions:

Grumperina's used underpants to plan a baby blanket.

Cara (a professional photographer) used photographs and PhotoShop's Stained Glass filter to choose the colors for some of her mitered squares this past spring. The idea was originally discussed at Knitting on Impulse. where Ruth Stewart has created an entire catagory on Playing with Color that could be a any crafter's tutorial. Instead of Photoshop, Ruth uses PhotoFiltre, a free download.

And She Knits,Too! made a beautiful copper bracelet, then blogged about how she chose her palette.

Lisa Condon is addicted to monochrome. These pieces strongly argue that "all color all the time" might not be the best way to go. Melody Johnson, however, might argue otherwise.

These color inspirations can be used in other ways, too. For example, designing a websites or scrapbook palettes:

Colourlovers looked at knit socks... for palette inspiration.

Posh'd used Rolling Stone's Top Ten Albums of All Time to create color palettes. Looking over these I desperately want to design something "experienced!"

Have you ever been grabbed by a color obsession? How did you finally express it?

Detail of Eucalyptus I from my own Flickr Surface Design File.

Debra Roby blogs her art at A Stitch in Time and her life at Deb's Daily Distractions .