MORE ON COLOR

Posted by Peg in South Carolina 

RICHARD BOX ON PROPORTION

Richard Box has some some ideas about proportions of color to be used in embroidery.  On the whole, the proportions he favors are one third of one color and two-thirds of the second.

But this doesn’t mean that he favors using only two colors.  If either of the two colors is a mixed color, that is, a color made up of two or more colors (red-violet, for example), he likes to see a bit of the original colors that make them up (in this case, red and blue) somewhere in the embroidery.

Also, if there is a lot of one color (the color, I would guess, that is used for two-thirds of the piece), he likes to include bits of the color’s complement, yellow-green in the case of red-violet.

PROPORTION APPLIED TO MY GREEN CRACKLE PIECE 

Let me apply these ideas, tentatively, to the crackle piece I am preparing for.

The major colors will be green and yellow-green.  My instinct would be to select the green as the dominant of the two colors.  But this is a spring piece, and yellow-greens dominate in that season.  So I am going to go against my instincts and assign the dominant status to yellow-green.

Now I am going to be using a lot of different greens and a lot of different yellow-greens, all the way from quite pure to very dulled, so dulled that they may be read as brown.  I think I will subdivide each of these greens, the pure and the yellowed green, in the same way I divided the over-all greens.  That is, two-thirds of the yellowed greens will be dulled, one third will be bright and pure.  For the greens I am going to have two-thirds of the greens bright and pure, and one-third dulled.   Don’t ask me why.  This is just what I am seeing right now.

Now for some real fun.

Yellow-green contains yellow as well as green.  I have been wanting the whole time to include some highlights of yellow.  Now I have a reason for doing so.

Then the complement to yellow-green is  red-violet.  I already knew I wanted to incorporate some red-violet!  “Heaven, I’m in heaven” as the song goes…..

Related Posts:   Mud
Yellow-Greens and Some Red-Violet

“More on Color“ was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on October 15, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.