Over the next few weeks, we are going to have a play with some simple colour exercises. Some of them will be all about sewing, and some not about sewing at all. At the end of the few weeks I hope that you will have some new tools in your box the next time you think about a new quilt and where you want to take it.
In every single class I have ever taught over the last 25 years of my teaching career, at least one person has told me they aren’t good with colour. This blanket statement is usually dismally delivered, apologetically, and with a sigh of finality. I’ve got news for you all - you are ALL good with colour. The most important thing that I can teach you about colour is that there IS NO RIGHT AND WRONG.
Every single one of us gets out of bed in the morning and puts on clothing that looks nice together, and compliments our own sense of style. We know what we like to look at, and what makes a pleasing arrangement of tones when we see it somewhere or choose it ourselves. You all think those choices are made by someone else, and yes - usually the fabric or book cover or sofa cushion you’re admiring was designed by someone else, but you are able to look at that object or painting or flower or sunset and know what is pleasing to your own eye, and that is the first and most important step towards being “good with colour!” We all have it already within us, we just need to stop denying it and treating colour as some kind of magical unicorn we can never ride.
Despite my earlier protestations, spending the past few weeks thinking about how best to start this class with you has dragged me kicking and screaming back to the colour wheel. Despite my deep loathing of art teachers everywhere thinking that people will be magically able to process colour once they possess a little circle full of coloured wedges, I’ve decided that the colour wheel has merit. So we’re going back to basics.
I don’t want you to have to buy loads of things for these exercises and I definitely don’t want you to have to buy more fabric - but if you don’t have a packet of coloured pencils and some plain paper, I’d like you to pop out and get those things before we start. They don’t need to be expensive pencils and just plain copy paper or a note pad will be just fine - you probably want some paper that isn’t lined or gridded (for now). If you do want to invest in some nice quality pencils, I absolutely LOVE Palomino Blackwing pencils - I use their soft graphite pencils almost exclusively for drawing and their coloured pencils are absolutely lovely. They’re widely available, if you have a quick Google around you’re sure to find some near you.
Ok we’re going to start at the beginning, where fabric has almost nothing to do with what we’re going to learn. Colour theory is the study of colour families and their relationships. I don’t want this to get too technical, but lets start with what we all learned as kids. The basic colour groupings are:
Primary colours - true red, true blue and true yellow
Secondary colours - you can mix two primary colours to produce secondary colours.
Blue + yellow = green
Red + yellow = orange
Blue + red = purple
Tertiary colours - mixing primary and secondary colours produces tertiary colours. Mixing different amounts will give you different hues of colour. For example:
Blue + green = teal
We will add to this list
Tones/Shades - different grades of colour in a within one colour group. For example, light or dark blue
Neutrals - a colour without much intensity or saturation, which generally goes with everything. For example, black, white, brown and grey.
Today we’re going to start out with a very simple exercise of shading in the colour wheel. This wheel will be expanded on and played with in the coming weeks, but we will also then throw it out the window at some point, so don’t be put off. Sometimes you have to learn some rules before you smash them up.
Start with one of the wedges in the colour wheel provided, and colour it in red. Count three wedges around to the right and leave them blank, and colour the fourth wedge in yellow. Do the same again, leaving three blank wedges and colouring the fourth in blue.
Colour the wedge centrally between the red and yellow wedges, first lightly with a red pencil, and then with a yellow pencil, blending the colours to create orange. (Yep, feel free to cheat and use the orange pencil if you want to - but I kind of want you to see the colour change as you do it, to give you a little mixing buzz). Repeat to colour the centre wedge between the blue and the yellow, and between the red and the blue. You might find that if your pencils aren’t very porous, you need to blend them a bit with your finger or do a few layers of colours to make them blend.
Once everything has blended, you have your secondary colours.
Now comes your homework! You will need:
Two copies of the Colour Wheel provided -
Coloured pencils, pastels, paint, or felt tip pens (pencils or pastels are best)
Paper
Your stash
Have a sort through your stash and pull out some pieces that are red, blue and yellow. This for a lot of quilters will be a challenge - not a lot of people find primary red, blue and yellow palatable. What I want you to do though is to find YOUR red, blue and yellow. They might be a little paler, or a little darker, than primary. They might be a bit greyer, or whiter. They might have other colours in the print - but I want you to find something that YOU consider to be predominately that colour.
Once you find what you consider to be YOUR base red, blue and yellow, cut a piece around 1” square from them and glue them into the same wedges on your colour wheel in the same places you coloured in your fabric. Choose a green, purple and orange to go with them and do the same.
If you come across any fabrics that you can’t quite identify - maybe thats red? But there’s a lot of yellow? I’m not sure what colour this is? Put it aside.
Photograph your colour wheel fabrics and any rogue ones you found with your phone (or scan them if you’re fancy) and email them to me sarah@sarahfielke.com with “Smites Colour Class” in the subject line - and then you’re ready for next week! I’ll be showing you my wheel next time.
Have fun Smites, I hope you enjoy your first little colour foray.
Sarah x
Comments