It is a very grey and grotty day today. The wind is blowing the rain in at 45 degrees; the sky is grey; the colours of the landscape through the sheets of rain are faded to grey. All in all the view outside the window is lacking its usual verdant spring green and cerulean blue sky. So what better day to be thinking about colour. If I can't look at it through the window I can imagine it.
As regular readers will know, I've got krokbragd on my mind at the moment and one of the pointers I kept reading when first exploring the technique was to have high contrast colour choices. As you can see in this early piece the turquoise really pops against the duller brown whereas the light brown agains the fawn has much less contrast.
So how does this relate to colour theory? Well - an understanding of how colours interact can inform the effects likely to be produced by our choice of yarn colour. The image at the top of this post shows a typical colour wheel. The wheel has been divided into groups of hues. Hue is another word for colour (but just to add confusion can also mean a particular shade of a colour). So you might hear someone talk about "reddish hues" meaning a group of colours which have lots of red in their mix.
When painting a hue can be altered by mixing it with black, white or grey. Adding black creates a shade - a darker, richer colour. Adding grey creates a tone - a less vibrant, more subtle version of the hue. Adding white creates a tint which is a paler, more pastel version of the hue. Weavers don't generally get to change the colour of their yarn unless they are also dying their own yarn. So rather than mixing colours it is more a case of thinking how colours interact with each other.
There are lots of ways of thinking about how to combine colours. A common approach is to consider how much contrast you want between the different hues. There are three pure colours - red, yellow and blue - you cannot make them by mixing other colours. They are known as the primary colours. Mix two primary colours and you get the secondary colours, and mix a secondary colour with a primary and you get the tertiary colours as shown.
For maximum contrast choose colours that are opposite each other on the colour wheel. These pairs are known as complementary colours. Examples are red and green, yellow and purple, blue and orange. Complementary colourways are very vibrant, but if that's the look you like - go wild and enjoy the clashes.
A triad of colours, evenly spaced around the colour wheel also creates a vibrant colourway if all hues are used equally. Imagine orange, purple and green all sharing equal space in a design... It could be brilliant for krokbragd as the patterns work really well with high contrast colourways. But if you're after vibrant but not headache inducing having one dominant colour and two accent colours can create a much more pleasing harmony.
For a low contrast pattern you might choose analogous colors. These are groups of three colours which sit next to each other around the colour wheel. So blue, green and turquoise for example would form an analogous group. Such groupings tend to create a harmonious colourway which is easy on the eyes but would also create a lower contrast pattern when woven.
A final consideration is colour context. The appearance of a colour is affected by the colours around it. Red appears more vibrant against black but will appear less vibrant against white. Against turquoise red will appear more vibrant and against orange it will appear duller.
Beginner weavers often pair brightly coloured yarn with white, expecting the colours to pop, but end up with a pastel colurway instead. If you have some luscious coloured yarn you want to show off pair it with black rather than white for maximum effect, particularly if you are creating a balanced weave. White yarn woven with a colour is like adding white paint to a pigment - you end up with a paler, more pastel tint and lose the original vibrancy.
Notice how the same colour blue seems much brighter against the black than it does against the white in this krokbragd sample.
If you are interested in colour theory and particularly how context affects colour perception, I can highly recomment Josef Albers' book Interaction of Colour.
So that was a very brief summary how a knowledge of colour theory can inform your colour choices for weaving and the effects that can be created by those choices. Do you have a favourite book or website that you turn to for colour advice? Why not share it in a comment.
