Color Theory - Part 2

Hi Stamping Friend,

Last week we talked about the challenge of choosing colors for projects. Let's recap that, shall we?

(this image is taken from page 5 of the 2021 Stampin' Up!® annual catalog) 

• There are 3 primary colors (Yellow, Red & Blue), combine equal amounts of any two of them and you get one of the 
• 3 secondary colors (Orange, Purple & Green). 
• Mixing equal amounts of one of the primary colors with a neighboring secondary color yields the 6 tertiary colors (Amber, Vermillion, Magenta, Violet, Teal & Chartreuse). OK, now that we're caught up, let's move on to how to choose colors for a project.

(this photo is from the article: Color Meanings by Jacob Olesen)

There are several color schemes that are commonly accepted. You may be familiar with some of them, for instance, 

• Monochromatic color schemes use lighter and darker variations (aka shades) of a single color or hue. 
• Complimentary colors are opposite one another on the color wheel and make a bold statement. Using the color wheel illustration above you can see what I mean - Yellow & Purple, Amber & Violet, Orange & Blue (popular for movie posters), Vermillion & Teal, Red & Green, Magenta & Chartreuse, are all complimentary pairs of colors that can be used together.  
• Split-Complimentary color schemes use 3 colors instead of two. An example would be Yellow with Magenta & Violet (the colors on each side of its complimentary color). When using three colors together, it is generally best to make one of them the focus and the other two as accents.  Another common color scheme is 
• Analagous, colors that are next to one another on the color wheel. a couple of examples  would be Yellow, Amber & Orange  or Purple, Violet, Blue & Teal, depending on whether you wanted to use three (triad) or four colors (tetrad) together. 

            Triangles-Triads                                  Squares & Rectangles-Tetrads

• You can use triangles with your color wheel to choose your triads of color. 
• Colors that are equidistant from each other will be pointed to by the points of an equilateral triangle producing schemes composed of the primary colors, the secondary colors and two more from the tertiary colors (Amber Magenta & Teal or Vermillion, Violet & Chartreuse). 
• If you vary the length of the sides of the triangle you will get other pleasing combinations to use. 
• For a scheme composed of four colors (tetrad) you can do the same thing with a square or a  rectangle. 

Play with it, have fun making your color choices . Ultimately, the best colors to choose are the ones that you like. I hope this has been helpful. We can get deeper into it if you are interested, let me know in the comments.

Have a lovely day!

Susan 🌄 🖖