Learning about Color

1.  HUE refers to the particular color, a name that would identify a specific color.  For example, Crayola has some great hues like “Macaroni & Cheese”.  Although it’s probably some kind of yellow-orange-yellow, it’s easy to explain and identify with a specified name for that exact hue.  The color wheel project helped me learn about hue since we had to mix and paint specific colors for the wheel.

SATURATION refers to the brightness of a color.  The brighter a color, the more the it is saturated with color.  With the emphasis project I used saturation to help emphasize the seahorse.  The colors directly surround it are less saturated and the seahorse is very saturated, allowing it to more vividly stand out from it’s background.

VALUE refers to the lightness/darkness of a color.  The very first project allowed us to see how many different values there actually are.  Never again will I think of gray as one color (more like 75 colors atleast).  The 10-line composition really racked my brain with value.  It showed me how to understand that colors are essentially composed of either white+color or black+color, which definitely changes if the color is light or dark.

2.  I think I learned the most from the 10-line composition and the transparency problem.  I had a pretty tough time with the 10-line composition project.  Deciphering what value a color is in terms of actually finding that value in the grays was so hard!  I think that if I went back today I would do a better job though and I do think I learned a lot.  It’s something you don’t think about when you watch black and white movies or take black and white pictures, but it’s a prevalent concept and would be powerful to have the ability to change a color scheme into pure value when designing.

Finding a transparency color out of two colors was difficult but after practicing in class I was able to see the change better.  It was weird sometimes because the color that would mathematically be correct for the transparency didn’t always work; clearly it takes more skill and understanding of color to be able to see what works best.

3.  Again I can’t pick one, so my favorites were the transparency and the repeat pattern problems.  I really liked researching ad campaigns and being able to create my own inspired by a company…it was like I had a job for a few hours.  When it finally came together it was great to see how others reacted to the feeling of the design.  I like ads much more than commercials because they silently tell the viewer a story that encourages the purchase of their product.  They work the viewers brain effectively without being loud, long, and annoying.

I’ve never really liked printed fabric because I found it limiting, but after being able to design my own repeat pattern, I appreciate pattern a lot more.  It was amazing to take one small piece and repeat it to look entirely different and then try repeating it another way and it be completely different again.  There are so many possibilities, it was fun to see what happened.  Perhaps I’ll give printed fabric a chance now…especially if I could print it myself!  Seeing the pattern in different color combinations  was great too as it changed what parts stand out.

Out of the five that I took, here are three picture that I liked best.  I took them in color and then transferred them into black & white.

I like the unexpected color combination and the curvy pattern in this gown.  14 Values

For my second picture I chose a section of my Passion Works passion flower.  I love these flowers because of how vibrant they are and feature so many different colors, glitter, and hand-painted pictures.   20 Values

I love that each bead in this bracelet is so colorful but the differences are subtle when looked at as a whole.  22 Values