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September 24, 2021
One of the most exciting and exhilarating things about creating an outfit is color. Color is one of the "Elements" of Design. Those elements are the parts that the "Principles" use to make good design. Together the Elements and Principles can put us square towards making a beautiful design.
But color to me is so important an element, that it deserves its own category. Color can make or break a design. Color can flatter or ruin a design. Color can make you look wonderful or bleed you out. Line, shape, space size and texture have their place, and more importantly can be the fine-tuning in a design, but color is vital. The others can be in the background and the design won't suffer, but if the color is off, or wrong, the whole design is a
mess. Besides that, color is like the life of design...it sparkles, surprises and sizzles design.
The big problem with color is that it is abstract. How can you tell abstract from concrete? My favorite way is by asking, "Can you touch ________?" So can you touch a chair? Can you touch a thought? Can you touch a pencil? Can you touch color? When the answer is yes, it's concrete. When the answer is no, its abstract. Here's the thing; we're so used to using some of these abstract terms, that we even forget
they are abstract. There's no question that they exist, yet we can't touch them. Does that mean they aren't real? Of course not, it simply means that the word is a description of something that does not have mass.
The physics experts who deal with such things as Quantum Physics and the Theory of Relativity (the really small and the really big, respectively), will tell you unequivocally that just because something doesn't take up mass does not mean it doesn't affect us. Their fav example: gravity (can you touch gravity?). This gives us the reason it's important to know, study and be familiar with the abstract, so here we go.
Let's delve a little deeper into color, and the first question we all want to know is how to create, or even know, the right color for us. That means we have to be able to describe it. There are lots of ways to do that, but I'm only going to list a few of the more familiar. The most common ones we may see are:
RGB (red, green, blue)
CYMK (cyan, yellow, magenta, K=black)
HSB (hue, saturation, brightness)
Hex (used for the internet, usually internet safe colors)
With these descriptors (and I'm mostly using computer, monitor and tech colors because that's what we mostly deal with today), we can lay out most colors, but not all, but most. In the early days of computers, monitors and programs would have color profiles like black and white (1-bit), grayscale (8-bit), paletted (8-bit w/color), RGB-Color (24 bit), and CYMK Color (32 bit). These different palettes can help explain more about color as can other palettes. A
palette is a collection of colors used in graphic.
Here's how that looks:
Yikes - you can hardly tell it's me. But more than anything else, this looks like something out of a newspaper, and there's a reason for that because the paper uses only black ink (unless it's the funny pages). This also doesn't give much dimension to a photograph and certainly not to a garment.
Much better, but still you can see if you look closely there are some clear delineations between the colors. More in comparison below.
The splotches above are a lot less visible here, although in these photos it's hard to see, the background (particularly when the colors are close) are splotchy.
Here the color is very dramatically different. There's more color, the photo seems darker, and even the contrast (different between dark and light) seems more dramatic. The photo looks almost fake on the computer. But there's a reason for that.
Here's an up close look at those last three palettes, which shows the differences. The main difference is that an 8-bit palette will take up less space than the 32-bit palette.
Granted this is enlarged, but you can see the variation in color from the 8-bit at the top to the 32-bit at the bottom.
So what's the big deal? On the computer if a store has uploaded 8-paletted photos of fabrics, they are going to appear way differently than the 32-paletted photos. And here's the big problem, they may not even know how detailed their photo palettes are. It's something most fabric stores don't do. This is a huge problem in determining color on your monitor at home.
So how do we combat that?
By knowing about colors. That way we can say things like, "I'm looking for a red that has a lot of saturation and value, but is on the blue side of red not the orange side of red. All of a sudden you've said some descriptors in there that can immediately help the fabric store understand what you want.
But what does all that mean? And I don't see "saturation" in the photo above?
Yeah, that can get confusing and this is where we can really define what we mean, and where you need to know your definitions. I really like that graphic above because it really describes all we need to know about color, but we do need to know about definitions so that when we start describing our colors, we can describe what we want.
HUE
 Hue is the color name - like red, blue, aqua, orange, etc. All of these colors are made up in the color wheel. Artists who mix colors regularly know that red, blue and yellow are primary and with black and white, they can mix all the other colors.
CHROMA or SATURATION
As if it weren't confusing enough, there are two different names for this - the amount of the hue in a color. So that a red had high saturation (high chroma) and a pink has low saturation/chroma.
VALUE OR BRIGHTNESS
This means the amount of light in a color. Now don't confuse lack of saturation red with lack of value red.
Here's the difference:
This is from Adobe Color Wheel, and one of the most fun places to mess around with color. This gives you the clear difference here on Hue, Saturation (Chroma) and Brightness (Value).
So Hue is the color, Saturation (Chroma) is the lightness and Value (Brightness) is the darkness of the color.
Why this makes so much importance is this helps you describe really describe the color so much better.
Here's the other thing that can help with this. In picking colors for an outfit or a project, you can make complementary color palettes, but not only do you work with complementary colors, but with complementary Value or Chroma, you can end up with some very dynamic color palettes that can be very sophisticated, artistic and professional, because the pros know about hues, value and saturation and they know they can mix these this way.
This is a very sophisticated color combo as compared to what we normally think of as green and red.
I mean this is great for Christmas, but really, all year round would get boring and would tire your eyes out.
The other "red & green" (at the top) looks far more sophisticated. The first place I saw it used well, it was described as "Nile Green" (when the Nile river floods it fertilizes the flooding area and is filled with sulphur which is yellow, so the nile turns a mucky yellow-green, which means that it's very fertile), and dark cherry wood (which turns even darker the more it's exposed to UVA rays).
This is the Chinnery Bar in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hong Kong (I was there in the late 90's and it looked just like this). Built in 1963, it was the tallest, most modern hotel in Asia at the time. I reflects the colors of the British Empire, Nile Green and dark Cherry Wood.
When Walt asked me what color to paint our TV room, I wanted something very sophisticated, but very comfortable....a place where he would feel at home as much as me. A men's club type thing is what came up and the colors I went with were directly from the Chinnery Bar.
But since then I've been looking for these to fill in my wardrobe.
I refer to these as oxblood red and muted chartreuse.
The colors that are so sophisticated and professional looking are just as much fun to use in your own wardrobe. Colors that work in other art works, whether they are architecture, interior design, paintings, set decorations can all work great for our own clothing designs.
But one of the things I find most enjoyable is that often opposing colors - one of those colors won't match a personal palette. By messing with the value and the saturation I can manipulate colors that will work.
So this:
Which looks almost clown-ish and that purple or magenta stuff on the right is NOT my color.
Turns into this:
Which darkens that purple so much that even though it's a beautiful contrast for the yellow, it's sufficiently black enough that it takes away the harshness of that color and allows me to use it. The purple almost turns into a brown, but still has the deep base of a purple. Contrast in hues, but also in values and saturations.
Let's turn that purple/yellow combo around so that it's geared for the cool side of the color wheel instead of the warm side. Here's what that would look like
Notice the contrast in value, saturation and hue.
Hue opposites - purple yellow
Saturation opposites - purple high saturation, yellow not much
Value opposites - purple lots of value, yellow hardly any.
That's how this is done, and my bet is there's not a person out there who looks dynamic in purple that would look fabulous in this combination.
I want to encourage you to not only become familiar with the makes up of color, but to also mess around with these hues, saturations and values to start doing some amazing creative things with your color combinations.
This is the quintessential toolbox for the wannabe designer, and you don't even have to draw to use them. All you have to do is trace. That may sound just a little too far-fetched, but believe me, not all designers can draw, and most of them do not sew. So you are one up on most designers.
This package includes a lot:
Elements & Principles of Design w/Color
Proportion (Divine and Rule of Thirds) and Apex Point Fitting
and something new:
 Sketching - taking the idea to sketch, to pattern to garment and yes, you can do that. It's not that hard. There are a lot of steps, but this is the final part of the whole package of creating something especially for yourself.
You know all those pictures on Pinterest or pinned in your studio or on your bathroom mirror?...those ones you know you would look smashing in if...1.) you could find the right pattern, 2.) you might be able to find it in RTW, but to fit you would be a problem or 3.) you've always wanted to create a look or certain collar or fabulous sleeve or some other detail and never knew how. Here's how to do that.
This does require that you have your core pattern up and running. That's what the whole pattern will be based on and it is what makes all this work so well. Whereas commercial pattern makers and designers have to go through 5 to 8 iterations to get it right, with your core pattern, we already know it works, and what we're doing is copying that to make the style you want.
If you already have only one of the above, then you have the opportunity here to bring your toolbox up to date by acquiring the only what you need at a discounted price. The Sketching Resource is the only one that's new that no one has before this month.
At the same time if you want the whole kit and caboodle, it's at an even greater discount than normal. Here's everything with the whole kit and caboodle at the bottom!
Enjoy!
Elements & Principles of Design with Color Primer - This is what art and design students learn in art school. The only difference between them and you is that they have the time to play around with them. But we can do the same, albeit a little less time.
Fitting with Proportion and Figure-Flattering Tools
(This one comes in two parts)
Sketching - From Idea to Garment
The Design Toolbox - All Three Resources above in one download at a terrific price.
Once this special is over, the Sketching will go into both the Proportion and Elements & Principles (it's already in the Toolbox), at regular pricing.
On the Blog
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