I love color..I believe it enhances what you are sharing with your audience, it one of the most important practices in art...
Let's take take color one step further and share with you about value, more or less, this is about the lightness to darkness that each color holds.
...turn the wheel into black and white. We can then start to see the value of the color tone or the hue.
If we take this and place it into scale form, I think it is easier to understand. Every color value is determined by the amount of white (light) to black (dark) within it.
Here is the Butterfly Charm Girl in black and white value. My hope is that even in black and white you can see a consistency of a medium value.
Side note: Doesn't the texture show up more??? Texture- keep this in mind when creating monochromatic pieces.
When creating my pieces, I choose my fabrics within a certain range of value...in other words, I do not mix pastels - light value with jewel tones- dark value. Keeping your color value "as neighbors" creates a harmonious balance.
light value dark value
Let's go back to color! And look at this scale now in color. You can see how the color moves from from white to black creating its value.
Here is Butterfly Charm Girl in color. Color DOES make a difference and so we want to use it as thoughtfully as we can.
The value scales with my colors with from this doll are in the medium range.
The large circles on the scale board are the main fabric and the small circles are accent values. Notice the small stripe in the pant is actually a bluish-lavendar.
Side Note: The doll itself is a strict contrast of white body and black hair! Which adds a foundation of a contrasting value.
Purples, golds, and grey
Here is Butterfly Charm Girl with the values. Note how not only are the colors being balanced that the values are also balanced! Having a strong contrast at her feet help keep that foundation.
My hope is this gives you another way of looking at
the balance of lightness or darkness of your own pieces!
