If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen my post of Intro to Color Theory. I really want to help fellow crochet artists (and knitters, and indie dyers, and all fiber artists) make the best possible work they can, and I feel that starts with what colors you choose for a project.
Here you’ll learn:
- What is Color Theory?
- What is a Color Wheel?
- What colors make up a Color Wheel?
- What does this mean for me and my yarn??
What is Color Theory?
To put it simply, Color Theory is the study of colors and how they relate to each other.
What is a color wheel?
A Color Wheel is is a tool used to see the placement colors in relation to each other. A basic color wheel is comprised of 12 colors that can be grouped into 3 sets. These sets are Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary.
You can buy a physical color wheel and your local art supply store or look one up online.
Basic Colors
Primary colors (think “first level”) are blue, yellow, and red. They are the colors from which all other colors come from. Primary colors cannot be created by mixing any other colors together, they are the foundation of all other colors.
Secondary (think “second level”) colors are green, orange, and violet. These colors are technically equal parts 2 primary colors (ex. Green = 50% blue + 50% yellow).
Tertiary colors (think “third level”) are equal parts a Secondary color and the nearest Primary. They are named by listing the Primary color then the Secondary (ex. Yellow Orange, meaning it’s orange, but leaning towards yellow).
What does this mean for yarn?
This is the most important part, isn’t it? As long as you are choosing colors that make you happy when making your project, you have my full support. If we aren’t happy when we’re working, why bother?
But if you want to try looking at colors differently, I’d recommend going through your yarn stash and seeing if you can identify roughly what colors you have. Is that ball of yarn violet? Does it have a bit more red in it to make it red-violet? Or maybe it’s blue-violet? It’s OK if you have a lot of pastels (I’ll get into those, too) just see if you can start thinking about what you’re seeing!
In my future posts I want to cover what to do now that you can start identifying different colors. Being able to apply what you’ve learned is so important and fun!
Was this a helpful start? Please tell me how I did so I can keep improving for next installment. If you like this post, Pin it!
Be sure to stop back for the next installment: Complementary Colors
