Why Color Is Irrelevant

I like color. No, I mean, I really like color. Often, I like more color than appears naturally in my subjects. A pink rhino? Been there. A multi-colored dodo bird? Done that.

Despite that, it’s actually value that allows me to indulge my passion for color.

In a comment on a previous blog, a follower asked me if I would describe how I inject vibrant, non-realistic color into my pieces:

My pieces are natural and realistic and I feel a bit intimidated by the abstract pieces I see around me but I know what speaks to me. I would like to make the leap to translate the actual colors to the bright and fanciful as you did with Croc. That would be my next step. Will you be talking about how you translate your color values to the palette you have? It’s wonderful! For now I can’t ‘see’ beyond the real coloring.

—Ginny from timelessarts.blogspot.com

Well, Ginny, I’ll do my best.

Value

Ginny nailed it. It’s all about value. And we’re not talking about catching the sale at Macy’s.

Value is the relative degree of lightness or darkness of a particular color.

I spend a lot of time and effort in the classes I teach talking about and giving examples of value. It’s probably the most important art concept to understand when faced with the challenge of translating an image into fabric. Value is what gives a shape form and depth. Take a face, for example. Look at the highlights on the tip of the nose and cheekbones. Notice the shadows under the eyebrow and under the chin.

Learning to recognize and separate one value from another frees you up to make any color choice you prefer. As long as you are faithful to representing the comparative values of your subject, color is, in fact, irrelevant.

Peace, Love, Tie-Dye, Save the Whales

A good example of tossing realistic color out the window while remaining true to value is my quilt “Peace, Love, Tie-Dye, Save the Whales.”

Peace, Love, Tie-Dye, Save the Whales

In this portrait of my son, Sam, I used four completely different color palettes, yet each one is a fairly faithful rendering of his face.

How did I do it?

Did I sit with the photograph of Sam in front of me and break down all the different values for each of the four portraits?

Hardly. No, I took a much more pragmatic approach. I did what I teach my students to do.

Step One: Find a photo you like. You should choose one with good contrast and wide range of values, from very dark to very light, if possible.

Step Two (optional): Convert the image to grayscale. Viewing the image in black and white converts color to pure value. In the photo below I also increased the contrast to deepen the darks and brighten up the lights.

Step Three: Break down the values by tracing shapes. To separate highlights from shadows I shaded in some of the shapes.

From this point, I transferred the tracing (four times) onto muslin at the enlargement I wanted.

Why?

Great. I’ve broken the image apart into its constituent values—now what do I do? What fabrics and what colors do I choose?

One question I ask myself, and my students, at this point is “Why?” Why do you want to change the coloring? How will it add to the feel of the piece? Does it help to define your subject matter?

In the case of “Peace, Love, Tie-Dye, Save the Whales,” I had a very specific reason for using the colors I did. As you can imagine, that helped immensely.

The phrase Peace, Love, Tie-Dye, Save the Whales has a special meaning for Sam and me. It represents the goodbye we said (and still say 5 years later) to each other at the bus stop (or now as he leaves for college). We use hand signals for the phrase—no words are needed.

This theme, coupled with Sam’s love of the Beatles (and his resemblance in this photo to one of the band members), made me think of the repeated imagery of Andy Warhol, especially his portrait of John Lennon. You know the one:

Okay, then. I now knew that I would create four portraits—one for each part of our greeting. And I knew, from Warhol’s inspiration, that each would have a unique color theme.

Peace would be peaceful greens—a good choice for my tree-hugging kid; Love would be sixties-era hearts and flowers with lots of reds; Tie-Dye would be, well, tie-dye with yellows and oranges; and Save the Whales would be a watery sort of look, blues and blue-greens.

Choosing Fabrics

I told you how much I like color, right?

Well, I even like my color to have color. Other than muslin, I don’t think I own a solid-color piece of fabric. I prefer patterns, the bolder the better. Take a look at a partial selection of fabrics for each portrait.

Clockwise from upper left: fabric for  Peace, Love, Save the Whales, and Tie-Dye.

Notice they are grouped not only by color, but are also arranged by value (sort of), darkest at the left of each group, lightest at the right. If you’re having trouble distinguishing the differences (made more difficult by the bold patterns I use), try squinting.

If you still have trouble, try this: do what I did with the original photo of Sam. Take a photo of your fabric choices and change it to black and white. Here are the four groups of fabrics paired with their black and white images.

Peace fabrics.

Love fabrics.

Tie-Dye fabrics.

Save the Whales fabric.

As you can see, in the black and white version of the fabrics, color is irrelevant. A medium value red could easily match a medium value blue, green, or orange. I could choose darks, mediums, and lights from any (or all!) of the color groups to create an image.

Here’s a little game. For each of the faces below, try to pick out the fabric assortment I used based solely on value. Of course, you’ll have to try to ignore the patterns. Squint if you have to.

Until you look at the fabric patterns, it’s hard (impossible?) to tell which is which, isn’t it? Hopefully, this drives home the point that color is irrelevant to form.

Being able to see values allows you to choose colors based on any criteria you wish. Maybe purple is your favorite color and you want to make a purple armadillo. Go ahead. If you need to, convert the original photo to black and white and break out the values. Then take all your purple fabrics and arrange them by value, realizing that in some, you’ll find a wide variety of values due to their designs. Do what you can and double check by taking a picture of them and converting it to black and white.

It may seem contradictory, but in order to expand your color palette, you may need to ignore color and concentrate on value. You may never look at your fabrics the same way again!

Next Week: Visiting “Stevie”

I travel to Cedarburg, Wisconsin to see the exhibition “From Insects to Elephants” at the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts where my quilt “Crocodylus Smylus” is having its premier.