Color Thoughts

All of the rippling that has been going on around here has actually led to some interesting conversations about color between my husband and myself. In one of those odd life coincidences, just before I started the first ripple, my husband brought home a couple of books about color from his weekly book sorting gig. (He's in charge of the library's book sale each year, and if he sees books that he thinks might be worth selling for more than a dollar, he brings them home and looks them up online.) I've only had a chance to go through one of the books, but I thought the one I have read might make for an interesting post or two. Consider this another contribution to Project Spectrum, as well as a break from ripple talk.

The book is called Sanford's Manual of Color by John Ithiel Sanford and dates from 1910. It is only 33 pages long, but it has given me a lot to think about. He uses a hexagon rather than a circle or wheel that encompasses 15 different colors - three primary, three secondary, three tertiary and 6 intermediate colors. Primary are of course red, blue, yellow. Secondary are green, orange and purple, formed by combining primary colors. Tertiary are green/orange, orange/purple, and purple/green - or as he calls them, citrine, russet and olive, formed by combining 2 secondary colors. Finally, intermediate colors are formed by combining a primary with a secondary color - blue/purple, blue/green, yellow/green, yellow/orange, red/orange and red/purple. Or, as listed in the book, campanula, turquoise, sulphur, saffron, nasturtium and garnet. All of these colors together make up our modern color wheel.

As you probably know, each color has a complementary color which supplies what is lacking in the other. For example, green is made up of blue and yellow, so red is its complement because there is no red in green. Yellow and purple, and blue and orange make up the other 2 sets of complements. Now I haven't had a chance to test this theory out yet, but Sanford suggests that when the eye is saturated with one color and then closed, the mind's eye will remember the complementary color rather than the color you were actually just looking at. This makes understanding complementary colors very important if you want your colors to harmonize rather than clash. Tomorrow, brightening and subduing colors.

Now, I suppose I should close without a picture. Here is where I have gotten with the first ripple afghan. I only have 5 colors left to add in. I think then I will just repeat the colors in the order I have already used them, rather than continue with the randomness. I will probably prefer the symmetry, ultimately.

Oh, and just in case you would prefer granny squares to ripples, there's now a granny along as well!