Last week, I wrote about the role of value in choosing colors. Today, I’ll tackle three terms that are often misused but once explained are actually pretty easy to understand: tint, shade, and tone.
Imagine for a moment that you have three pots of red paint in front of you. If you add white to one of them, what will you get? Easy peasy … we’ve all done this to get pink. You have just mastered the concept of tint. The more white that is added, the lighter the pink.
What happens when you add black to the second pot? Are you imagining a darker red? The imagined result would be a burgundy or maybe maroon. The proper term here is shade. The more black that is added, the darker the red.
Top to bottom: tint, pure color, shade. Better known as pink, red, and burgundy!
For the last imaginary experiment, add grey to the last pot of red. This is a little trickier because you are essentially adding both white and black. Regardless of the ratio, what you end up with here is tone and the end result will be what we often think of as a dusty rose color. In the green family, think of moss green as opposed to grass green. In blues, you may have steel blue or a misty blue.
The true blue in the center is bracketed by a medium tone (above) and a lighter tone (below).
Tint: add white to any color.
Shade: add black to any color.
Tone: add grey to any color.
These are very basic descriptions and are not meant as a tutorial for any serious study of art theory. My purpose is to help you understand why some colors work together and other do not when making your own color choices in needlework projects.
In general, do not mix tones with tints and shades. If you are working with pure colors (no grey added) then stick to them. If you are working with colors that are softened with grey, like the rose pink or moss green mentioned above, then stay with them. In all creative endeavors, there are exceptions so if you mix it up and like the result, that’s great.
Color is all around us. All you go through your daily routine, make note of how colors are used together. Take pictures of color schemes that catch your eye and put them in a file together … (can you say Pinterest?!) … even if the subject matter is not needlework. As your “color collection” grows, really look at it. I suspect that you will soon see a common color scheme develop. The next time you need a color scheme, you’ll know just where to look!
Stitch. Enjoy. Love.
PS: It’s not too late to join us on the third annual Stitchers’ Escapes cruise from Southampton, UK to Bruges, Belgium; Hamburg, Germany; and Oslo, Norway. Registration closes June 1, 2018.