Imagine yourself walking down a busy city street teeming with people of all ages. As you look ahead, you see a flash of a patterned shirt when a young woman passes you. You may not take in all of the shapes, lines, or pattern construction, but what you will remember is the colour. In fact, comments on colour are what I get most often at my booth at the Farmers’ Market, or in response to a new pattern I present in this newsletter.
“I love that green. It reminds me of my garden!” or “Blue and white is my favourite combination. It’s just so relaxing and vintage.” or “That red really stands out.” Sound familiar? Instinctively, we know what colours work together based on what we see in nature. Green leaves beside blue lakes are peaceful. The red and orange strata of canyons and sunsets are bold and striking. The arresting sight of bright yellow and purple wildflowers spreading across a meadow can take your breath away.
Most of you are probably aware of the basics of colour theory. You may have heard of the colour wheel based on the longest to the shortest wavelengths of visible light.
Colour is an integral part of my pattern-building process. My tonal choices might be influenced by a historical period that is depicted in my motifs, a photographic reference that catches my attention, or even a monochromatic scale of tints and shades.
As a surface pattern designer, I work with colour palettes for every new piece of artwork. As I’ve developed my portfolio, I’ve been amazed to see how different colour palettes really change the visual personality of a pattern. A design that looks classic in an expected palette can suddenly take on a modern flair with a more current set of colours. In the pattern world, these palettes are called colourways.
Here’s a real-world example. In my Arabesque on Point collection of patterns, I began with a more traditional colour palette of blues, reds, and dark greens, reflective of the historical norms of early Arabesque printed patterns. To develop a second colourway, I found a beautiful source image of a mosque at sunset, with the warm light reflecting off the limestone and the amazing deep shades from the Islamic mosaics and glass decoration. I built the new colour palette by sampling 12 colours from this image, ranging from bright orange sunlight and cyan sky to deep teals and reds. In some ways, this second colourway would be very at home in the 1980s, with just a few more neon colours thrown in! These colours create a different mood and aesthetic for the very same pattern motifs.
In this second example from my Geometricalities collection, my initial colourway is again more traditional, based on green and red with a light cream and neutral tan. In the alternate colourway, I’ve used a primarily complementary palette with dark pinks and teals. The negative, cream coloured space in the first example is completely flipped in the second, with the dark pink visually advancing, as do all warm colours. Your eye is immediately drawn to the curly spaces between the motifs, alongside the dark maroon floral shapes.
Two different colour approaches to the same pattern create a real contrast.
Colour has also been important in my handmade and photographed drawings that I’ve transformed into patterns. In these cases, I often begin with an analogous or complementary scheme using my markers and fineliners and build from there. Here you can see the basic triad of red, blue, and yellow tones.
Three patterns within the same colourway work well together.
The next time a pattern catches your eye because of its colour, take a moment to notice what you see and how it makes you feel. Colour is constantly shaping the way we experience the world around us, often before we even realize it.
Reviving A Piece of My Pattern History
At this point in my pattern designing journey, I’ve developed more patterns than I can remember. Some of them were made in response to a design prompt from an educator or course, others from my own internal inspiration or from what I see around me everyday.
As we get into the last few months of the year, I decided to make a couple of Christmas themed patterns. But as I was about to get started with my blank page in front of me, I remembered that I’d already created a small collection of seasonal patterns a couple of years ago.
With that in mind, I decided to revive this theme of Winter Angels, inspired by snow angels, snow flakes and radial repeats. Repeating a small slice of a design around 360 degrees is as old as pattern making itself. Stylized florals are radial repeats, as are stars, and even simple shapes like hexagons. I decided to make a few figures in the midst of making snow angels into a stylized snow flake and then put them against a snow storm background. I’ve just finished up my fall order and have ordered some tea towels and table runners with this design.
Winter Angels in Cinnamon Colourway
Lots of Fans!
Here's a little something for your personal use from my Geometricalities collection. This could be a digital background or printed off for a card. Use your imagination! Thanks for reading :) FreebieDownload-100.jpg
Where does your eye go first?
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