Color Theory 102 – Blends Gradients and Ombre

Monochromatic Scheme is the technical term for blends, Gradients and ombre’s

In lesson 101 “The basics” we touched up on Tones, Tints and Shades. These elements of color theory are the basis to creating blends, Gradients and Ombre effects.

Think of Blends Gradients and Ombre as cake recipe, you start of with your dry ingredients and slowly add you wet ingredients, the more wet ingredients added the thinner/lighter the mixture becomes the more dry ingredients added the thicker/heavy the mixture becomes

As we learned in lesson 101, a tint is made by taking a hue and added white to it giving us a tint of color. To create a gradient we simply keep adding increasing amounts of white.
Here is an example by taking Red and adding increasing amounts white to create a gradient effect

The same goes for Tones by adding increasing amounts of Grey

and the same for Shades by adding increasing amounts of Black

Understanding the value of hues is key! Values are the degree of lightness or darkness of a hue. We will looking to this element later on in Exploring Colors.

So do they work.. lets see .. Here I have made up some samples using the theory above.

But what happens when you favorite yarn does not have that prefect color to create a seamless gradient…. Well a neat trick is to blend in the nearest match but gradually adding in the color to your work..

When working with colors that you want to blend into another a neat trick is to gradually add them to your project. Here I have gradually added new colors by introducing the new color by one, then two rows at a time

This also work great with non-gradient colors

I hope you have found this lesson useful, next weeks lesson we will go over Color Harmony.. What colors in theory compliment each other!

Homework:
This weeks homework, I want you to play with you scarp ends (I know you yarn addicts have some). By wrapping them around a pencil, ruler or piece of card I want you to come up with a gradient or blend. Snap a pic and head on over to the Pippin Crochet club to enter in this weeks giveaway. (Giveaway ends Jan 18)

Next in the series…..
Color Theory 103 – Color Harmony
Color Theory 104 – Exploring Colors
Color Theory 105 – Presentation is key