Value in Contrast
The lead article in the next issue of The Polymer Arts is about contrast, all types of contrasts. One of the harder to grasp ideas in the realm of contrast is color value. The difficulty comes in identifying differences in value. Value is the variation between light and dark. Generally we can see that yellow and purple are not only opposite colors, but also quite different in value–yellow comes across as light, and purple appears to be dark. But what about green and red? Or chocolate brown and royal blue? Or mustard and periwinkle? Even though the value difference can be hard to decide on, value is still perceived in an overall design. If you’re having trouble, there are a couple tricks to help you figure out how much value contrast you have in a piece.
One, if you are having a hard time identifying colors with value contrast in your piece, then you likely don’t have much value contrast. That may or may not be okay, depending on how you want the piece to come across. If your piece is looking boring or flat, increasing the value contrast would be something to investigate. And if you want to identify the value differences so you can decide what to change, a really easy way to do this is to take a black and white photo of your piece, or change a color photo of it to “grayscale” in your favorite photo editing software.
Value is easy to find in work that is created without color. This lovely necklace by Nathalie of 100% Bijoux is all about value. Without color, the contrast between black, white, and gray is all she has to carry the drama in this piece, and she does that quite well. It’s a great example of how important value can be, and the contrast is easy to see without the distraction of color.
We discuss many more elements of design that can be contrasted to add interest and drama in the upcoming Winter 2013 article. We’ll be putting the mailing list together early next week for that first batch that mails directly from the printer, so if you haven’t gotten your pre-order in or your subscription yet, it takes just a few clicks to order on our website. If you are a subscriber but are wondering if your subscription is up yet or not, we did send out the notice to all readers whose subscriptions are expired Tuesday morning (it might be in your spam folder if you’re thinking yours is expired). If it’s not there, you can also check your digital access emails (for digital subscribers), or write my assistant Lisa at connect@thepolymerarts.com and she can look it up for you.
