![]() Newton did something extraordinary with his scale of colors! First, look at how mathematician and philosopher Descartes created a circular representation of the musical scale pictured on the left (Newton studied Descartes as an undergraduate at Cambridge). BIV is the acronym for Newton’s spectrum?). Newton named these colors Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet (do you know ROY G. Just like musical notes, these visual colored notes can be combined to create new chords. Newton thinks “ah-ha!” when he makes this comparison and decides there are 7 individual colors in his visual spectrum to correspond with 7 notes of the musical scale. In a musical scale of 7 notes, individual notes can be combined to create new chords and harmonies. He figured that just as sound in a ringing bell or musical string creates waves traveling through the air sensed by our ears, so also the rays of light reflecting from an object create waves that the eyes sense as colors. Newton gave a lot of thought to this visual spectrum and began to make comparisons between these colors in the spectrum and musical notes in a scale. When Newton refracted bright sunlight through a prism in a darkened room, he saw a bright band of colors like a rainbow. He named this band of colors the spectrum (from the Latin word “spectrum” meaning ghostlike apparition). I bet that Isaac Newton is the last name you’d associate with modern color wheels (unless you’re a total color theory geek like me)! Newton first experimented with light and prisms in 1666. The first color wheel is over 300 years old! Next week we will look at how to use either of these color wheels to find color harmony with fabrics and get inspired to try some new color combinations.Īs a bonus, at the end of this post you’ll find our free PDF printable Color Wheel Basics cards to help you remember what you’ve learned! Look for the free download and instructions on how to print and assemble your set of cards at the end of the post. It turns out that you can easily apply color theory to colored fabrics, and in this week’s post we’ll take a closer look at what a color wheel is, and learn about the three most commonly used color wheels. ![]() The fabric color wheel above is inspired by one of those basic assignments creating a 12-step red/yellow/blue color wheel. I’ve read lots of books about color theory both old and new, and even recreated some of those basic color theory assignments from my college days with fabrics instead of paint. I recently became interested in revisiting color theory again to see how it could be applied to color in fabrics. Having the freedom to mix almost any color with paints is a lot different than working with the colors you are limited to in fabrics. I first learned about color theory while studying fine arts in college, completing lots of basic color assignments with paints. Did you know even quilters and sewists have been using a color wheel to help with fabric color choices? Even machine embroiderers can use a color wheel to help pick out thread colors for embroidery designs! If you haven’t tried using a color wheel before (or maybe never even heard of one) and would like to learn more about using this tool to help with selecting and coordinating fabrics, this is the series for you! Color wheels are not just for artists anymore they are used by all kinds of creative people working with color-florists and landscape designers, decorators and interior designers, graphic designers, filmmakers, and comic book artists.
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