Colour Theory 101: Value and Low Volume

Welcome to the final theory post in the Colour Theory for Quilters series. Today's guest post is by Rebecca of Making Rebecca Lynne - she has done an amazing job explaining Value and Low Volume.

Let us see shall we?  So far we have learned about The Color Wheel and Color Terminology which included all that good stuff having to do with primary, secondary, and tertiary color (<-- tertiary, my personal fav color family).  Then we became experts in combining color in Color Harmony and, not sure about you, but I certainly became a huge fan of this online color tool.  Last week we learned about Color Context and I love how Jennifer described context as "knowing what colors do, when they are all cozying up to each other" as I think that is the perfect segway into talking about low volume which we will get to a little further down in this post.

But, before we jump to Low Volume, we need to chat about Value.  Ready?  Let’s do it…

VALUE

In artsy terms, value is what we are talking about when we describe a color as "light" or "dark".  When we classify color as light versus dark we are describing its "brightness".  To be geeky uber-technical about it...warning: feel free to gloss over this if you are anti-geeky uber-technical by nature...value (or brightness) is based on the amount of light eminating from the color.  The more white the HIGHER the value, the less white the LOWER the value.  The easiest way to think of this is using a grayscale.  And of course this gives me an opportunity to use some fabric examples!

Of course the same value scale applies when we talk about any color...  Such as yellow for example.

Value Challenges for Quilters

To apply this information to what We Do as Quilters we need to recognize the challenges that we face in our medium...in other words fabric.  Painters, illustrators, graphic designers...pssht they've got it easy!  Quilters often use patterned fabrics that combine multiple colors and sometimes multiple values all in one swatch.  Depending on the scale of the fabric pattern if that swatch is cut in half the new swatch creates a change in value range.  For anyone who has ever tried organizing their stash in color order you know you've faced the question of "hunh, well where does this one fit in?"  The pile of fabrics I've depicted below demonstrates my "hunh" or "multicolored" fabric pile in my own stash. 

To get past this challenge, my advice is to use the monochromatic feature on your camera or computer to judge the value of a particularly challenging fabric.  I've done that here with the yellow example from above.  You can see through grayscale how the patterns still have an important role in value.

Creating Contrast using Value.

Right.  Okay, you get it, light versus dark, but why does this matter anyway?  Value is important because it allows us to create contrast.  If colors are close in value they will flatten, if they are varied in value then they will contrast and thereby create depth.  Too close in value = flat.  Far in value = depth.  Take the yellows up above, looking at them in grayscale you can see that the fabrics closer together in color blend together and fall flat.  But, I've taken the darkest yellow (low value) and the lightest yellow (high value) and paired them together below and now you can see the pop - value creating contrast.

        

This is example is also good because the darker yellow fabric has a lighter value pattern which, as you can see, also creates value contrast within the same piece of fabric!  Quilters, we have so many options!

However, if you've diligently read through these Colour Theory Posts then you don't need me to tell you Value is merely one way to create contrast.  Contrast can also be created with color through context as we learned in the last post.  In fact, to push this even further, as fabric enthusiasts we all know contrast can also be achieved by contrasting different textures or fabrics with different scaled patterns.  Oh fabric...how I love thee!  Quick Example?  Sure...

Value Contrast: As we've already seen above in the yellow, value contrast is an important consideration when pairing fabric.  See how it works with these blue solids I paired.  The depth is created by the range in the value.  The value pairing creates an impressive contrast in the grayscale.   This is why monochromatic pairings can often be so compelling.

Color Contrast : But as you already know complementary colors create a wonderful contrast as well and do not require a difference in value.  Complementary colors = Blue and Orange.  I kept the same blue from above but chose an orange with a similar value.  While things look rather flat in the grayscale in color the fabrics vibrate against each other.  And it follows that using complementary colors with different values results in a greater contrast.

LOW VOLUME

So why did I march you through the preamble about value and contrast above?  Well...low volume of course!  The trick to low volume is to consider value and how contrast is created in the ways I mentioned above such as color, pattern, scale, and value.  If I were to tell you that all the fabrics above are considered low volume you may scratch your head and say what?  If you have done any research into the recent low volume craze then you know that what is considered to be low volume covers a vast range. 

 

What is Low Volume?

To put it simply...low volume fabrics live in the high value range of the value scale.  Nevertheless, one visit to the low volume swap flickr page demonstrates that there is a broad scope of what different quilters think of as low volume!

First and foremost, there is no "wrong way" to do low volume.  Please, how ridiculous!  However, after hosting two Low Volume swaps and fielding a multitude of questions on what qualifies as low volume I have found that low volume can be divided into two larger categories.  Pop Low Volume and Muted Low Volume.

Pop Low Volume.  Best described as graphic prints amidst a neutral background, usually white.  This is the low volume style of Malka Dubrowsky who is credited with starting the concept of modern low volume in 2009 with an article she wrote for Quilting Arts magazine.  This style is still very popular four years after that article was written.  It is probably most commonly known in its implementation by Rita of Red Pepper Quilts.  I describe it as "pop" because the design style utilizes the high value background of the fabric as a foundation to allow the graphic print to pop out.  Place a number of these fabrics together in a quilt and voila you have a very cheerful, largely neutral quilt, with fun popping graphics playing against each other.  TIP:  If you gravitate towards this style of low volume look for fabrics with a large ratio of white, a single colored print or at the maximum a print composed of no more than two colors, and the simpler the pattern - the more graphic - the better.

Muted Low Volume.  "If quiet had a color this would be it." - Sarah from Issabella the Cat's daughter when describing Sarah's low volume quilt.   {Go check it out, Sarah's quilt features fabrics from the first Low Volume Fabric Swap hosted on my blog.}  Muted low volume really is, well, muted!  This style utilizes fabrics in soft colors found in the high value range such as light yellows, light purples, soft grays, tans.  This style is not new to quilting as using muted low volume fabrics can be found in every period of American quilting.  Today one source of its popularity amongst modern quilters can be attributed to the beautiful Sunday Morning Quilt featured in the pages of the book Sunday Morning Quilts.  TIP: Thinking of putting together a muted low volume quilt?  In addition to gathering fabrics in soft colors and muted tones also consider choosing fabrics with "soft patterns" such as florals, small dots, scripted text.  Notice the bold chevron print above, in addition to the soft colors the pattern has a sketchy quality to it which softens the normally striking angles of the chevron.  Smaller scale prints will work well in this low volume style but what works best is a combination of different prints paired together to add some interest to this type of low volume quilt.  

No matter which style of Low Volume you prefer here is are some things to consider when picking your fabrics for your next low volume project...

Low Volume Fabric Considerations

• fabric with a large ratio of white or neutral   

• consider the complexity of pattern

• minimal color contrast, a pattern with too many colors will distract from the neutral background

• color element, brighter/saturated color for pop low volume, soft colors for muted low volume

Well, the time has come for me to say goodbye.  I hope some of this information was helpful!  Clearly, I could go on and on about this forever but I am pretty sure Jess wants her blog back.  I'd love to hear your thoughts on value, low volume, design and pretty much anything quilt or art related!  Do stop by my blog and have a chat if you have the chance...

- rebecca lynne

Thanks so much Rebecca! Next week will be a series of guest posts from various quilters all about how they use colour and what inspires their colour choices.

Working with Value {a tutorial}

After struggling somewhat with the layout for my Retro Flowers quilt, and trying to balance the colours and values across the quilt top, my cry for help yielded some interesting ideas on ways to look at the distribution of value in fabrics. Some of you were interested in a post discussing this, so that's what I'm talking about today :o)

Put very simply, value refers to how light or dark a particular colour is. Value is also relative to the other colours around it. For example, a yellow next to a deep purple might have a light value, but if the same yellow was placed next to white it would have a medium value. Value is a very useful thing to understand in quilting, and can be used to create some pretty amazing effects.

TECHNIQUES FOR LOOKING AT VALUE:

Within a single colour group, it's reasonably easy to sort value by eye. For example, this set of greens:

The very light and very dark value greens are quite obvious, not quite so much for the three middle ones. There are a couple of quick and easy ways to figure this out.

Ruby Glass/ Value Finder

One readily available, cheap tool is a ruby glass, or value finder. It's essentially a see-through piece of red plastic (I would imagine red cellophane would also work.) When you look through the ruby glass, the colour of the fabric is washed out, and you're left with the relative value of each piece.

It was tricky to photograph, but this is the same set of greens photographed through the ruby glass. As you can see the mid-value greens are difficult to separate even with the colour washed out. The third and fourth could possibly even be switched around.

One negative aspect of the ruby glass is that it is not especially useful when looking at the value of red-based colours (red, pink, orange) as they all look extremely light.

Black and White Photos:

The other easy way to do it is by taking a photo and then using a photo editing program to change the image to black and white. I love Picmonkey for this - it's free, easy to use and quick.

Simply upload your photo, go to the second tab down on the left (Effects) and click on Black and White.

When you're working with fabrics with several colours in them (especially larger prints) and a wide range of different colours, working out their relative values can be a little trickier.

For example these Anna Maria Horner prints (the same ones I used in my Retro Flowers quilt, which is what inspired this post). I quickly laid these out, in roughly what I thought was value order.

This is the same set of fabrics, with the picture taken through the ruby glass. As you can see, the bottom four on the left have pretty much washed out as they're all red based colours. So not such a useful technique for looking at the relative value of this set of fabric.

But, if we make the photo black and white, it becomes easier to see the relative value. Because some of these have a large contrast in value within the one print, it is pretty subjective as to where it might be placed relative to the other fabrics. I also think it's a matter of experience - the more you practice looking a the value of different sets of fabric, the better you'll get - and honestly I'm a newbie quilter so I don't have a whole lot of experience ;o)

Based on the above photo, I rearranged them into what I thought might be value order.

As you can see from the black and white version, I could probably keep playing with the order to get a better array from dark through to light. The reason I've left the deep blues at the left hand side is that to me, the blue dominates more than the lighter colours in each of the fabrics (but that's probably quite subjective). Another thing to consider is that these are only small areas of the fabrics - if you wanted to get a really good idea of the value of large scale prints, it would work more effectively if you photographed a larger area.

I think this is a really good thing to practice, and something I will be doing when I'm designing quilts from now on :o)

LOOKING AT VALUE ACROSS A WHOLE QUILT:

The techniques above can obviously be used when looking at value distribution across a whole quilt. When I was playing around with the layout for my Retro Flowers quilt and asked for some feedback, there were a couple of other suggestions for techniques you can use.

'Pin It'

In my cry for help post, I had narrowed down my quilt layout to three options. Kathy clicked the 'Pin It' button, which then pops up all the photos from a web page so you can choose which one to add to Pinterest. She said this was a great way to compare the three layouts side by side and work out which one was the most balanced.

Changing the Image Size

A really great suggestion came from Susan (The Bored Zombie) about reducing the image size of your photo. Susan has been told that if you're image isn't interesting at 200x200 pixels, it probably isn't interesting larger either.

Picmonkey to the rescue again! Simply go to the 'Crop' button, and in the box where it says Actual Size, enter 200 in both the boxes. Click the button next to 'Scale Photo', and make sure you've dragged the crop box around your whole image. Then click the apply button.

This will reduce your photo to 200x200, which does make it easier to assess the value distribution. This is the 200x200 version of my Retro Flowers quilt top - and looking at this I probably could have distributed the value a bit better!

I hope this post has been helpful - I'm only just starting to learn about value and how to use it to good effect in quilts, so this is really just the tip of the iceberg as far as value theory goes. If you're interested in further reading, some very talented quilty ladies put together the Value Added QAL last year, and covered a lot of different aspects of how to use value in quilts for particular effects. The bloggers involved also designed four different quilts that rely strongly on value for their design.


Understanding Value with Leila at Where the Orchids Grow
Leading the Eye with Value with Amy Badskirt
Value Patterns in Quilts with Rachel at Stitched in Colour
Value Dynamics with Jolene at Blue Elephant Stitches


xx Jess