Use neutrals to bring balance and harmony to your color palette

Welcome to part 3 of my series on how to use color for wet felting. In the first 2 parts we’ve looked at some of the basic concepts behind the color wheel.

So, now you know about

• warm and cool colors
• and monochromatic palettes

as well as

• complementary
• triadic
• and analogous colors.

There’s only one last concept I’d like to add: the concept of neutral colors.

Neutral colors are white, black, grey, and brown. But they’re also those colors that can be difficult to define. They live somewhere between the ones I’ve just mentioned.

They show up in Nature in sand, rocks, and shells. We call them off-white, cream, tan, beige, taupe, ivory. They can also have a bit of blue, yellow or pink in them. They can be warm or cool, depending on the colors they were created from.

Neutrals complement the colors from the color wheel. They reduce overwhelm, they’re easy on the eyes and create a peaceful atmosphere. So, adding them to your color palettes can really help you create harmony.

Let’s see some examples. Have a look at the images below. On the left, you have two examples of complementary colors. Now look at the image on the right, where I’ve added a neutral (brown). Can you see how much more appealing and harmonious the color palette becomes?

This is what happens in a monochromatic scheme too. You’re actually only adding different amounts of white or black (both neutrals) to one color, to create a peaceful and harmonious palette.

Had you ever thought about the effects of adding neutrals to your palettes? If not, I hope I can encourage you to try this out in your next project.

Join me next time, for the fourth and last part of this series. We’ll be looking at how we can mix all we’ve talked about until now.

See you then!

Vanda