Color Part 8 - Color combinations

“Colour, colour, what colour do I choose?” – playground song.

“If you want to produce great brightness, you must oppose to it a very dark shade: so a pale yellow will cause red to appear more beautiful than if opposed to a purple color.” - Leonardo da Vinci

What to wear with a blue skirt, what colour letters would look nice against a pale green background, what shade curtains for a pink wall, what colour underwear goes with dark skin? Lemme give you some ground rules that if followed, will start you off. These are just for raising confidence levels; later just be yourself, trust your instincts and flout the rules.

1. Anything goes with white, black and grey.

· These are neutrals and won’t affect or be affected by neighbouring colours. But other considerations should guide you. For example, light-grey, pencil-thin lines on a white shirt gives a subtle look but light grey text on a white poster can’t be read. Read, not red! Grey clothes on a cloudy day won’t get you a second look. Inspired by “Girls in white dresses with red satin sashes,” wearing a red sash on a snow white gown gets you lots of looks especially if you are male.

2. Bright red on blue, or on green produces a violent pulsating effect. If that’s what you want, go ahead. What fashion designers and graphic artists do is to have red and green (or blue) motifs on a white field to retain the vivacity without the violence. Charged with potential dynamism! Like a lovesick couple caught in polite society. Or boxers waiting for the bell.

3. If you see a nice colour scheme, remember it. You can use it somewhere later. But, also don’t just remember blue and green, or green and violet. How pale or how dark are the colours? Is the green a yellow green or a bluish green? Bluish violet or reddish purple? Mauve? Turquoise? Warm Grey? Cool grey?

I recently just picked the predominant colours of a Rubens painting and used it in my illustrations to get an old world colour scheme. You may do the same thing with a photo of a landscape to get a safe palette. Nature rarely goes wrong. Keep copying combos till you become a master colourist.

4. Even if you think you can’t draw, have fun with crayons, paint and dyes. Being with colour, thinking about it, reading about it, and talking about it, will exercise your colour muscle, if there’s something like that. You will derive your own favourite colour combos. More on this in the hub on décor.

One colour with another gives a new meaning. Like a boy and girl together give new meaning. Like Laurel and Hardy gave new laughs. One colour is the other’s catalyst and their resulting conversation is different from the sum of their soliloquies.

1. Orange by itself means the things mentioned earlier, but orange and blue is more vibrant. Orange and black means Halloween while orange and green give a tropical look for travel posters or crush bottles. Orange with browns mean autumn, with a dash of blue or violet to signify cold. Orange and pinks together take us back to hippie days.

2. Red and green is Christmas to some and ethnic Indian cholis and skirts to others.It could remind people of strawberry, tomato and watermelon. Red, blue and white is the combo of the US, UK and French flags. Add yellow to this mix and you get a super-alien who became an American citizen.

3. Green with blue is Mom Nature: the sea, waterfalls in the woods, fields under sky…Green with brown, too, but this is more warm and earthy. Truly agricultural. Green with yellow is lemon or mango, greedy fellow.

4. Blue and white is nautical, blue with grey is ultraformal, light blue and pink are nursery colours.

5. Browns and its tints and shades give a formal look combined with blues or greys.

6. Turquoise with pinks and cream is a feminine combo, like purple and pink, while turquoise with black isn’t necessarily feminine – only soft and cool. With orange or yellow, T is a sporty chap.

7. Sometimes a variant of one of a pair of clashing colours or variants of both can work. Red clashes with green, but watermelon pink and rind green seem to be friends. Salmon and Navy Blue is better than Bright Orange and Cyan.