Let's Talk Colours Part 2

In the last post we discussed colour families, the difference between colour schemes and palettes and of the different types of colour schemes. In this post I want to delve deeper into colours and talk about warm and cool colours and about how to use them. Also what the heck is SHTT?
If this is your first visit here, welcome! There is a Let's Talk About Colours Part 1 in a previous post. It's in this post where you'll be able to download a RYB colour wheel to print for a reference. For those of you who already have your colour wheel, you may want to grab it before you proceed.

Warm and Cool Colours
If you were to draw a line starting from in between the colour purple and magenta straight across the colour wheel circle to in between chartreuse and yellow, you will have divided your wheel into cool and warm colours. All colours from magenta to yellow are warm colours and all colours from purple to chartreuse are cool colours. I kinda think that chartreuse could be considered both and that’s okay too.
If you think of colours that reflect daylight, like a sunrise or sunset then you are thinking of warm colours. If you think of colours that reflect water or the sky then you’re thinking of cool colours. I was thinking about the seasons of the year and how the colours represent them. Spring and Summer are represented will using both warm and cool colours, Autumn by using warm colours and Winter by using cool colours.

When making colour choices for card making, always take these into consideration, the theme for the card, the time of year and the most important one of all is the person that the card is being made for. Does that person have a favourite colour? Usually when you have one colour down it’s easy to find other colours to go with it by using a colour scheme.

Let's quickly talk about Saturation. The more saturation a colour has the more vibrant and intense the colour is, when the saturation of a colour is decreased the colour becomes darker. A very low or no saturation of a colour will make it look grey.

What the Heck is SHTT?
Well when you sound out the acronym it’s definitely not hard to forget *chuckle. SHTT stands for Shade, Hue, Tone and Tint. Have you ever used a photo editing program? Now most smart phones have fancy cameras and a photo editing program along with them. If so then you may be familiar with how these work.

Hue is the dominant colour family of a specific colour. Pink is a mix of colours but the dominant hue would be red.

Tint is when a colour has been lightened, this can be achieved by adding white to lighten the colour. Pastel colours are a result of tinting.

Shade is when a colour has been darkened by using the colour black. I like to think of standing in the shade of a tree. There is less light and so everything is darker.

Tone is when a colour has been mixed with equal amounts of black and white, or pure grey, it doesn’t darken the colour like shading but it does dull the intensity of the colour.
The colour wheel below shows the difference of each.

Now that we’ve learned about SHTT, we can discuss what a monochromatic colour scheme is.

Monochromatic Colour Scheme
A monochromatic colour scheme is when you use all of the varieties of one hue. Adding a tint, a shade and a tone to one hue will create a range lighter and darker versions of this colour. You can make a greeting card using this colour scheme too.
​Here is an example of a monochromatic colour scheme

I hope this helps when it comes to choosing colours for your card making.  
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Thanks for stopping by!
Anita