Lighting, Shading and Color Placement
Previously, I've shared how I choose the color palettes for each of my quilts. I'm often asked about my process, and I always enjoy sharing my inspiration boards.
Color placement is another aspect of color that I don't talk about very often. Why do I place certain colors where I do within each quilt?
It’s all about lighting! I use a lot of inspiration photos from nature to solidify my color choices, but I also try to mimic the way sunlight plays into these natural landscapes to capture some of their essence.
The way sunlight streams through the trees creates a bright spot in the leafy canopy. This inspired me to use an ombre fabric for the background of my Fall Foliage pattern.
I figured that if I could create a bright spot in the background as the leaves tumbled down, I could capture that warm, fall-afternoon sunlight vibe.
Here you see my lighting inspiration pics for my Entangled Sky pattern. I used these same photos as my color inspiration, but it's the way light is used that makes the three-dimensional structure pop.
Imagine the light source coming from one direction, like at sunset, which makes it easier to narrow down color placement for a dynamic effect.
When choosing fabrics, this idea helped me select a distinct light, medium, and dark shade in each color. Once I’d built the blocks, the inspiration photos helped me decide how to layer the colors. I was going for a latticework look of clouds against a fading blue sky.
Happy Sunday, everyone,
Krista
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