The Non-Colors and Metallics: All About Color, Part III

Gray scale in five steps, from black to white

Technically, black is not a color, but rather the absence of color. If we are talking about light, there isn't any. (For more background, see All About Color Part I and Part II.)  If we refer to pigment, black has absorbed all the colors. Theoretically, if you want to make black pigment, you can do so by combining the 3 primary colors, the 3 secondary colors, or the 6 tertiary colors in the right proportions. Most of us just buy the black materials. 

Raven sculpture from J.D.'s collection

Culturally, black has been handicapped by negative connotations, particularly in Western cultures. It is associated with death and mourning,  When I was a child, people still placed black mourning wreaths on the doors of homes where someone had died. In old Western movies, the "good guys" could always be identified by their white hats, while the "bad guys" wore black hats. In some cultures, black cats, dogs, and birds like crows and ravens were messengers of disaster.  Black signifies night, the unknown, mystery and intrigue. We talk about "black moods" caused by depression or suppressed anger.  "Black magic" indicates witchcraft.  A "black mark" against us is harmful to our reputations.  Even when opinions and customs change, such expressions linger in the language.

Ancient Egyptian agriculture

On the other hand, the "little black dress" is the height of fashion —  sophisticated (and slimming). Black satin, velvet. and lace are romantic fabrics. If we are out of debt, we are "in the black". Black automobiles and other vehicles are extremely popular.  A black tuxedo evokes elegance and important occasions. Black print is still the easiest to read. (Please take note, manufacturers of who think printing contents and directions in pale yellow on light blue is even slightly effective!) I think the ancient Egyptians had the right idea. They celebrated black. It was the color of the soil in the Nile delta, which gave them life, health, and prosperity.  Black is indeed beautiful.

Annake's "Red, Red Rose" needlepoint, in progress

A black background makes other colors in a composition appear lighter, and brighter, making them appear to advance toward the viewer.  Artists who made good use of this effect were the Dutch still life painters who painted large, fanciful floral bouquets against deep black backgrounds.  I like using the technique in needlepoint.

Wrought iron wine rack

Black does not "clash" with colors. This makes it great for trimming, framing, hanging, etc.  It is a mainstay in many kinds of needlework I use black back-stitching in all sorts of needlework and make many samples of blackwork diaper patterns (for instance, see this post or this one.) Wrought iron furniture and accessories can be used indoors just as well as on patios.

White light is the presence of all colors. White pigment is the absence of all colors. It is useful for all sorts of backgrounds, from paper, canvas, and walls to picture frames and mats.  White wicker furniture is also fashionable indoors as well as outdoors.  White garments are associated with celebrations — weddings, christenings, graduations, etc.  White statuary and ceramics are elegant.  Many kinds of needlework are done on white canvas or linens. Colors appear darker on white than they do on other colors.  The colors that we call black and white are often just very dark or very light values of primary, secondary, or tertiary colors.

In Western cultures, white symbolizes innocence, from a baby's christening dress to a bride's gown. But in many Asian and some African countries, white is the color of mourning. A white flag is the signal for surrender;  a white feather, a sign of cowardice. A frightened person is "white as a sheet". To cover up something unsavory, we "whitewash" it. Again, we usually buy white fabric, paint, or yarn instead of trying to bleach the raw materials.

Begin with black and gradually add white and you get gray. Begin with white and add black to it gradually and you get gray. "True" gray is 50% black and 50% white. "Cool" grays have a bluish or greenish tint.  "Warm"  grays have a reddish or yellowish tint.

Cool gray vs. warm gray

"Barred Owl",  print by Annake

Gray also has negative connotations — gray skies, gray hair, gray clouds, ashes, lead. We talk of "gray areas" where there is confusion and inactivity and problems often don't get solved. It is considered a dull or depressing color.  In Nature, however, gray is a color that camouflages and supports gray wolves and whales, elephants, tree bark, fur, feathers — and on and on.

"Snow Leopard", print by Annake

An art instructor in a class I took in Panama called me a "color freak" and said that if something didn't have color in it that I didn't want to look at it. How wrong she was! Most of my serious artwork is done in #2 pencil, grades of graphite, charcoal, pastels, diluted ink, ashes — anything that gives me the effect that I desire. To me, gray is the color of structure — the contours of flesh and muscle, the bones beneath the skin — and of surfaces — the softness of fur,  sleekness of feathers, coarseness of bristles, roughness of scales, sharpness of spines.  Gray is the most tactile color I know.

You certainly don't need color to recognize the message in The Tiger Vanishes.

Poinsettias in gold and silver

Finally, I would like to say something about metallics.  This might refer to metal objects used to decorate a room, frames or hangers for artworks,  objects grouped for a still life painting or photograph — even to the settings for jewelry. But they also refer to metallic thread or floss, fabric, trimming, foils and paint. The first working of metals is usually credited to the ancient Middle East. Ancient cultures in that area, Egypt, and areas in and around the Aegean Sea used gold, silver, copper and bronze.

Pre-Columbian 24k Inca gold

Gold is a warm, shiny color. Gold (or gold-colored) ribbon, thread, rick-rack, beads, foil, etc., can enhance many kinds of compositions. In painting, golden objects have bright yellow highlights and darker yellow or orange overtones. Remember that objects — particularly shiny, reflective ones — cast shadows in their complementary colors. Therefore, a golden object will have a violet or blue-violet tinted shadow. Pure gold is very soft. My husband brought home a gold charm from the Orient.  I was surprised and disappointed to find out how soft it was and how little handling it took to blur its features. In order to be used for coins and jewelry the gold must be alloyed with a harder metal, usually silver. Pure gold is designated 24 k (karat); most jewelry is 14k to 18k.

Hammered copper pot

Copper is a very warm-colored metal with reddish and orange overtones. It was produced by smelting about 8,700 years ago in what is now Serbia, and is one of the most versatile metals. I like copper pots for decorating and copper wire for embellishments. Copper's shadows should contain blue or blue-green tones.

Cast bronze belt buckle

Bronze is an alloy of copper, tin, and occasionally other elements. It has many commercial uses. Artistically, it is very popular for casting large statues, smaller figurines, and trophies. Remember that Olympic medals are awarded in gold, silver, and bronze. Bronze was widely used in the Near East and the Aegean civilizations, gradually spreading as far as Scandinavia by about 2,300 BC (BCE). It was such a popular metal in Europe from at least 2,800 BC (BCE), to 1,200 BC (BCE), that this period was called the Bronze Age.

Brass insignia (US Army)

Brass is essentially an alloy of copper and zinc, widely used in some kinds of musical instruments.  Although it is used less frequently for jewelry and designer items, it is also warm. Brass can take a fairly high polish, but when it is placed next to gold. the difference becomes obvious. Its use as uniform buttons for military and police officers has led to the nickname for higher officials — who have more insignia and braid on their uniforms — to be referred to collectively as "the Brass". I use brass buttons occasionally for decorative purposes.

Silver concho

Silver is cool and shiny; it is widely used in jewelry, serving utensils, coinage and medals. Silver buttons and trims of various kinds can be used on garments or needlework. One art form in which gold and silver foil (very thin sheets) are used, and copper foil is becoming popular, is scratchboard. A picture or design is incised in very fine lines on the foil so that a black background shows through. A heavier copper foil can be used in embossing.  The foil is placed over a mold of fairly hard material and then pressed over the mold with an embossing tool.  All kinds of foil, including the decorative ones used by florists, can be used in collages.

Pewter tankard

Pewter is made of tin and lead. It was used widely in dishes until the toxicity of lead was realized. I love the soft look of it, only slightly reflective. Look at this pewter tankard.  Think of the challenge in portraying it accurately with graphite and pastels.

Embrace the non-colors!

"Winter Scene", print by J.D.

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Our New Print Series: Some FAQs

Barred owl print by Annake

Hi — J.D., Annake’s Garden Gnome here. Annake is feverishly working away on at least three upcoming posts, planning for something special on the coming Earth Day, and grinding away on the final chapters of the first of several e-books we hope to publish later this year. She’s asked me to step in here to give explanations of the whys, hows, and wherefores of what we are doing with the series of prints we have been rolling out for sale. The first draft of this post was much longer than what we try to hold these posts to, so I’ve pared it down to a fairly spare set of FAQ’s.



Why are you suddenly putting all this emphasis on prints?

A number of trends and circumstances came together over the winter: an enthusiastic reception for Annake’s drawings at the late art and crafts shows last year and to their use as gifts over the holidays; a change in emphasis for Annake’s Garden, moving toward a more gallery-oriented business model; Annake’s quest for more and better studio space, and the need to cull decades worth of old notes, projects, clippings and unidentified STUFF out of the way to make room for current projects; the need to upgrade my graphics editing capabilities to meet the increasing technical requirements involved in various projects we’ve taken on; and, last but not least, a very long/cold/wet/gray winter and early spring which limited a lot of activities we usually engage in.

Why are all the prints black and white? Annake’s needlework is so colorful, I was hoping for prints that were, too…

Scan of a watercolor by Annake, not ready for printing yet

They are in the works. Our plan is to keep things as simple as possible to begin with — and color reproduction opens a whole new can of worms, so we are going to introduce color to our line slowly and carefully. Differences between types and brands of color printers, the difference between what you see on your computer monitor and what comes out of the printer, even the differences between the way different screens render colors make getting consistent quality a REALLY complicated job.

Annake is hand-tinting some new drawings for our Earth Day post. I’m going to do my best to get good electronic reproductions of those into the shop as soon as possible. Look for a few of my photos, and maybe some of J.J.’s, to show up there in the next few weeks. A lot more color is on the way, but it’s coming on baby steps.

Most of those ‘black and white’ prints we are offering are actually in gray scale, which might make a difference if your printer insists on sucking the color ink cartridges to make grays the way our HP does. I told you it was complicated.  Speaking of the complexity of doing things in color, look for Annake’s first post in her new series on using color in needle arts (and other arts) in May.

Leopard print in gray scale (left) and true black & white. We prefer the detail in gray scale.

Why so many animals, with just a few prints of people, no landscapes, no still lifes…?

A lot of the reason is just timing — it’s Spring, all the animals are coming out of hibernation, new babies are being born, new life is on peoples' minds — it’s part of our culture this time of year, and reflected in our holidays:   Easter, Arbor Day, even the relatively new addition of Earth Day. We’re just reflecting the calendar. Also, Annake is wrapping up her series of posts on landscapes and seascapes — and those final posts happened to include animals as focal points.  Plus, we have long planned something special for Earth Day (April 22), and endangered animals seems an important issue to address for that post.

One of J.J.'s many critter photos

Annake really likes doing animals (she WAS a biology major in college, after all); and my sister, J.J., who has her own addiction to cute furry things, keeps feeding the flames with torrents of emailed photos she has taken; even I have been know to take photos of animals (when I can get them to sit still long enough) so we have lots of raw materials for new posts and projects. It just makes sense to take the editing process for these a few steps further to produce something suitable for sale.

Ferret (print of pen-&-ink sketch)

Finally, we already had a lot of nearly camera-ready material to work from. Annake does a lot of preliminary sketching and plotting before she begins major needle arts projects like her “Close Encounter” series or the American wildlife set she has done (and plans more of) on canvas.  She returns to the theme of endangered species often in a number of media. Many of those preliminary drawings don't make the cut for technical reasons like the size, orientation, or materials of the final project. It’s a lot less expensive in materials and time to sort out the problems on paper than fix them halfway through a major needlework piece. If you follow this blog, you have already seen the genesis of the wolf, which became a needlepoint piece last fall, and the black-maned lion, a piece done several years ago that we revised the original plan for and made into a print. The grizzly was a sketch that didn’t quite fit for the bear-and-bumblebee piece we showed you in progress. The ferret to the left was a first sketch for the “Close Encounters” quickpoint we showed in earlier days of this blog. That needlework was one of our first sales on Etsy.

While it sometimes requires Annake to do quite a bit of extra work to make one of these drawings suitable for printing (the lion, for instance, took several days of modifications before she was satisfied with it), it 's still a lot less time and material intensive than creating a new needle artwork. We’ll be adding all the genres you mentioned above (and others) as the seasons move along — but the animals will keep coming back.

Why are you only offering one size of print? Other places online have prints of the same pictures in a variety of sizes…

Same print in three frame sizes

This is our first venture into selling print-your-own, downloadable files — we assume there are going to be bugs and glitches, so we are trying to keep things as simple as possible until we are sure the system works the way it is supposed to. Adding more choice of sizes is our first priority after that. The files we are offering will print on 8.5 x 11 inch (U.S. standard document size) paper, so they can easily be trimmed to fit any 8 x 10 inch (U.S.) picture frame, should fit most off-the-shelf commercial mattes for 11 x 14 inch frames, and will even print on A5 (UK standard) paper with a minimum of fiddling — just center the print all around. That is a pretty wide variety of choices to start with.

Why are you using .pdf files? I was expecting JPEGs or some other graphic file format…

Basically, the same answer:  to keep things as simple and predictable as possible while we iron out the wrinkles in the process. PDFs (Portable Document Files) are specifically designed to produce identical results across all platforms, regardless of operating system, hardware differences, or bandwidths; nearly everyone, everywhere has or has access to free PDF reader software; so these files will print the way they are suppose to on just about any home printer and can be handled by any commercial print shop anywhere in the world.

Boy, there sure is a difference between the styles of some of these prints… were they really done by the same artist?

Originally done as needlepoint pattern

Yes, they really were: if it has Annake’s signature, it is her original work. Please remember that these were done 1) for a wide variety of purposes: what is appropriate for planning a big needlepoint project is very different from what is useful for teaching a class of 10 year-olds; 2) made over a very broad stretch of time; and, 3) done in a variety of media. Although these versions are all for printing on digital printers, the originals were sometimes in pencil,  marker, charcoal, or pen — often on just whatever was handy at that particular time and place.

Originally done as a demonstration for elementary students, pencil versus  pen & ink

Does this mean Annake is going to stop doing needlework to concentrate on these prints?

A new needlepoint, still unframed

Oh, Good Heavens, NO! While some of these drawings were made specifically to turn into prints (mostly to fill out sets and series — Annake prefers to do things in sets), most of them are byproducts of other projects: preliminary sketches, additional illustrations to make a point in articles, examples done for teaching purposes, and sometimes just for fun. Turning them into products to sell is pretty much my responsibility while Annake pursues her next endeavors.





I hope this set of FAQs answers most of your questions about what we are doing, and why — and that you’ll take advantage of this new opportunity to own some of Annake’s original artwork, quickly and inexpensively.

J.D., Annake’s Garden Gnome, sitting in for...

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Fog, Flashing Lights, and Flotsam: Seascapes, Part III

Surf & Rainbow, photo by J.J.

It is foggy this morning. Fog is essentially a cloud that has dropped to ground level. The tiny droplets of water that we feel on our faces as mist are not large or heavy enough to fall as rain, nor are they cold enough to start crystallizing into snowflakes.  Fog is relatively rare in this high, dry country. It is usually welcome because it brings the promise of rain or snow to this drought-damaged region. I can, however, remember a year when fog lingered from mid-December through mid-January,  leaving people short-tempered and depressed. Fog is an emotional thing.

Fog dampens sounds, distorts distances, and interferes with our sense of direction, making it easy to become lost. From an artistic standpoint, it reduces even a complex scene to a few basic shapes. That simplifies the scene and gets rid of a lot of clutter. Only the closest objects and the most distinctive shapes remain. Any source of light or reflection becomes a focal point. On the other hand, fog neutralizes the colors of everything. Fog is gray.

Grey-scale of photo by J.J.

In Part I of this series, we showed J.J.'s photograph of sunrise over the harbor. J.D. has shown it here in gray scale as it might have looked on a foggy morning. Old black-and-white snapshots could also give you more ideas for how things might appear in a light fog.

Much of my artwork lately consists of prints J.D. makes from detailed drawings I've done in graphite, charcoal, and black ink, so I am very interested in grays. I work with them practically every day. We think of grays as mixtures of black and white, but that is a very limited view. Very lively grays can be achieved by mixing complementary colors — the ones directly opposite each other on the color wheel. This technique can give you an array of warm grays, cool grays, soft grays, opaque grays, etc.

Simple color wheel

It is a good practice to mix complementary colors in needlepoint, particularly in shadows, which always show some of the complementary color of the object which casts the shadow. You might want to make some reference samples of this kind of work. You can do this with separate strands of floss or yarn. The strands can be twisted together or you can use them separately, side by side. Stitch fine lines of the colors close together on small swatches of fabric or canvas that you can keep for future reference. Hold the finished sample at arm's length to see how the blend appears. Keep and use the combinations you like best. Sometimes you may even get an iridescent effect. Orange and blue are complementary colors. Browns are grouped in the orange family of colors. I have gotten nice results with some mixtures of blues and browns. Try a cool greenish blue with a warm reddish brown, for example, or a purplish blue with a yellowish tan.*

Complementary colors from the wheel with their mixed grays

People have been going to sea for thousands of years. Many must have perished in fog, perhaps tragically close to safe harbors. Seacoast cities began building tall towers with large fires burning on top of them to serve as beacons.  The most famous one of these lighthouses was on the island of Pharos by the mouth of the harbor at Alexandria, Egypt. Built by Pharaoh Ptolemy II between 290 and 280 B.C. (BCE),  it was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.  It survived for more than 16 centuries before it was destroyed by an earthquake. Writers described it as 450 feet (135 meters) tall. Focused by huge polished bronze mirrors, its light could be seen 40 miles (65 km) at sea. There has recently been a magnificent computer reconstruction of it.

A U.S. lighthouse (public domain photo)

Many of these lighthouses were built along the coasts of the United States and some of the Great Lakes to guide ships by their fixed or flashing lights.  Their use has declined since World War II because so many vessels now use SONAR and GPS positioning systems. A few, mostly remotely controlled, are still in use. Others have become converted to tourist attractions, maritime museums, even private homes.  But the lighthouse is still a romantic structure, loved by painters, photographers, and fiction writers. Lighthouses are a popular subject for large photograph calendars. Now that 2019 has already begun, you may find these handsome pictorial calendars on sale for a reduced rate. They are good references for creating your own lighthouse design. Those of you who prefer landscapes to seascapes may be content with the small amount of ocean visible around a lighthouse.

Lighthouse collage by Annake

This picture is one of my collages, now belonging to J.D. Those of you who are quilters can probably imagine stitching a scene like this on top of a patchwork background. It would also be attractive done in trapunto, a type of decorative raised quilting, on a pillow top. In trapunto, two parallel lines are stitched through at least two layers of material to outline the design. Then the bottom layer has slits made in it and stuffing is inserted between the lines. If the lines are quite close together, a heavy cord,  instead of stuffing,  can be worked into the space between the lines.

Watercolor study for a wall hanging

The word flotsam comes to us from maritime law, where it referred to items deliberately dumped into the ocean from ships. Over the years it has come to mean anything that floats on the water. Much of this flotsam eventually washes up on beaches. Most of it is just garbage that needs to be removed in order to keep the beaches clean and safe. It is unsightly; some of it is dangerous. Nevertheless, an attentive person walking on a beach will find something attractive: pretty seashells, branches of coral, deep-sea fishing lures, glass floats, etc. These objects can be put together in collections or made into artistic arrangements.

The picture at the side of this section of the article is a watercolor sketch for a quickpoint wall hanging. It is 23 inches (58 cm) long and 9 inches (23 cm) wide. When the wall hanging is completed, it could be hung either horizontally or vertically.  I think I prefer to hang it vertically, so that is the way I have shown it here. A sketch in progress for a similar composition is shown horizontally, below. I have not chosen a final background color for that composition yet. Those of you who enjoy doing still life designs should enjoy putting together an assortment like one of these. A pattern like one of these, with a wider background, could also be used for a latch-hook rug.

Another watercolor study of flotsam

Think of a foggy day as a fortunate time to spend with a good book (or sketchbook) or to read blog posts like this one.

* Look for more on this subject in our series on using color, coming this spring,

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