Explorations in Color - Swatching it Square!

I am often amazed at the color combination's designers create. A friend and I were talking about this recently when I began to think that there must be a way to come up with unexpected color combination's. I have read about the basic principles of color theory, and I do have a color wheel that was a great help to me when I created a scrap afghan. But, I thought, there must be something on the web that I could use - and I was right!

http://swatchspot.com/

Using this site you can create 6 random color choices. You can also lock one or more of the color choices and choose shuffle colors to change the unlocked colors.


Swatch #1

My first try I kept it completely random and decided I would crochet up a traditional granny square of 5 colors, matching the colors to yarn as closely as possible. I chose to leave out the bright green color, and to use the colors as displayed in order starting from the left.

I was pleasantly surprised and I really like the color combination! They are definitely not colors I would have thought of myself.









Swatch #2

For this swatch I decided to leave out the last color. And I didn't want to use another light mint green like I had in the first swatch, so I used a light gray color instead. I can't say that I like the colors, but it was a fun experiment in what colors I probably wouldn't use together.







Swatch #3

For this swatch I left out the blue colors and instead opted for a dark green for the last round. Not a surprising combination, but I could have used more of a gold color for round 4 instead of the buttery off white, which also would have worked well.





Swatch #4

For this swatch I kept choosing shuffle colors and locking in some of the brighter colors. I left out the dark brown in my granny square and again crocheted them in order of the color swatch. This was fun to play with, and I really like the color combo's except for the center beige color. It would have been better with a light pink or bright pink center.




I certainly enjoyed myself doing this experiment. And I will definitely use swatchspot.com in the future to explore other color combination's. Check it out if you have a chance and I'd love to hear about your own unexpected or "different" color combination's.