- 1 pure hue
- 2 tints
- 2 tones
- 2 shades
The back of each card shows the color wheel, the location of the hue, and the
color schemes of two different split-complementary, complementary, triadic,
and analogous. Each card has both a number for the hue and a letter, so you
can put the cards back in order. The bottom has the RGB, CMYK, and Hex codes
for each color.
 |
| top row 2 shades, 2 tints, pure hue on right; bottom back side of 2 tones |
In addition to the 168 color cards, there are 32 neutral cards, four groups of
8 cards with each group ranging from a deep shade to a pale tint. There are
three brown groups with blue, red, or yellow casts. And there's a set of 8
value cards running from black to white.
Having nice-sized cards is very helpful when creating color schemes. You can move cards around, but more importantly, you can overlap them to adjust proportions.
I like that the deck is CMYK and has 24 colors. Fiber arts is optical mixing.
For spinning, knitting, or weaving, you want the printer's color wheel not the
painter's color wheel.
I very much like the inclusion of gray-scale and brown cards. Browns can be very difficult to use in design. If you are doing interior design work, you may be dealing with a stone fireplace, hardwood floors, wood trim, furniture, or other brown/neutral objects. Being able to discern a warm brown from a cool brown is a big help.
I like the inclusion of RGB, CMYK, and Hex codes. Would have loved for light
reflective value to be included, the way it is on the back of paint chip
cards. For the gray scale cards, I would have preferred markings indicating
things like 25%, 50%, 75% and so on.
There are a few things I don't like.
I prefer Palette Scout's approach to putting the colors in order, tint to hue
to shade. And I prefer Palette Scout's approach to putting tones on the back.
Of course, with the Essential Color Card Deck, I can just rearrange the cards.
But it is much easier to pull out a stack of five already in grayscale order.
Palette Scout has the full tone range, while the Essential Color Card Deck
does not, since it has two tones not five.
The back of the cards has the color wheel for the pure hue only. It would have been a big help to show the color wheel in tint, tone, or shade for those cards. I know that would have been a lot more work to make — a different back for each card, instead of the same back for all cards of one hue family. But I think seeing the color wheel in different gray scales would be a huge help. Value and proportion are the two things that mess me up when working with color. Having the color wheel in different gray scales could make dealing with value difference easier.
All that said, Essential Color Card Deck is still an excellent addition to
your collection of color tools. For me, the basis in the printer's palette, as
well as the gray scale cards and the browns make it worthy of space among my
crafting tools.
Comments