Recently, I've acquired some color tools. I thought it would be helpful to post a series of reviews about different color tools. Which ones are best suited for which circumstances? Which ones would be most helpful based on what type of help you most need?
First up, Palette Scout from Zollie.
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| pure hue upper left, plus 2 shades; bottom are two light tones |
This one is the most expensive of all my color tools. I bought the full bundle which includes the card pack plus the online color theory course, match guides, and palette suggestion pdfs. The whole thing normally sells for more than $100. I purchased it as part of a Black Friday 50% off sale. Good for me. If all you want is the card pack, that costs about $30.
Bullet points:
- based on painter's primaries (red, yellow, blue)
- 18 hues in the color wheel
- 90 large cards — true colors on front and tones on back = 180 colors
- alphabetical color names
This color tool has a lot to recommend it. The box is sturdy, making this something you could toss in a craft bag. The swatch card pack has 18 hues. Each hue has 5 numbered cards, with 1 being a high tint, 3 being the pure color, and 5 being a dark shade. It reminds me of back when Sherwin Williams used to have the range of tints through shades on one long color swatch, instead of the little separate squares they have now. The deck has 90 color cards. When you flip them over, you have the same value range and hue but with the tone. There's a dot to indicate this swatch is a tone. Thus, you have 10 swatch examples of each color.
Colors are named in alphabetical order. Instead of "yellow" the first color is
"amber." The sequence progresses to "buttercup," "carrot," "daylily," and so
on. The names are evocative. Even better, you can sort your palette in
alphabetical order! It is very easy to tell if two swatches are the same hue
or related hues and, if related, in what way. I can tell from the sequence
that "buttercup" is a more yellow color than "carrot" and "daylily" is more
orange. Of all the innovations with this tool, alphabetical color names may be my favorite!
The cards also have symbols. This color wheel is built on the painter's
palette not the printer's palette, meaning yellow, red, and blue are the
primary colors. All three cards have a triangle on them. Secondary colors of
orange, green, and purple also have triangles on them. Tertiary colors have
either a square or a circle. Palette Scout has two tertiary colors between
each primary and secondary. Thus, "buttercup" is ⅔rd "amber" and ⅓rd "daylily"
while "carrot" is ⅓rd "amber" and ⅔rd "daylily." The circles, squares, and triangles are used when picking colors to match traditional color theory schemes.
The deck has some cards that are not color swatches. There is a main color card for each of the 18 named hues. That card has the 10 swatch colors on the front. The back shows the basic color theory groupings for that color, including complementary, analogous, split-complementary, and triadic. The colors are shown with their symbols, but it isn't always immediately obvious which color is shown. Since all the colors have an alphabetical letter, it would be nice if the letter was included. Still, this is a quick way to pick a hue and see immediately 10 versions of that hue plus potential palettes.
There is a card that shows the whole rainbow in order with instructions on the back for how to put the card deck back in order. There's also a little instruction booklet. I'd prefer the instructions to have been just more cards with some sort of header and numbers to put them in order. Several pages of the instructions such as value versus tone would obviously lend themselves to a two-sided card.
The pdfs are helpful. Zollie is the home of Gist yarn. Thus, there is a pdf that tells you exactly which colors of Gist match which swatches. There are other guides including DMC thread, Hex Codes, and Prismacolor Pencils. It's nice to match the color tool to craft materials.
The online class videos were helpful. They covered basic color theory, but also went beyond the color wheel to include things like psychology and proportion. Each lesson has an exercise at the end. I found I needed to pause the lessons so I could select and manipulate my cards. The exercises broadened my thinking and got me used to using the deck. It took me a couple hours to work through the course, even though the videos are short. Taking your time pays off with this tool.
If Zollie offered an expansion pack, I'd like to see the ½ + ½ colors between the primaries and secondaries with maybe a diamond or star shape, although that would mess with the alphabetical names. Since this color tool is very aware of value, it would be nice to have a set of swatch cards in fine gray scale, maybe 10 or 20 steps. I'd also like the light reflective value printed on each swatch. Or maybe the swatches could have a symbol similar to a moon or a pie, colored in to indicate gray value? The online course asks you to put colors in value order at one point, but the solution isn't given and there's no way to check your work from the cards themselves. It would be nice to indicate whether a color is on the warm or cool side of the color wheel. I'd prefer a card with the rainbow on one side and the color wheel on the other, and a second card with the same information but for the tones. Finally, this tool is based on the painter's palette. For weaving and spinning which use optical mixing, I prefer the printer's palette.
Even with the caveats, I think this is a fantastic tool! It is also new. Maybe some of the updates I've suggested will appear in version 2.0? There are plenty of colors to sort. The swatches are a nice large size. Flipping to the tone side is very helpful for creating more sophisticated palettes. I find myself wanting to spend time looking at tones and learning them. With 180 swatches, there is a lot of opportunity to match colors to palettes you experience in the world. Again, the tones are very helpful, particularly for evaluating browns in furniture. Definitely recommend!
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