Colour Wheel

My relationship with colours

The process of choosing colours for my creations is exhilarating. Embarking upon a design requires me to trust my intuition and not go overboard with my colour choices. It requires me to balance between my mindful self and not so mindful self, controlling of colour patches and letting go. I react to the changes, each time I toy with the palette on a design illustration. This constant process creates a ‘conversation’ while creating an ensemble of blouses, thence, hopefully carried on by my clients, the beautiful people who wear them.

Isaac Newton’s Colour Wheel theory fascinated me from my little girl days. We learnt to put blobs of paint in a circular shape like a wheel. The colours from each blob was mixed together to derive new and different colors never seen before. The colour wheel had every hue from bright yellow to crimson red.

It was a total thrill to learn that RED, YELLOW & BLUE are Primary colours. Coded as the core colours, the primary colours are robust, stand alone shades that form the base for the numerous other colours, derived by the process of mixing. The sophisticated Secondary colors are derived from mixing primary colors. Orange is a combination of red and yellow. PURPLE comes from a mix of red and blue. Spectacular Tertiary colors are formed from mixing primary and secondary colors to obtain unique shades of Grey, Coral, Aquamarine, Dusky browns and Burnt oranges. The combinations are endless.

Over the years as I progressed to being a designer, since my first design class with my teacher Ms. Chandravadini, the universal concept of primary, secondary and tertiary colours opened doors to endless possibilities. Thus began my passionate journey of celebrating colours in my designs for ethnic Indian women’s clothing.

My relationship with the Colour Wheel continues… never to stop. Well, Not yet!