mixing the colors

When working on faces or figures, the rendering of shape and volume must be particularly precise.
This is generated by the gradation of colors, from light to dark and vice versa.
With a little observation, you'll see that light doesn't necessarily mean white, and dark doesn't mean black. Far from it.

A whole palette of livelier shades lets us play with light and shadow.
The challenge is to find the right shade with the existing yarn palette. And sometimes often, the existing palette just isn't enough.

This is where the mixing of colors comes in, a bit like painting. You'll often find in my designs symbols with two colors in reference. In this case, I use two threads of different colors in the same needle (photo 1).

With a little digging, I even went as far as three on some models!
This simple technique allowed me to multiply my available color palette exponentially.
Over time, I refined the technique and now use it for applications that are both varied and precise.
Let me explain:

Firstly, it allows me to create smooth, soft gradations when the gap between two existing colors is too wide. This is what you experience if you've already embroidered our faces, for example.
In this case, I look for shades that are as close as possible to each other, to smooth out the transition between the different shades as much as possible.

I then realized that, conversely, by forcing the contrast a little, we could obtain a non-uniform but very vibrant rendering to the eye: see the dark color of the statuette in the photo (photo 2). The brain reconstitutes a darker color while retaining the 'non-uniform' information, so to speak.

Going a step further, the same principle can be applied to change from one color to another, completely different color.
In "Queen of Hearts" design, for example, I went from gold to black using this technique (photo 3).

As you can see, you can go pretty far with a simple idea after all!
You can also use this technique to make the transition between a matte material, such as wool or cotton, and a very shiny material like silk or metallic thread 💡