Review of Color Sense by Susan Levin

The book Color Sense Creative Color Combinations for Crafters by Susan Levin published by Sixth&Spring Books (2008) is a book that helps crafters of all genres, including knitters, choose pleasing color combinations.

Every so often you may see a color combination that says to you, “Who would have thought that those colors would look well together?” or “Yikes, who in their right mind would put those colors together?” or even “I’m sticking to the basics and not going to leave what I’m comfortable with ever!” and finally, “I’m only using the colors the designer recommends, so that pattern won’t work for me because those colors don’t work for me.” Levin’s book is one answer to learning how to use colors in combinations that are pleasing, adventurous but still look good, or how to experiment with color “safely”.

The book Color Sense comes with a color wheel, color swatches and masking templates. These tools allow you to choose a color or combination of colors and place them on a background of black, gray, cream, and white to see what they look like together. The masking templates can be used with your actual materials and will filter out opposing colors. All of these tools are extremely helpful, but since I’m not used to any of these tools (art class from high school was a long long time ago) I personally had a hard time learning to use them. I will use this book, but I think I need an even more basic book or one that does not offer as many choices as Levin offers.

The book is broken into sections the first one on how to use the book, and the next four chapters are: monochromatic colors, two-color combinations, three-color combinations and four-color combinations. There is only a cursory discussion of color theory, but if you are already grounded with a knowledge of color theory this book will probably expand your horizons and let you experiment at will. If you need color theory this book may not be the place to start.