Tuesday 19 May 2015

Primroses Colour Palette for Springtime

What colour comes to mind when you hear the word 'primrose'?

I'm sure most of us associate primroses with the colour yellow - the particularly delicate, pale yellow of the wild primroses of springtime. I remember, as a child, travelling on the old steam trains in the Isle of Wight, you could look out of the window and see a 'carpet' of pale yellow! 

The wild primroses almost completely covered the grassy banks of the cuttings we passed through just before we went into a tunnel. Anywhere else, they would have been picked or even dug up for someone's garden. But it was probably too dangerous for anyone to venture down the steep slopes of the railway cuttings to pick them. So they were left in peace, to grow and multiply - a lovely sight in spring!

But cultivated primroses come in a wide range of colours!

Years ago I grew them from seed. But nowadays my lack of wide enough window sills for the seedlings, sends me off to the supermarket to buy the plants. (That's my excuse, anyway!)

I particularly like the pink-ish orange ones  - 



Sometimes I can't get enough of them all the same colour for the shelf in my front porch, so then I go for as many different colours as I can:



To me the different coloured flowers look fine - splendidly bright and cheerful! 

But when you look at all the colours together, I can't help feeling that there are too many colours, that some need to be eliminated to make a cohesive colour scheme.

So from this group of eight colours, we could pick out lots of different schemes.

I have chosen 2, 3, 4 and 6 for this traditional Islamic pattern:



But there are lots of other possibilities!
Which four would you choose?

You can save this pattern tile and experiment with it if you wish -










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