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 Margie’s Muse
by Margie Deeb
Color & Dominance
 Harmony is created when there exists a balance of similarities and differences. Enough concordance and enough contrast must be at play to achieve dynamic tension.
Too many visual differences confuse the eye. What if every bead in the bead store were dumped into one huge bowl? Though enticing, the arrangement wouldn’t be harmonious or well designed. Such a completely random mix offers delightful textures and colors, but provides no focused direction, and no place for the eye to rest.
Lampwork and bracelet by Kristy Nijenkamp.
After feasting for a moment on that random mix, your eye will spot all the bright yellow beads and begin grouping the yellows. You are seeking order. And you are finding order through concordance—colors (or shapes or sizes) that are similar.
Dominance, whether in color, composition, or both, unifies a finished piece, giving it a sense of oneness. Design elements and concepts mean little if your work lacks this wholeness. All the elements must be somehow unified. How? Elevate one or two elements above all others. Let this dominant force govern everything else in the piece.
Dominance is crucial to all art. Even the squirt, blob, and swash paintings of abstract expressionists employed dominance—that of texture or movement, or a prevailing color family—to unify their work.
Try using color as your unifying element. Color dominance assumes many faces, simple and complex. Establishing a dominant color is the simplest approach, as Kristy Nijenkamp has achieved in her lampworked bracelet (see left). Each bead contains many colors, but the dominant color of the whole bracelet is the transparent peach, which unifies all the palette members. Johannes Itten explains “emphasizing one color enhances expressive character.” This peach color gives an aura of radiance and innocence.
 The tonal approach is a more complex use of color dominance. This method uses dominant tones (muted and darker, or intense and brighter) rather than specific hues. The fully saturated colors of Margie Deeb’s “Spectral Tapestry” (see left) create a dominance through intensity. Though not one is used particularly more than others, the piece is unified by the intensity the colors share. And by black, which outlines and frames each color of the palette.
To unify your work and give a sense of wholeness and completeness, try color dominance.
“Spectral Tapestry” Design by Margie Deeb. Loomwork by Frieda Bates.
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