All the while, colour grabs our attention and causes our heads to turn. Luckily, our brains automatically sort out values so we can see our surroundings in 3D. Similarly, the ball looks perfectly round because of its five values of orange. The grey shades you see in Tashi’s colour photo are five values of white. If I removed her eyes and nose as well, you would see a flat ghost outline without any depth or dimension. ![]() Here’s what Tashi looks like when I remove the shadows from her face and neck and make her all white. Let’s look at two examples of my canine friends to see how this plays out. ![]() They are the reason we see the dog in 3D, aside from contrast with the background. And it so happens that (…insert drumroll) all greys are values of the colour white. In a photograph, these shadows and reflections read as grey. When we look closely at a white dog or a black dog on a sunny day, there is a good chance there will be shadows somewhere on the white dog’s coat and reflections on the black dog’s coat. OK, enough about science! Here’s where it gets interesting. It’s why we wear white in summer to reflect the sun’s rays and and black in winter to absorb the sun’s warmth and stay warm. We see a white surface or object as white because all of the light is reflected back at us conversely black is seen as black because the light is completely absorbed. Value is a colour’s relative lightness or darkness. But before tackling your first pet portrait project, you’ll need to know about one thing: value. I know this is hard to do because we quilters love our fabric. When you think of making a pet portrait, your first impulse will be to collect fabrics that match the colours of your pet. In this 3 part Pet Portrait Collage Tutorial, I’ll explain the importance of value in making a realistic portrait, how to read value in your fabrics and finally, how to make a pattern from your photograph. ![]() The first is how to create a pattern from a photograph and the second is how to select the right fabrics for the portrait. Even so, there are two steps that often stump the beginner. That’s great, but now what? Fortunately, there are many resources on the internet and good books on the subject of fabric collage to get you started. So, you have the perfect photograph of your dog or cat that captures their personality to a tee and you’ve decided you want to make your first quilted pet portrait collage.
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