Working intentionally with color in your handspun projects can be like enjoying a layer cake. Spinning your favorite color is satisfying, but you can invite other colors into the experience, adding depth and complexity to your work. No color is an island unto itself, but it can take some practice to develop the skill of seeing the color interactions that surround us.
Using more than one color leads you down the path of perceiving how colors appear when placed next to each other. Seeing the ways in which colors interact—really seeing them—is as important a tool as key color concepts, such as hue, value, and saturation, and familiarity with a basic 12-hue color wheel. Josef Albers, considered one of the most influential teachers of visual art in the twentieth century,…