Grounds.]

[Clearing Coloured Forms]

A white outline produced by a resist or a mordant in a printed
textile, where the colours used are full and rich, often has a good
effect, lightening the effect while giving point and definition to
certain leading forms. Instances of the use of white outlines may be
found in Eastern carpets, where the main colours, being dark blue and
yellows on rich red, are relieved in parts by a dull white outline. Also
in Persian carpets of the sixteenth or seventeenth century, the
scrollwork in red is often relieved by an ivory white outline on blue.

It is always a good practice in blocking in flowers, either from nature
or as parts of a design, to leave a white outline at the junctions--that
is to say, where one petal overlaps another, or where there is a joint
in the stem, or a fold in the leaf--and to show the ribbings, markings,
and divisions of flower and leaf.

By judiciously changing the quality of our tints it is possible to make
different colours in a pattern tell clearly. To relieve red upon blue,
for instance, one would use an orange red upon greenish blue, or scarlet
upon a gray blue--the general principle being apparently a kind of
compensating balance between colours, so that in taking from one you
give to another.

A full red and blue used together, as we have seen, would show a
tendency to purple, unless separated by outlines; so that if the blue
was full and rich, the red would have to approach brown or russet; or if
the red was a full one--a crimson red--the blue would have to approach
green.

[Harmony]

This may be because of the necessary complements in colours, which we
see in nature, and which prepossess the eye, and make it demand these
modifications to satisfy the sense of harmony.

When daylight struggles with candle- or lamp-light, one may notice that
upon the white cloth of a dinner-table the light is blue and the shadows
yellow or orange--the orange deepening as with the fading daylight the
blue grows deeper, until the colour of the light and the shadow change
places. The same principle may be noticed in firelight, but the redder
the flame the greener will be the shadows.

Harmony in colour may be said to consist--apart from the general
acknowledgment of the law of complementaries, in giving quality to the
raw pigments by gradation, by a certai