Luminous color is not an accident. Nor is it necessarily following Mother Nature. There are some easy tricks for building color that glows. Note this fish is done in free motion zigzag embroidery, but the color theory works in any technique.

You can see that the original kind of fish I was embroidering is mostly green and off white with a little brown. I’ve taken my drawing and zoned it so that I know where I want the darker greens and the lighter colors. The mouth and the eye are a separate zone each and are handled differently.

When you choose a range of colors you go way darker than you intend as your start color and end way lighter. Somewhere in there, you should have a shocker and a shader.

The shader should be a dark color that’s not in the color range, A dark complement like deep red for something green, or purple for something golden brown always works well. Here I used a layer of dark purple.

A shocker is a color that shocks your eye. It should be the third or second color right before your done. For this fish, I chose orange.

I know, I know, there’s no orange in the fish. But there he is and that is what makes him glow. I don’t reproduce nature. I indulge her. Besides, you’ll see that last light green colors most and the orange will be peaking out from behind, waking up your eyes.

The eye is zoned differently, and done with sliver thread. Gold for the iris. Black for the pupil and a dash of white for the spark.

Don’t be afraid of very bright colors in embroidery. Build them up from dark to light and add a shocker and a shader for emphasis.

Into the water he goes!