[Illustration: FIG. 133.--Notice the good spacing and arrangement of lines.] Miss Willing said this is called studying values. We can study values of color as well as of black and white. Next lesson we shall learn what Miss Willing told the girls about color in selecting or making dresses. EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 1. Why do you think Miss Willing had "good taste" in dress? 2. What can you tell about Miss Willing's talk on artistic appreciation? What does it mean in relation to dress? 3. Criticize your own garments in relation to line, simplicity, decoration, appropriateness. LESSON 2 THE CHOICE OF COLORS FOR CLOTHING Color is important in choosing or making our clothes. We too must learn if we would choose as wisely as the Pleasant Valley girls. Miss James thinks that the Pleasant Valley girls have learned so much about color in relation to general design in their art classes that they will be able to understand easily about color in dress too. Colors, they have learned, have value, with gradations from light to dark. In black and white the contrast is striking, but when values are closer together the harmony is closer and less conspicuous. =In choosing your new spring dress be sure to think of your own characteristics.= Your appearance may be injured or improved according to the color chosen. Color even more than design may spoil the appearance, and is important to the wearer and to all who come in contact with her, for color is expression of one's refinement and culture. Every girl of Pleasant Valley will wish to know how to look her best. Color in which there has been mixed much gray, as dull blue or dull red rather than pure bright color, is apt to make the individual characteristics stand out. This grayness in color forms a background as it were, or a setting, for the face and shows the figure to best advantage. Artists have a way of expressing this brilliancy of color. Miss James says they call it intensity. Do you understand what is meant by color when it is strongest and loudest and most intense? Think of red of the most vivid brilliant kind; gradually think of it growing grayer and grayer until it is pure gray. By intensity of a color is meant this difference in grayness. Very few people can wear very bright red. Miss James says she must have the "grayed" colors, in dahlia tones of red if she wishes a dark dress of this color, or in old rose if she wishes a dress which will be less somber. This is true of all colors; only red is perhaps the most difficult to use. One learns to use color in its full intensity only for touches here and there on a gown or a hat, which is itself not intense in color. [Illustration: FIG. 134.--Can you find the middle values of gray?]