If you love color, this post is for you! Or if you're an artist who needs a little help in the color department, hopefully this can help a little too!
I'm currently right in the middle of working on a beautiful coastal collection in all of my most favorite hues and shades, and decided to pull out my trusty case of color swatches.
It's no surprise to see plenty of blues, neutrals, and muted pastels in this bunch of swatches, given the theme! As an artist, one of the best parts of painting is playing with color. Color mixing is easily my favorite thing to do when working on a painting, and if I'm being honest, I really love color matching! It can be a challenge and learning experience when you're trying to mix a certain color to match your reference. That's where these swatches come in!
A lot of these swatches are ones that I picked up at local hardware stores when I was learning color theory, and some are beautiful Pantone cards from a set that I purchased. Between the two, I've accrued a large collection of them, making planning out palettes easier, especially if you're a visual person that likes to see things in front of you or have a road map to jump off from. Although it's good to sit and mix color just for the learning experience, these are really handy once you've got a feel for what tube to reach for!
So how will these colors be matched to paintings in this new coastal collection?
Mostly by value!
Each painting will need lights, mid-range tones, and darks. I love contrast, so I reached for a few pretty dark hues for a couple of pairings. There will also be a lot of water and sky in these paintings, so that's where blues and greens will come into play. I also took into account complementary colors, so if a painting has lots of green, I like to throw in some kind of pink or red! For ones with blue, a shade of orange or orangey-brown, and so on. Sometimes I will go into a painting completely spontaneously with a very limited palette and just play, but a lot of the time, I like to have at least a loose plan. This type of preparing soothes the Type A in me!
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Thanks for reading, friend!
