A challenge of color

Last night I was involved in a #kidlitart chat on Twitter that was really inspiring to me. It was all about color! How do you come up with your palettes? What’s your favorite color to use? Do you plan ahead or just dive into a piece and figure it out as you go? (You can find a full transcript of the chat here.)

As someone who’s work lately has been 95% black and white, I felt a bit out of place to an extent. What is great about this conversation was that it got me thinking about color again! I love color! I just need to work more with it so that my color use can go from run-of-the-mill to radiant.

When I was a child, I wanted my drawings to look like what I thought was real. 3D people. Green leaves. Blue sky. Red apples. As I matured and learned to really see the world around me, I learned that leaves come in all sorts of shades and colors, skies can be literally almost any color of the rainbow and then some, and even apples come in varying shades and gradients. And the world is all the better for it!

The next step forward from where I am is trying to learn how to manipulate color and use it more deliberately. I have been saving pictures and possible color palettes to a board on Pinterest for a long time, but not doing anything with them. I’ve decided that I will start picking a palette I’ve saved and making a piece with those colors. I don’t have any certain time frame for them, since I’m working on a few other projects right now as well, but I figure I will use each piece as an experiment. I’ve already made my sketch for my first palette! I tried to pick something a little spring-y since Spring is finally here, at least according to the calendar.

Blythe posted this helpful example for me after I asked about what people meant when they talked about doing color comps for projects. I have never done one before, and I think it will be super helpful.

I’ll check back in with a finished piece after it’s done!