Usually, people ask to visual artists how they pick colors, and you probably got the answer “I don’t know, it’s intuitive” and for some of us it is.
I am a lover of color, color combos, color harmonies, color everything. And as I can’t teach or trespass the intuition, I’m going to reveal a well saved ancient secret.
*whispers* Steal a color scheme you like.
You never knew, right? Yes, you can copy a color scheme and apply it or tweak it for your practice. You only must have your eyes open.
Here are some resources where you can pick colors: movies and series, fabric, propaganda posters, packagings, sneakers, the new aesthetic trendy spot, anything actually.
When picking a color scheme from a packaging for example do not only try picking the colors with the color picker from the actual image. Try picking the colors you see on the image, usually the colors we perceive on a picture are made from many different colors, shadows and lights.
Also think about proportions, the same color palette with different proportions will feel very different. I usually overlap the swatches to see how colors interact with each other.
Play
Spend some time trying color schemes with blobs of different sizes and apply them to your art. Don’t forget to try ugly1 colors and ugly combos! You never know what you can get.
Sometimes an interesting color scheme may come from an ugly combo plus a nice color.
Salli Swindell has a great exercise to zone out and discover some new color palettes. And she kindly offered free access2 for my readers!
Oh well, I hope that now that you know the ancient secret, picking colors is easier for you. Have you ever stolen a color palette before? How do you pick colors for your pieces? Is it a struggle for you or do you enjoy figuring out the colors? Comment below!
All colors are beautiful, no offense has been taken to any color in this post.
Exercise for creating color palettes by Salli Swindell on Illustrators Circle.