On colors (4)
Find the whole series "On colors" here.
While the others posts of these series about colors were about how I studied colors, this one is about a quick fix I found to build palettes for illustrations.
I don't have always the time to study whole cultures, history of art, or even fashion magazines. Thankfully, there is this new trend on the internet that I find fab.
Colors and palettes are now fashionable , yeah for design blogs!
A designer will take a picture he likes, analyze the color platte, and republish it with the colors on the bottom or side. While doing this poses a few copyrights problems ( proper authorizing is indeed needed), it's a gold mine for other designers.
Here I made an example from one of my pictures on my other blog "Spilt Milk", where I post my photos. It's one of the cute houses from my book "Mon Village", isn't it cute?
Anyway. So for me, thanks to these websites it's like 75% of the color job is done. It's glorious. I will browse design websites, make mood boards, study the new trends ,and make my own palettes out of it.
You can find fabulous palettes on different websites, but my favorite includes:
Creature Comfort : the chicest. Ez Pudewa has great taste, and her blog is an inspirational paradise.
Color Collective : a trendy designer resource. Lots of good ideas and delicate colors.
Rotten Cupcakes: I love that author July Mack included a notion of proportion in her palettes.
Design Seed: the gigantic corpus of this website is searchable with RGB cursors. An amazing tool when you want to build palettes around this specific lime green or that adorable coral.
I don't take one palette and use it as is. Like I said, most of my illustrations have a palette of more than 4 or 5 colors. What I do is gather palettes that go together on a mood board. Finding 2 palettes that goes together is easy, 3 more difficult, finding 6 assorted palettes a real job. I gathered up to 14 to make a rich color panel. I combine them with old favorites that constitute a big part of my personal style, to bring a richer world of colors in my illustrations.
And then comes the hard work : painting!
Next time I will talk about fun apps and tools to create your own palettes.