6 Ways to Pick a Palette - Off the Wall Friday

This week, my friend Debby and I were talking about how to pick a palette.  As I started going through my quilts over the last couple of years, you could see where I've somehow fallen in love with this Warm, Warm, Cool kind of thing.. . . . Like I would pick Red, Orange, and a touch of blue.  You can see it over and over and over.  Now I didn't do it consciously, its kinda like - the heart wants what
the heart wants.

The Old Guitarist, Pablo Picasso

First of all what is a Palette?  Its the colors you pick to be in your piece.  I would highly suggest picking  3 or 4 and a neutral.  Limiting your palette is an easy way to make your piece stronger.   Now that doesn't mean you have to stick with just 3 or 4 hues. You can pick any tones, shades or tints within those colors.  For example, if you chose green - you can add any variation of that green in your piece and it still qualifies as one color.  

How to Pick A Palette

1.  Choose the Emotion.  First decide what emotion you want to evoke with  your piece and then decide what palette.  Reds - Anger, Aggression, Passion.  Blue - Serenity, loneliness.  Yellow  - Happy, Excited.  You get the idea

2. Pick what you Like.  I'm thinking this is the trap I've fallen into lately.  When starting a project I look at my fabric and just say - hey I like these reds and then I grab my color wheel and pick the colors that I like from there.  Its easy to work with colors you like and therefore that much easier to get the project done.

UNEXPECTED LANDSCAPE PALETTES

3.  Choose an Inspiration.  Another great way I've chosen palettes is just peruse other's art and see what really speaks to me.   I've done that before as a way to get out of my own rut of picking palettes I like (see #2). 

4.  Choose the Unexpected.  So you want to do a landscape.  Does that mean you need to stick to blues, greens, browns with a hint of yellow?  NO.  I mean if you were taking a photo yes.  But you are an artist with a full range of colors in front of you.  Choose something unexpected that will convey what you want to say about the piece.

PALETTE CREATED FROM MY PHOTO

5.  Use a Color Board.  My daughter does this.  When she's writing a new story or novel, she will collect pictures that kind of evoke the emotion, color, the  basic ascetic  of what she wants to write.  Because she is child of the internet, she uses Pinterest to collect them.  I too have a color board on Pinterest but never one with several ideas all for the same piece.  I really do need to try it sometime!

6.  Use an Online Palette Generator.  I've talked about these before....you pick a photo you like and the program takes the colors from there so you can match them to your fabric.  And then there is Design Seeds where they do all the work for you - choosing the photos and creating the palette.

So How Do You Create a Palette?