I’ve spent many brain cells puzzling over how some people create beautiful palettes out of colors that I wouldn’t have thought worked together at all.
Color wheel fatigue creeps in as I fiddle with shades and hues that always end up looking like highlighter kid aesthetic or just different colors of mud.
Every time I try and match the color gold I end up with something gross looking.
I’ve wondered, where do I master this technique? What wisdom am I missing?
(the most pretentious concept useful for confusing young artists)
A bit of research into color theory seems to lend a few notions of using various shapes, big words, and a color wheels to produce “complementary colors” and “analogous colors”.
Now I don’t deny these methods produce good results, but I still don’t quite understand how we made a linear spectrum of light frequencies going from high to low become a circle…
Ultimately trying methods such as this made my problem worse.
I started over. I started thinking…
Why do colors appear the way they are? Why does neon yellow look weird? Why do deep greens feel peaceful? Why is pink a girly color?
i’m pretty sure there’s actually no real reason for that last one besides america and marketing
Whether you believe humans evolved independently, were created mystically, or both; you can acknowledge that human eyesight was not developed at random and without purpose.
I believe every color we are able to see is relevant to the human experience for some reason.
Red, being the color of intense life, and intense death: blood
Green, being the common frequency of plant life: chlorophyll
Blue, being the color of depth and peace: the sky
Our perceptions of colors are based in the natural order of the Earth.
So if you want to know how to pull off a familiar, friendly, and cohesive color scheme for a particular vibe, what better place to look than all around you?
(unless you live in a dump or like mars)
If you can look at a scene and see order and beauty in the trees, the lights, the petals, the sky, the fog, the fire, you’re already doing color theory, by using your brain’s premade powerful color engine.
Now let’s put this to work:
Pick an aesthetic/vibe you want to go for.
Vintage? Organic? Misty? Cyberpunk? You name it.
Envision this in your head, and think of places or things that kind of fit the idea.
Grab your nearest camera, go outside, touch some grass, and take some photos.
Or, if you’re like me, go to pinterest and find some pictures of grass to use.
(i promise i love touching grass but i am guilty of just cheating with pinterest)
Put these images into a graphic design software (I use Affinity Designer), and generate palettes from them!
Now you’ve got beautiful vibey cozy colors to use for whatever masterpiece you create next!
Play around with all kinds of photos you find that look good to your eye; they can yield some really interesting palettes!
I hope you enjoy this technique!
bonk your friend with my story for brownie points