Seeing a palette :: day 4

So, it’s day 4 of my creativity challenge! Today you’ll do a simple exercise to see the color around you by using an online color palette generating tool. Breaking color down into fundamental blocks this way is really interesting because it gets you beyond your expectations. For example, in the image of my daughter’s ballet class (below), I knew I’d get a palette of greys and blacks because I know the floor of the dance studio is almost black. But not so! My mind knows the color of the floor, but the camera captured shades of browns because of the reflected light. So it is with our eyes…we learn to see color more clearly when we remove our ingrained patterns of seeing our “ideas” of color and actually looking at what is there. I used PaletteGenerator.com. It takes just a few seconds! Simply upload an image and drag across it to select the area of the picture you want to match. Click “submit the selection” at the bottom. You can take screen shots to save your palettes. (On a mac, use command + shift + 4 … then use the cursor to select your image). read more

The idea of colors

A painting of mine from this year called The Ecstatic Beauty of It All (Carrie Bloomston)

I wrote in the last post here about the “idea” of colors. I also wrote about how we are instructed early by painting teachers to never use paint right out of the tube. This is such an important point and I want to explain it further here as it applies to every area of art, design, sewing, crafting, etc. read more

Be the color!

From the graphicmac.com

From mood rings and chakras to seasonal color analysis and the psychology of color in design, we use color all day, every day to navigate our world. Companies use it to tell their story and sell to us. (Look at the cool color chart of logos here.) We use color to get dressed each morning and tell our own story. Color draws us to people, places, and things. It communicates our feelings. We use color to express ourselves. read more