November Challenge Color Palette

"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns." - George Eliot

I can't help think of this quote when I look at the colors in this silkscreen. In fact, I can look up from the my computer, out over our woodland meadow surrounding my home and see the exact same color palette. I printed this out right away and ran to the studio to make new beads!

I could get lost in the sophisticated play of hues, overlapping and peeking through each other to create new muted colors. Mixed in with all of those muddy, tertiary colors I love the pop of teal, cornflower blue, olive green and those wonderful rusty oranges. I could play for days in this color palate. 

Have fun pulling out leaf, floral and fern themed beads this month or just revel in the colors as your inspiration. 

See my new beads inspired by the color palette in my Etsy shop. 

August Challenge Color Palette

 

While this month's color palette is predominately red and black, there are a few other hues to draw out your muse. I don't know about you, but red is always a hard color for me to design with, so I'm more drawn to this rusty shade of red. Purple is used throughout the weaving along with the neutral putty color. There are a few accents of gold, brown and a muted plum woven in the design. 

The key to successfully using this color palette is pick one main color for your design and then choose a few of the accents to bring in interest to your jewelry piece. Proportion of the color will be important. Just as in our inspiration piece, one color dominate and then the accent add the spice. 

I'm looking forward to seeing what you create this month!

(A few beads from my shop that fit the challenge.)

June Monthly Challenge Color Palette

This month's painting is bursting with pink, red, orange, golden yellow and rich greens and hints of purple. I love how the colors contrast against the white leaves, I would probably add in some lighter colors to this bright palette in creams and off-whites.

You could focus on a single leaf theme or create the over-abundance portrayed in the art by layering leaves together. Anyone else see fringe in the leaves down at the bottom of the painting? 

No matter which direction you go in this month, have fun playing with the relationship of your chosen colors, as they play back and forth in the painting causing your eye to jump from one color combination to the next. 

Did you know they made a movie about our artist this month, Seraphine? Check out the trailer below.

May Monthly Challenge Color Palette

This month's challenge painting is "Untitled" by Augustin Lesage.

"Lesage’s patterns are unmistakable.  After noting the symmetry of the first large canvas, he began organizing his compositions along a central axis, building complex geometric structures in horizontal layers from the center outward."

This painting is so unique as is the artist who painted it. With a backdrop of beiges and tan the bright color pop off the canvas. You can do so much with this unique painting, using the repetition of dots, geometric elements and the intense colors.

I pulled out the bright colors, the neutral colors ground the painting.

February Monthly Challenge Color Palette

This month's challenge piece comes from Edward Julius Detmold, and I love the reminder that spring is right around the corner, don't you?

This month, you want to focus most of your attention on shades of cream and coral, as those are the most prominent colors in the painting. And there are a lot of shades of coral to work with, too, from pale and toned down, to bolder and more saturated. The creamy parchment background has a little variation, but not too much, and tends to take a more muted, grayish cast than pure, bright cream.

If you're not familiar, coral comes from a mixture of red and orange. In this case, it's definitely more red than orange, and again, the saturation varies depending on the shade. This is good news for you, since you may or may not like coral (until a few years ago, I didn't), so there are some options here to play with if it's not a color you feel totally comfortable using.

Beyond that, we also have shades of green, from olive to sage, and touches of a reddish purple. That red-orange/green/red-purple combination is called a split complementary relationship in color theory, so it's naturally appealing to our eyes. This combination works because it's balanced.

Overall, I'm really drawn in by this month's color palette because we have a variation of values here, from pale to slightly dark. Which means you've got a lot of range to play with. Tell me, how do you feel about it?

January Monthly Challenge Color Palette

Happy New Year, ABS readers!

This month, we're working with this lively piece from Hundertwasser. I love bright colors all of the time, but probably never more than during winter when the weather's cold and nature's colors are muted. And this month, we've got as bright a color palette as we've ever had.

Pretty much all the colors of the rainbow are represented here in fully saturated hues, even touches of colors that I haven't included a swatch for, like olive green or pink. I look at this inspiration piece as anything goes, but if want to follow the color proportions faithfully, use a lot of orange - yellow orange, true orange, red-orange. Orange dominates the bottom two thirds of the poster with lines and shading, and the top third with shades of dark brown.

You might also want to use a lot of the aqua (second swatch from the bottom); that color is featured prominently, too, in solid squares and lines. And depending on how you choose to look at the poster, you could also include the dark gray/black of the background, too, either through beads or metal (like oxidized sterling silver). The dark gray helps all of the other colors seem that much brighter.

What colors are you feeling from this month's challenge palette?