Why stress about colors? Why is it so overwhelming?
A palette is like a self-portrait of an artist. Isn’t that overwhelming? These colors reflect my emotional condition?
Each layout and collection of pans is personal and unique!
If you spend any time with watercolorists, you’ll very soon start hearing that you can’t do this or that (you can’t add gouache or you’re not a “real watercolorist”, a “real watercolorist doesn’t use white and black… etcetera…), some artists who insist that you should only use single pigment colors. At the same time, others will swear by common mixed paints such as Payne’s Grey or Neutral Tint. What’s the deal?
I think you can just do what you like and use the colors YOU find beautiful.
Trying to recover my skills after 15 years not making art, I did a lot of masterclasses with several artists, doing loads of work, struggling to find “my style”, asking myself loads of questions… being stressed and full of doubt… It was full of stress, where it should have been fun and full of joy! I was taught I should paint like this and like that and only use these colors and not those…. and was overwhelmed by stress. I imitated the color palettes of all those other artists and that way explored which colors I like. When I see a beautiful color used by someone else I add it to my palette to try it out….
Of course the use of colors changes over time, but now it has been a couple of years already that my palette mostly stayed the same.
But even now, by preparing a new online course about colors, my scientific and rational brain took over several times, telling me I should document myself better on the chemical aspects of this and that pigment… And about color psychology and primary and secondary colors… and explain all that in the course….
And then I decided not to, because I received a lot of questions from people just wanting to know my color palette and how I use it… And try to speak to the emotional side of color use !
Here you can see a video of the making of my new pocket palettes… They’re quite similar than my previous ones, but it’s so much fun to make 🙂
Which is your favorite color?
If you want you can explore my Color Party class by clicking here and on the image below!
