When I visit Rockport, Texas I love to take pictures to stimulate my creative juices back home in my studio. Rockport is a small artist town along the Gulf coast brimming with vivid colors everywhere! This Texan town has a mixture of cheery beachy shops, salsa hot colors from Mexican influences….
Color drenched jewelry & art galleries…
Rows of lively shrimping boats with tiny seafood stores that are balance precariously on the edge of the wharf, waiting to sell their early morning catch…
And quaint restaurants with menus that beckoned me to indulge in the local seafood fare.
Rockport is a wonderful place to recharge anyone’s creative soul!
Now for a little experiment!
You’ll be using this Color wheel to pick out some color combinations from the above photos. (I LOVE this color wheel!)
- First, pick out 1 dominate or favorite color in any of the photos, then go to the color wheel and find it.
- Next, straight across this color you will find the opposite color. This is the complementary color or the color that creates the most contrast for that particular color. These would be the main 2 colors you would use to create a lively, dynamic color scheme if you wanted the greatest impact designing a piece of jewelry, painting, etc.
- To add more color variations, add the colors to each side of the original color.
For Example, let say your original color was green. Opposite on the color wheel is red. So red and green create the most contrast together. Then if you want more variety you can add other colors in the blue-green or yellow-blue range.
Reviewing basic color theory always help to stimulate you creative juices. We all love certain colors and could use them forever. These exercises helps you to play with other colors combinations and refreshes you color palette.
Do you use the color wheel to pre plan your color choices? Comment below & share what you do to come up with a color combination.
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Looks like a great place to spend an afternoon exploring.
I never thought about using a color palette before but I really like the idea.
Looks like a great place to spend an afternoon exploring.
I never thought about using a color palette before but I really like the idea.
Thanks for your great thoughts!
When my inspiration come from colors, I rely on the color wheel to help me determine what kind of feeling I want to express with that particular piece of jewelry or painting. Do I want excitement, soothing relaxation, etc. Then I consult the color wheel for the right colors to use to get that feeling. It’s a wonderful device to keep me focusing cause I love all colors and it can get overwhelming.
Thanks for your great thoughts!
When my inspiration come from colors, I rely on the color wheel to help me determine what kind of feeling I want to express with that particular piece of jewelry or painting. Do I want excitement, soothing relaxation, etc. Then I consult the color wheel for the right colors to use to get that feeling. It’s a wonderful device to keep me focusing cause I love all colors and it can get overwhelming.
Those are very nice pics. I would love to be able to visit a place like that. and maybe I should get my color wheel back out. I have always liked mixing unexpected colors, but that might help me even more. Great post. :)
Those are very nice pics. I would love to be able to visit a place like that. and maybe I should get my color wheel back out. I have always liked mixing unexpected colors, but that might help me even more. Great post. :)
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
When I attended art school at Silvermine in New York, one of the homework assignments was picking a favorite color and creating 100 different color combinations with that color. These were small thumbnail sketches only about 2″ squares. Usually the first 30 or 40 were easy but it was the next 20 that pushed my artistic boundaries to think outside my box. Then all kinds of new possibilities flooded my mind. It takes a little work but I got amazing results and grew artistically.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
When I attended art school at Silvermine in New York, one of the homework assignments was picking a favorite color and creating 100 different color combinations with that color. These were small thumbnail sketches only about 2″ squares. Usually the first 30 or 40 were easy but it was the next 20 that pushed my artistic boundaries to think outside my box. Then all kinds of new possibilities flooded my mind. It takes a little work but I got amazing results and grew artistically.