I've often been asked: " how do you find your color palettes?"
And having never really given it much thought, I always answered the same: "ah, I don't know I just mix my colors." But thats not entirely true, I've been freelancing for about two years and in that time my skill set has grown, I've gotten used to drawing in a specific way or illustrating with more freedom but I haven't found my style as such, but I often find colors that I feel really resonate with me as a person and as a brand.
And these colors come from my life experiences, magazines, pinterest, other illustrators or packaging! I find that tea boxes, jam jars or fish packaging is just on point sometimes in terms of color!
My tips to find these are quite easy,
Have a look around your room and list three colors, but be creative. Don't just say yellow, green, pick colors and then say olive green and mustard yellow- and then go mix them! Using paint or crayons or whatever medium you're working in!
Secondly, I take tons of photo's each day and I use them as references for things, places and color. The world is filled with vibrant colors, try to look for them and embrace them in your art.
A fun tool, I discovered by trawling the internet was Coolers, https://coolors.co/ . Its an app that shifts through thousands of colors and you can pick and choose! A very handy tool for digital illustrations. There are quite a few generators like this, just make sure that you always add your own touch to it! You are the creative! not the computer...
With brand work for clients, I don't quite leave it up to a computer to generate work for me. I research colors, color trends and forecasts and then find the perfect color palette.
A better program for this is Adobe Color, I can find my colors and save them to my color adobe library, super helpful!
Well, that's my say on color! Let me know what your tips and tricks are!
Thank you for reading xxx