So, you’d like to create your color palette for a new painting you have in mind, or a graphics design project you are working on.
To achieve your goal, you search the internet for the best resources about color theory and how to mix colors.
You even read a couple of books on color schemes, but most of what you find teaches you about the theories, and no one talks about the holy grail: How can you create your unique palette.
No worries. You’re in the right place. Today, I’ll show you a few tricks to help you create your own color palette.
Before I do, it’s important to go over the basics. If you believe you’ve had enough of all the basics, skip down to the main section section. Otherwise, let’s get started.
Color is one of the main elements of art. The others are line, shape, form, space and value.
Elements of art are the building blocks for any design project.
Though many designs don’t require colors, adding colors to one is an easy and fast way to add unity & harmony to it.
Below is “Color Basics Cheat Sheet” that I created to help my students learn the basics of color theory.
You can download the pdf version of this cheat sheet by clicking this link: color basics cheat sheet.
Let’s start with some common color definitions.
Hue refers to a specific wavelength of light. It is the portion of the spectrum that is reflected (not absorbed) when light hits an object we see.
Shades are created by mixing any hue with black.
Tints are created by mixing any hue with white.
Tones are created by mixing any hue with gray.
The image below illustrates the difference between a green hue, one of its shades, one of its tints, and one of its tones.
Value refers to the amount of light reflected by a color, regardless of hue. Values are on a scale from lightest (white) to darkest (black).
Hues have intrinsic values. For example, the purple hue below is intrinsically darker than the yellow hue next to it.
I have included a value scale below the hues, to show you how dark and light each one of the hues are.
Sometimes referred to as intensity, saturation is the amount of purity of a hue.
Colors can become desaturated (less intense) by adding black, white, or gray.
In addition to values, hues can give us a sense of temperature.
Some hues feel warm(er) (reds, yellows, oranges), others feel cool(er) (blues, greens, purples).
Primary colors (hues) are red, blue, and yellow. They are called so because when mixed together, they create other hues.
Secondary colors (hues) are created by combining two primary colors. They are orange, green, and purple.
Tertiary colors (hues) are created by combining two primary and/or secondary colors.
Below is an image illustrating primary, secondary, and tertiary colors. The illustration also covers temperature, by showing you which hues are often known to feel cooler and those that feel warmer.
Color scheme vs color palette
Color schemes are general guidelines for how to harmoniously combine two or more hues, tints, shades, or tones.
Your color palette is the resulting color combination you’ll create, using your knowledge of color schemes.
There are an infinite number of ways to harmoniously combine colors.
Below are 5 of the main ways that are known today.
An analogous color scheme combines three or more colors that are next to each other on the color wheel.
A complementary color scheme combines two colors on opposite sides of the color wheel.
Split-complementary color scheme combines three colors. The first one on a side of the color wheel, the other two are opposite to the first color, but on each side of its complementary.
A Triadic color scheme combines three colors that are the same distance apart from each other, on the color wheel.
A Tetradic color scheme combines four colors. When connected, the four colors create a rectangle.
How to create your own color palette
So now you’ve got the basics. You’re ready to create your own color palette. But the question remains: how to get started? Let’s jump right in.
Step 1: Choose your hue(s)
When creating your own color palette, it is good practice to start with emotions.
In case you did not know, colors have the ability to evoke certain emotions in our brains.
Neil Patel, a digital marketing expert, wrote an extensive article on color psychology.
The article discusses in detail how colors affect our emotions, and how to use that knowledge to create a color combination that accurately reflects the message we want to send with a design.
You can refer to the article for a more detailed explanation, but for the sake of this article, let’s choose the blue hue below as our main hue.
Step 2: Choose a color scheme
Digital colors vs paint colors
Mixing digital colors is easy. Often, it involves choosing colors from a digital color picker, like the one below.
To create a complementary color scheme, simply choose two colors that are on opposite sides of the color wheel. Creating a triadic color scheme means finding three hues that are evenly spaced on the color wheel, and so on.
Mixing paint colors is a completely different story.
I use acrylic for most of my painting projects. With acrylic alone, I know of 5 different hues of blue: Fluorescent Blue, Phthalo Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Primary Blue, Cobalt Blue.
Each one of these different shades of blue has a different pigment than the other. Consequently, each one will have a slightly different complement on the color wheel.
With paint colors, creating a harmonious color scheme involves knowing each individual hue and being able to match them to the correct corresponding hues.
Choose a color scheme
Whether you are using digital or paint colors, one of the next steps will be to choose a color scheme.
If you need a color palette with a lot of contrast, you can go with a complementary or split-complementary color scheme.
On the other hand, if you wanted a color palette with similar values, you can go with an analogous color scheme.
For this example, I chose the blue hue from earlier, and I created an analogous color palette with that hue as a base.
Step 2: Consider tones and values
When I got back into painting about 5 years ago, I predominantly used pure hues in most of my artworks.
My color palette was often similar to the color palette above.
While I was able to create beautiful pieces at the time, the quality of my paintings significantly improved when I started using tones.
If you remember tones result from mixing a hue with gray. There are two main advantages to using tones instead of pure hues.
Get more unique colors
Mixing primary, secondary, and even tertiary hues are easy. You just get two, three or more hues together, combine them and you have something new.
Since those colors are easy to replicate, most people (typically beginner artists) tend to use them. The more you see them, the more you realize there isn’t anything too special about hues.
However, when you start adding grey to hues, it’ll take your palette to a whole new level.
Take a look at the color palette below and compare it to the previous one.
The colors for the one below are richer and I believe even more harmonious than the one above.
Make your design more realistic
One of the reasons we tend to like tones more is because most of the world we see is made up of tones, rather than pure hues.
Take a look at the landscape picture below. I used a tool in adobe illustrator to pick out a few of the colors present in the picture. Guess how many of them have a saturation of 100% (pure hue)? None of them.
Indeed colors found in the natural world are often a variation of tones derived from various hues. That’s why when you only use pure hues, your paintings/digital project will tend to look more like fantasy worlds.
That is because pure hues are rarely found in the natural world.
Step 3: Experiment, experiment, experiment
This is the part that most artists/creatives often struggle with. It is also the part that most articles and tutorials won’t cover.
Experimenting will take your color palette to the next level, and will make you a better artist/creative in the process.
What distinguishes great artists from average ones tend to be how unique the latter are.
There are many ways for artists to distinguish themselves. Using a unique, harmonious color palette is one way to achieve this goal.
I created the color palette below based on the hue we started with earlier.
After choosing a color scheme and adding different tones to the palette, I expanded the palette by adding a couple of tones of green.
For this palette, I was inspired by the picture of the landscape above.
Not all tones of green would have beautifully complemented the colors that I already had.
Check out the modified palette below. The palette below might look as harmonious to you as the previous one. To me, it does not. There is something off about this palette. It could be the jarring transition between the last purple and the first green.
The first palette has a much smoother transition between all colors, which makes it more harmonious.
This leads us to the final and maybe most important tip when it comes to creating your own color palette.
Trust your instincts
If you find the last color palette harmonious. Don’t feel bad. You are not wrong.
In fact, after taking a second look at it, I thought to myself that I could use that palette in a project, and make it look good.
Creating a color palette is a subjective endeavor. While doing so, you have to follow your instincts.
Color combinations that look good to you, may not look good to others. Furthermore, if your goal was to create a design that looks good to everyone, you’ll just end up creating something boring and uninteresting.
As I said earlier, what separates great artists from average ones is how unique the latter are.
Having one or more unique, harmonious color palettes you can use as an artist, is one way to distinguish yourself from others.
One of the best ways to create a unique and harmonious color palettes is to experiment over and over and over again and find a palette that speaks to you.
Thank you for reading. If you have any questions or feedback, please leave a comment below or contact me.