If you’re looking for some ideas for a quick painting look no further than simply limiting your palette. This blog will go over a few tips for picking colors as well as color suggestions from our favorite Nova Color bundles to help you get started.
Limiting your palette can help you develop your eye for organizing compositions simply and without getting too overly focused on the details. These techniques are also useful for planning out a larger painting by starting out small and knowing what the starting colors you want to use to develop a more complex palette.
Lets get started with the basics; Ideally you want to think about contrasting values yet harmonizing colors.
For example, you might want to stick to all vivid and highly chromatic colors but you can make sure they work together by keeping them all warm or adjacent to warm. Alternatively, you can select all warm colors and one cool color.
The colors used here (List of colors) can be found in the Nova Color “Starter Bundle”
Other options include all muted colors with the darkest color that is completely neutral, such as a 117D Raw Umber Dark for the ideal contrast.
The colors used here (List of colors) can be found in the Nova Color “Mid Century Bundle”
Or keep them all cool blues with the lightest color being a vibrant green. All cool but the bright pop of green helps create the needed contrast.
The colors used here (List of colors) can be found in the Nova Color “Core Bundle”
It can also be noted that with all these examples, when you look purely at the values in grayscale, they all maintain their contrast and help you see if a painting will benefit from lighter or darker values being added.
For example, the color combo in the “Core Bundle” painting (Far Left) are largely dark, and the Yellow Green color can be blended and used relatively more to even this out or used similarly to be more visually demanding.
Once you’ve painted in all of the areas with your chosen palettes, you can stop here and admire the variety you’ve been able to make with the exercise. Or you can take it a step further and select your favorite palette to blend and push into a more complex painting.
