What Do Your Color Choices Say?

April 2nd, 2009

Spring is such a fantastic time to focus on delicious color! I hope you'll have fun playing with the Creative Every Day Challenge's totally optional theme of color this month!

mermaids
mermaids

I took the first bit of playful color I painted for the theme's announcement and created this piece out of it. I was just playing with color when I started it, but as I do with so much of my art, I started to see things in it, in this case, a pair of mermaids. And I see something else in it, something maybe I'll play with in another piece. Do you see the bird? Here's it's face:

mermaids detail
mermaids detail

What colors are you drawn to right now? Let your self play with them. If you're playing with paint, squirt the colors right on the canvas, move them around, let your intuition guide you in the strokes you use, the colors you choose, the places you stop and start.

Let the paint dry and then step back and see if you're seeing anything there. Are you seeing a figure? A face? An animal? A tree? Start to emphasize the image you see. Bring some areas forward and let others fade into the background. Is there a story developing?

What's the feeling your color choices are evoking? Does it express something that you are feeling in your everyday life? What are your color choices trying to tell you?

I'd love to hear about what colors you're feeling especially drawn to right now!

p.s. The free Dream Call with Lianne Raymond is happening tonight! Sign up here if you'd like to join in!

7 Responses

Love your mermaids and I do see the bird. I’ll have to try the technique you’ve shared. Sounds fun and interesting.

I feel funny about colour – I have synaesthesia so I find myself frequently picking colours that don’t set off aggressive reactions in other senses.

Just created a whimsical “bubble” interpretation from a recent dream! The colors I am attracted to right now are blues, indigos and violets (with green always around somewhere!)
http://organicsyes.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/dreams-of-bubbles/

I think COLOR will be better for me than dreams was in March. The painting I posted earlier this week was supposed to be something I have been envisioning and even dreamed about. Somehow the vision veered from that when I went to the canvas. But I will try again. Maybe in watercolor. My other dream piece is still in progress and will post it when it’s farther along.
Already this month I have been playing with color. Yesterday I got to stay home in the afternoon and used some of the time to just play with color. I’m using up some of the colors from the last painting and just playing. Whenever I play my “what if” game, I seem to have the most fun.

pink … the pink of pink magnolias … and blue, like the blue of the bluest sky.

i love this painting so much..
xoxo nita

I am doing some pieces for a project on the prairie right now and my colors are very earthy and blue for the sky. I think choice of color really gives art voice a volume. Loud or soft it is how people hear your art.

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