Liberate Your Painting Practice Through Color

Do you use paint color straight from the tube? Or perhaps you stick to the same color combinations again and again in your painting because you know that they’re safe palettes. But how limiting! Becoming intimately familiar with color relationships gives you the confidence to unleash your creative practice and reach your potential as an artist. 

Your Colors Are Your Voice

Artists are always in search of discovering and refining their style, or their voice. This can include many aspects of painting such as medium, subject matter, genre, brush strokes and mark making, composition, and more. But our choices of colors can be a strong component of our artistic voice—and it can tell viewers in a glance that the painting is ours!

Thus it makes sense to spend a lot of time exploring color combinations and color mixing. This should be done intentionally and you should make notes that can be used as a road map for you in the future.

If you feel like color doesn’t come naturally to you or you haven’t ever embarked on a color adventure, you’ll want to grab a copy of my new Ultimate Color Liberation Guide. It’s a cost-effective way to get a real handle on color! It’ll take you from cautious with color to confident.

Experimenting with Color is Key

Think of the fashion icon Iris Apfel. She doesn’t take her outfit inspiration from mannequins at the mall—she’s spent a lifetime gathering information and interesting items of clothing, and she spends time mixing and matching these items together. There’s a sense of experimentation and adventure—she is an artist of her own wardrobe. 

You can bet that Iris’ work selecting items from her closet and auditioning different looks is a lot like your work in the studio: trying a little of this and a little of that, going for a certain look, tweaking it and adding details, or scrapping it and starting over from scratch. 

You won’t find your most original and powerful color combinations without doing a ton of your own experimentation. This will involve forgetting what you currently accept as color conventions and doing your own hands-on research. Iris was probably told the kind of color maxims we’ve all heard about what colors go together and when you should wear (or avoid) certain colors, but she doesn’t heed that advice and rather selects the colors, patterns, and fabrics that express her unique self.

Let Color Liberate Your Art

After diving deep into color exploration (and doing the eye-opening exercises in my Color Guide), you may be surprised at the colors and color combinations that truly excite you. If you find that they go against what you or others believe, just know that colors that make your heart sing are a true reflection of your own voice. Just like a fashionista expertly breaks fashion rules by combining prints and textures, you can do the same with your art palette. 

The end result is a more satisfying, freeing, and expressive art practice. And it results in paintings that reflect your unique artistic voice!

Caryl