Coloring Outside the Lines

I never was good at being perfectly inside the colorbook lines. I always got excited to see the finished product and rushed. I tried the outlining, the soft color... nope. Just always ended up getting a little around the edges somewhere. Now that I'm older I can appreciate that it is just my style. When I was a kid I just thought maybe I should try something else. Maybe I wasn't good at coloring. I've learned that getting a little bit of paint, marker or pencil outside the lines adds a special quality that is mine. It gives me a solid feeling of 'mine'. I own that color outside the line!

I love looking for color swatches and palettes as much as I love fonts. I get tremendous pleasure in matching up a funky pair of colors and watching them harmonize! Even in my own closet, I will grab a peacock teal shirt and start immediately searching for the terracotta or coral hue that will suit my mood... Yes. I like to name my colors as well. As if they were jumping from the pages of Mr. Peterman's catalog... or a nice J. Crew ad. Today I wore grays and purples... It was a gloomyish day. I dress for my mood. Next time I make a reference like that I will attach a photo. I need to take more photos.

I will share with you a few of my swatches... These are paper images I'm toying with for the Etsy site. I really love using pastels as neutrals (typically thought of as browns, grays and whites) with bright colors. It takes a busy flourish and makes it more subtle. I've paired a pale aqua and a muted peach here.

Complementary colors also make me giddy! The vibration that they give to your eye is stimulating and it creates harmony with neutrals as well. If you have a very neutral 'beige' room... you can add some pastels to create a soft color, and if you're looking for a punch go for the complement... blue's complement is orange. Yellow's complement is purple. Red's complement is green. Look for the same shade of the complement! Let me show you what I mean... I am sure you probably learned what a color wheel was sometime around the 1st grade. I'm going to show you the grown up version! It incorporates a bit more than the primary colors. I found this one online, since I just made this blog up today... I wasn't really prepared with my own. So, tomorrow I will get to working on my own color wheel to share next week! I'm excited for that task now...

This color wheel I found on Pinterest is quite good. Sorry, I can't give it credit because it didn't have anything with it... it is from Pinterest, which isn't always a reliable source. But you can see that the primary colors are not here like in the first grade... Instead we have actual colors that might be found in our homes. Colors that are next to each other are called 'analogous' and colors across from each other are 'complementary'.

Here are some great links to fun websites that you can play with color! I won't give you all the places I haunt... you may be overwhelmed just by this lovely list... But these are definitely at the top of my go to spots list.

Design Seeds
Kuler
Pantone
Benjamin Moore - Color Gallery
Sherwin Williams - Color Palettes
Color Palette Generator