Do These Colors Go Together? Musings of a Color Theory "Challenged" Artisan

From as far back as High School Art classes, I can remember being totally confused by Color Theory. Is this color considered a primary, secondary or tertiary?? Who had enough time on their hands to come up with monochromatic, analogous, complementary, split complementary, triadic and tetradic color schemes? And who the hell invented tints, shades, tones, saturation and hue? It's enough to give you a split complementary headache.

It's funny when you think about it though. At my "day" job, I can remember the section, subsection and sub-subsection numbers and letters to countless penal laws. I can instantly recall any number of criminal procedural laws and how they apply to any crime or violation you throw at me, but ask me if blue is a primary color and I start drooling and counting my toes, unsuccessfully. By the way, blue is a primary color. Google says so.

So what was I supposed to do when I needed a new color scheme for a project? Well, I could throw some  hot pink clay up against some neon green and hope for the best, right? Wrong, I tried it and I couldn't get that piece into the garbage fast enough. I guess I could refer back to my own post on Color Scales for Polymer Clay but, again, I've got no idea what colors go with each other. So where do I turn?

I was looking through some blogs one day and I came across one with a pic of this really colorful poison-arrow frog. As I was looking at it, I thought to myself, those colors really go well together. It was like a light bulb going off in my head. I started looking up more frogs and eventually progressed into butterflies and tropical birds. Did you know that there are approximately 17,500 different species of butterflies? That's 17,500 different color combinations alone to work with. I didn't need a color wheel anymore. All I apparently needed was Google Images.

After doing some more searching, I found COLOURlovers and a blog post on butterfly color palettes, showing the color combinations of 18 different butterflies. Who needs color theory when great color schemes are all around you just begging to be noticed? If your having trouble deciding whether that dark tinted, off-shade, bright hued magenta goes with that super saturated, dark hued, bright pastel shade of purple....start looking around you and notice the awesome color palettes right in front of your face.

Comments

[Busby SEO Test]

yeah, thanks for those tips , you post

[S. Hart]

Your comments are very astute. Perhaps it's not so much finding colors that align correctly (ala the color wheel), but finding tones that are harmonious together? Nature is the ultimate teacher, indeed!

[castocreations]

Oh that butterfly color theory post is excellent. On Starving Artist we designed an entire design challenge around it. It was so fun! :)

[Scott Bulger Photography]

That is a brilliant way to do it amigo. Using nature as inspiration is the purest form of art.

[High Desert Diva]

Great post!

Sort of goes with my theory of color in the garden...which is EVERYTHING goes together (just look around)

[cicada studio]

Color theory was/is one of my favorite subjects. It took me a long time to realize that not everyone has a sense of what color is about on a more "technical" level. It can be learned, like anything, but some nuances come more naturally. For instance, penal laws? Don't even bother telling me... I won't remember. But you've got the gist now, so roll with it! Nature is an ideal place to learn.

[Michelle]

Fellow PC artist and blogger Lindly Haunani has a great blog almost totally devoted to the subject of color. Check her out here: http://lindly.wordpress.com/. I'm sure you'll find lots to help with your color challenges there!

[Jennifer]

I really enjoyed reading this post. So true about the color wheel. When in doubt, nature has some really wonderful inspiration! Awesome!

[Diana]

I agree with you - get inspiration from what's around you. I guess some people are more technical-minded than that though :-)