Pages

▼

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

My Favorite Color Tool


'Snowed In'               8x10            pastel                ©Karen Margulis
click here to purchase $125
 It's close to being the best $24 I ever spent on art supplies.  Not including all my wonderful pastels but just all of the extra stuff we seem to accumulate.  My Analogous Color Wheel has gotten a work out over the past few years of painting.

I always choose my color palette before each painting but how do I decide what colors to choose?

That is where the analogous color wheel comes in handy.  I use it to help be decide what colors will make a harmonious and pleasing color palette.  Of course a traditional color wheel can help you choose colors and color schemes but I prefer the color relationships of the Munsell Color System which is what the Analogous Color Wheel is based on.

Analogous Color Wheel Fun!
 I used the wheel to help me choose the colors for today's painting.  I look at my reference photo and decide what the dominant color/temperature is and line it up at the top of the wheel. Now I can see the complement and the discord colors that will work for this painting.

If you look in my tray you can see I have a variety of blues and purples for the sky, shadows and trees. The complement is yellow to yellow orange which I used in the sky and snow.  The discords are the spices. These are colors that add visual excitement but need to be used in small amounts.  I introduced green by starting on a green piece of Canson paper.  The red is used in the distant house.

This color wheel is not only useful for helping me choose my palette it is also useful for helping color gone bad!  More on this later!   I will also be releasing my latest Demo Download later this week. It is a Winter landscape and I will discuss using this tool for choosing colors in more depth.

close-up detail

at

4 comments:

  1. juliefordoliver.blogspot.com12:53 AM

    Beautiful painting. You really know your stuff. The wheel may help you to a certain degree but it still takes a lot of skill to paint like you do.

    ReplyDelete
  2. robertsloan2art7:06 AM

    Interesting tool! Glad this is so handy for you.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Karen7:54 AM

    Thank you very much Julie! I always say it just takes many many paintings!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Karen7:54 AM

    Thanks Rob! I love any kind of art tools...the trick is to remember to use them!

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.