Thursday, September 5, 2013

September Monthly Challenge Color Palette


This month's painting, The Autumn by Alphonse Mucha, is a perfect palette as we slide out of summer and right into fall. Don't you think?

Unlike past challenge palettes, which usually featured a bunch of different colors, this month's challenge painting has colors in a fairly narrow range, focusing mostly on shades of orange and yellow. The browns and tans you see all come from those two colors, so these would be a great base for your own color schemes. Stay on the medium to light side for these to better match the source painting.

To keep things interesting, there are touches of red and green in The Autumn, too. Out of all the swatches I pulled, the red is the darkest shade, so use that as a guide for your own work and go with darker reds. If you're following the distribution of color in the painting, use that darker red only sparingly.

As for the greens, there are a few different shades - the two I picked were my favorites. Behind the oranges and yellows, green would be used the third-most, and range from very light sage greens to a darker forest green. But like red, there are touches of green everywhere, but they are just touches, so use them purposefully.

I hope this helps you create your challenge pieces this month!


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