I often see colourists posting on social media about how they aren’t happy with their colour choices and how their finished pages turned out. Making a colour palette swatch before you start colouring is one easy change to your colouring process that can make a big difference in the success and cohesiveness of your pages.
What’s a colour swatch and why should I use one?
A colour swatch is a marked piece of paper with small shapes of your colours with their marker codes labelled. It’s very useful to see what the markers you are planning to use look like together before you even start colouring (and hate the choice you made). This type of swatch is separate to the swatch sheets that often come with your marker sets and can be used to help you choose the colours initially.
But I’m stuck and don’t know what colours to choose!
Are you stuck for inspiration for a page and have no idea what colours to choose? Here’s where a little time spent on research can help alot. I like to use Pinterest to save images of awesome colour palettes and scenes similar to the one I’m colouring to see what colours I might need. I then use my master swatch sheets to choose the colours that match or are similar.
Sometimes inspiration completely leaves the building and this is where copying someone elses marker codes and technique for your page can be great. It means you can switch your brain off and just enjoy the process, rather than worrying about what the final page might look like. Alot of beginner colourists with anxiety or perfectionism preventing them from starting a page prefer this method to get themselves started. Remember to attribute the original artist you were inspired/copied though if you post online!
Whatever method you use to choose your colour palettes, it’s such an awesome tool to make sure that your colours look great together.
Do you have other sources of inspiration for your colour palettes? Let me know in the comments!