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How to select color palettes in your illustration work  | Episode Transcript

Intro

Welcome to the Self-taught Illustrator podcast. My name is Natasha Polozenko, and I am here to prove that you do not need a formal training or background in art to make it as an illustrator. So listen up and get ready to be inspired, encouraged, and uplifted in your illustration journey.

Let’s do this!

Hello hello everyone! Welcome back! So, I think that I may have mentioned this before, but I am currently creating a series of podcast episodes that are specifically focused on some of the recurring questions and struggles that I see my students having. And so, in this episode, I really want to dig into color palettes! Now, I was a little reluctant to create a whole episode around this topic at first. I just wasn’t sure that we could really speak about such a visual topic in audio form. But, after thinking through it a bit, I do think that there is a lot that we can chat about and learn when it comes to picking our own color palettes.

Why should we use color palettes?

Ok, so to kick it off, let’s talk about why we should use color palettes at all. Using colors in a way that feels consistent across your work, helps your work feel more cohesive. It all goes back to my favorite topic- personal illustration style. I believe it is super important to have your portfolio, social media, or wherever else you showcase your work to feel super cohesive and unified. The reason for this is that when customers, clients, brands, followers, whoever looks at your work, they understand who you are and what you do immediately, they know what they can expect from you, and so that idea to hire, work with you or follow you, is that little bit easier.

Color is just one element of an illustration style that can be used to create that cohesiveness in a body of work. Now, I want to mention, that when I talk about color palettes, yes I am referring to specific swatches of color that you use religiously in each of your illustrations. But I want to extend this definition to families of color or color stories as well. Generally speaking, in this episode, when I talking about having a consistent color palette. I am talking about having a consistent approach to color. I hope that makes sense.

Do I always need to stick to the same color palette?

Something that I find with a lot of my students is the reluctance that comes around “picking” a color palette. People are scared to dive in and commit to certain color combinations. They are not sure if it’s the right one. And what I always teach, and coach my students through is this idea that finding a personal illustration style, or in this case, just picking a color palette isn’t a prison sentence. It’s just a place to start. You can definitely evolve and change up your colors over time. In fact, I have come across some really great artists and accounts on Instagram in which they intentionally change up their color palettes depending on the season, or whichever set of colors they are ready to explore next.

Don’t be afraid to pick a color palette to start off with, and just see where it takes you, avoid the analysis paralysis. This really shouldn’t be a source of stress, but rather an exciting artistic experiment.

What if I don’t want to stick to a specific color palette at all?

So, another thing that I hear a lot is that some people don’t want to stick to a limited set of colors, and want to use all the colors. And I totally get that, and I think that there are some illustrators and artists who use a broad palette, and their work is absolutely incredible. The key however is to make sure that you are repeating those same colors throughout your work. So let’s say you use a really vibrant intense blue in one illustration, try and make sure that you’re not using a super dull, soft blue in the next one. Even if we’re using all the colors in the rainbow, we just need to make sure we are consistent in that. One example of an illustrator who does an incredible job with his broad color palette is Lucas Wakamatsu. If you check out his work, you can see that he generally keeps his work feeling super vibrant and high contrast, meaning that his work still feels super cohesive and consistent.

Picking your color palettes

Ok, so now let’s dig into the process of how you can actually pick your color palettes. So, it is probably worth taking a step back and considering the overall vibe or mission of your illustration work to help give you a clearer idea of the direction your should be moving towards. so let’s say for example that your work generally communicates cheerfulness and joy, you may want to lean into more light and bright colors. On the other hand, if your work is moodier, you may want to focus on darker colors. Or if your work is cute, perhaps more pastel, soft colors. Does that make sense? it may seem obvious, but really taking that step back to evaluate what you’re trying to communicate can be a good place to start.

Finding Inspiration

Another way to get inspiration for your color palettes is to try and understand which colors you are naturally drawn and attracted to. Take a look at all the images that you bookmark on Instagram, or anywhere else that you save or collect random pieces of inspiration. It doesn’t even have to be illustration-related. But, look through some of these collections of imagery that you are really drawn to, and see if there are any recurring colors, shades, or palettes that you’re seeing. A trip to a gallery or museum can be a super useful exercise too. Go to an art gallery, and just simply take a photo of every piece that you love and are drawn to. When you get home create a collage or mood board of all the pictures you took, and start to try and notice the colors that are recurring in these pieces.

Other sources that may be helpful to you are sites that curate or help you develop your own color palettes. Sites like color claim, colors.lol, or adobe color can be super helpful in helping inspire you, and in the case of adobe color can also help you build up your color palette.

The anatomy of a color palette

I want to walk you through my own approach to picking a color palette. This is just one way, from my own experiences of picking color palettes, that I have found to be helpful for a couple of my students. I want to explain how I approach all of this, but please feel free to take it or leave it.

So, what I like to teach is to pick one color that you love and know that you definitely want to include in your palette. So, for me, that was a really soft, almost pastel purple. Next, I want you to pick a color that is the opposite of that. You can look to the color wheel, and find which color is complimentary to your main color. Otherwise, you can just use your intuition. So for me, to offset the soft purple, I chose a bright, warm orange color.

From there you can pick the rest of your colors. I always suggest that people at least consider adding some sort of green into their palette. especially if you ever plan of drawing plants or nature. It’s also important to note that all your colors may not be used equally, like you may choose to add tiny splashes or accents of a certain color here and there.

Also, when it comes to selecting color palettes, consider black and white colors too! A lot of people will default to using black and white in their illustration, but we want to be super intentional in our color palettes, so if you decide to use black or white, include those in your palette!

Selecting shades

Now, as we think about our color palettes we also need to think about the shades of our colors and set up some rules for ourselves. So you may decide to be super strict on how your colors are used. You may not want to deviate too far off the shades. On the other hand, you may choose to be super broad with your shading, so in this case, what I want you to do is take a moment to list out all the different shades of the one color that you will use. This is going to be super helpful in keeping everything consistent, which is what we’re going for!

Using your color palettes

It’s also important to note that once you have a color palette set up, you don’t need to feel as though you need to use every color in every illustration. Like me, you may choose to alternate your main colors. What’s important is that as a whole, your feed or portfolio are cohesive.

Skin color

I want to take a moment to talk about skin colors, and how they fit in with your overall color palettes. Some people may completely disagree with this approach, but here is how I like to think of skin color. If you use unrealistic skin colors, like me for example, these should draw directly from your color palette. But, if you use realistic skin colors, these should be separate from your main color palette. So let me explain that. So, here’s what I want you to do. Create a secondary color palette with all the skin tones you plan to use in your work. This could look like a gradient, from your lightest light to the darkest dark of skin tones. It’s important to do this because we want to stay consistent with this too. Although we want to show many different skin colors. We want to make sure that we’re using the right saturation, and brightness of that color every time. To best define the right tones for our skin, make sure you’re referring closely to your main color palette.

Outro

Alrighty, So that’s it, for now! Thank you for tuning into the Self-taught Illustrator Podcast. Where we prove that you do not need formal training or background in art to make it and thrive as an illustrator. 

I hope This episode was helpful to you. I hope that it helped you get a better idea of how you could start developing your own color palettes. Drop me a DM @nataszko, that’s nataszko on TikTok or Instagram to let me know! I look forward to bringing you more illustration tips tricks and nuggets of wisdom. So, until next time. Bye for now.