Discovering online color palettes

In my previous post, I moaned about not seeming to be able to find groups of colors that "go" together. Yes, over time, I have come to realise - rather organically - that I ought not mix warm and cool colors together within a picture.

For example, I may use oranges, warm pinks, peach and even deep warm reds on a fish (see picture in the previous post), but in a picture with more than one fish, I might render another fish in a cool palette - icy blue, deep blue and even teal and cool grey (never warm or French grey).

But, as I lamented in my last post, I have a beautiful set of 150 Prismacolor pencils, and yet sometimes struggle to find colors that "sing' together in proximity. Yes, I'm aware of the color wheel, one rule of which is that complementary colors - those facing each other on the wheel - go together. Hence, yellow-purple, red-green, blue-orange and so on.

Two nights ago, I searched "color palettes" on my Pinterest feed and lo and behold, was shown several feeds, including the websites Design Seeds and Color Collective.  Both are beautifully designed, navigable websites set up principally for designers and "those who love color". They offer bold new palettes of color drawn from the colors appearing in color-balanced photographs (ranging from landscapes to cupcakes).

As an aside, many palettes draw inspiration from nature. Crashing waves on a seashore offer a palette of teals, blues, greens, yellow (from the incandescent light) and dove greys. A photo of succulent cactuses creates a palette of dusty pink, lilac, dull greens and frosty light greys.

When I am taken by a color pencil work, it is almost always as much about the choice of color as it is about technique in rendering those colors to show texture. One can't just fill in a picture with colors chosen at random. All you will get is a picture that looks wrong, out of whack.

Exhibit A: I don't know what I was thinking with this

disappointing work. Red and cool blues,

together with browns and warm pinks?? The

wrong colors were the very reason this work was abandoned.

One picture that I saved to my Pinterest board titled "Learn Color Pencil Art" is this one below. It had not yet been completed when it was uploaded by the artist to Pinterest, but I can tell it is going to be a winner.

It's all in the choice of color, baby.