Limiting the color palette, Part Deux

I have taken another look at the color palettes I saved to my board on Pinterest lately, and have decided to continue being more disciplined in my choice of color. (See my last post on this subject here.)

Sites such as Design Seeds, for example, put on display dozens of beautiful photographs of scenery, nature or every day objects which are beautiful because of the way the colors work in them. Alongside are color palettes drawn from the photos themselves, so a photo of cactus succulents, for example, would produce a palette of dusty rose, sage green and deeper purples and pinks, perhaps with cream or warm greys. Nature really does show us how some colors just work together.

The following work, another from my Johanna Basford book, The Enchanted Forest, shows the result of working with a limited palette:

 

The colors are dull greens - no "raw" greens here - used along with dusty pinks, purples and some browns or warm greys... much like the palette for the cactus succulents.

The yellows of the bug wings and the centre of the flower kind of stick out -- a lesson in what happens when you depart from the palette. Or maybe the yellows work, I am not sure.

Another recent  work I did, also with a view to restricting the color palette, was this one:

 

I uploaded this to my Pinterest board on my color pencil work too, and also to Instagram, where it is continuing to draw "likes" -- more than the other picture -- probably because of the element of whimsy in this one. Notice the quaint tree houses on stilts and the green house with Moorish architectural elements in it.

For this one, the greens were yellow-green (chartreuse) rather than sage green, and all other colors were from an earthy palette - browns, warm greys, yellows, ochres and some pumpkin orange. I doubt a bright blue or red would sit well here. It's just a feeling!

This whole color pencil adventure has taught me a lot about color. I find myself looking at things in a new way, seeing how the colors work, such as whether they are in ombre palettes, flowing smoothly one into the next, or whether they contrast each other.

As an aside here: I'm fast running out of pages in my Basford Enchanted Forest book. Will I get another of her works? I think not. She draws far too many tiny leaves that are a test of patience, and because they are that small, they don't offer much scope by way of shading possibilities. Her other books that don't feature "enchanted forests" may have fewer leaves and plants, perhaps?

I've ordered a new book from Book Depository, Mythomorphia by the illustrator Kerby Rosanes, which has taken the world of adult coloring by storm. This is his third book, his earlier works being  Animorphia and Imagimorphia.

And I still haven't given up on making and coloring in my own drawings. It's just that Life happens, and it did happen in a big way this past month, shaking my family to its core and yanking the rug from under our collective feet. So we are picking up the pieces and finding a new pattern to move on with.

I hope to carve out time to do this strangely calming hobby from hereon.