Use Color Theory To Choose A Cohesive Color Palette For Your Art

Picture this: you've just finished a gorgeous sketch for a brand-new painting or decided on a design for your latest crochet blanket, but you need to figure out a color scheme, and you're unsure how to choose one that looks good. Don't worry; we've got you covered with our three favorite color patterns for creating a cohesive color palette!

​Before we get into it fully, you may want to check out our blog post on Why Contrast Is The Key To Visually Appealing Art. Without an understanding of contrast, your pieces may appear flat and dull, even with a gorgeous color palette! 

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COLOR PATTERN 1: COMPLEMENTARY

Most of us learned about this color pattern in school, but there's so much more to know about this beautiful pairing! The complementary color scheme consists of opposite colors on the color wheel: purple and yellow, magenta and warm green, etc. 

Did you know that no matter which complementary pattern you choose, mixing the colors together will dull them down and neutralize them?​ If you add equal parts of each color, for example, blue and orange, you'll get brown! This ability to neutralize makes this color pattern so interesting; it's how you can paint a beautiful, dynamic beach scene with just white, blue, black, and orange!

​That's also what makes this color palette simple to work with because as long as you understand how the colors will interact, you can create a gorgeous color scheme with them!

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COLOR PATTERN 2: ANALOGOUS

One of my personal favorite color patterns is the analogous pattern! This pattern consists of the colors grouped directly next to each other on the color wheel. What I love most about it is that no matter which colors you mix together, they all feel harmonious and tend to stay vibrant. They may neutralize a bit, but not to the same extent as complementary colors.

This color pattern can feel really dynamic, especially when you play around with the contrast between light and dark in your work! Palettes using this pattern can also feel playful and bright due to its vibrancy. You have to be a bit careful with this pattern, though, taking extra care that your colors have varied light and darkness. Otherwise, everything will all look too similar and feel flat. Palettes like this are where a strong understanding of contrast can come in really handy. If you'd like to dig deeper, check out our Foundational Studies Course 1!

FOUNDATIONS 1: VALUE

In the course, you'll learn how to balance light and dark to create a beautiful piece of art. You'll also learn how to shade pieces to add dimension, control your paintbrushes, and mix different values properly!

LEARN MORE ABOUT FOUNDATIONS 1

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COLOR PATTERN 3:
​SPLIT COMPLEMENTARY

The final color pattern we're going to discuss today is split complementary. It's made up of one color on the bottom and its complementary, as well as the two colors on either side of the complementary, making a Y shape on the color wheel.

This makes the color pattern very visually interesting and allows for a little more range than the other two patterns we've previously touched on. Like the complementary scheme, this palette can neutralize itself, but like the analogous pattern, it also has an excellent capability of vibrancy! I'm an avid user of this palette because of its range. What I love about it the most is there's just about nothing you can't do with it! You can paint portraits with it by using red, orange, yellow, and blue. Yes, blue! The blue can easily neutralize the brighter, warm tones and give you a gorgeous, rich skin tone. 

​This pattern will provide you with a great chance to play around with color theory and learn to understand how colors interact with each other, making it invaluable to beginner and seasoned artists alike!

DO YOU WANT TO UNDERSTAND COLOR THEORY EVEN MORE IN DEPTH?

FOUNDATIONS 2: COLOR THEORY

​Our color theory course will take you through choosing colors for the subject of your paintings and how to avoid muddy and dull colors when blending. You'll also learn a fourth color pattern to complete your palette repertoire!

get FOUNDATIONS 2

If you'd like even more color palette inspo, check out our Unique Color Palettes For Art board on Pinterest! As a great exercise, you can identify which color palettes on the board fall into the pattern categories we taught you about and which patterns they are! We hope you learned a lot about color theory in this post, and we would love to see how you use these color patterns. Tag us on Instagram at @thesketchingpad for a chance to be featured!

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