April's Palette

I love color. I remember as a kid, there was very little that was nearly as exciting to me as a new box of 264 crayons. I love fabrics and paints and colored pencils and flowers in the garden and artfully displayed Tshirts and sweaters at JCrew at the mall. And don't even get me started on the paint chips and color cards in the paint department at Home Depot.....

Now, this may sound weird, but one of my favorite things to do is to see what kinds of colors I can isolate and pull out of photographs and scans of my artwork. I can spend literally hours with a single photo, making dozens of color chips in Photoshop. So I thought that as something new, I would share a palette with you.

This photo was taken 2 days ago, it is a pot of vinca that wintered over on my porch and is now blooming more profusely than it did all of last summer. The light was great and I snapped a couple of photos.

In Photoshop, I pulled out about 25 or so colors from the photo, mostly purples and greens. There is some tan and brown in the photo as well, so I grabbed some of those. Then I had to narrow it down to just a handful, which is very difficult. I try to choose colors that represent the image as a whole and also work well together and complement each other. There are always colors that I really like that just don't "play well" with the others, and so out they must go. In this case, the browns and tans just weren't fitting. I try to include a neutral or two so that the palette is actually usable. For the neutral, since the tans weren't working, I chose a pale purple-y gray.
So this is what I came up with for this photo:

OK so there you go... You could use this palette to jump start a craft or sewing project or decorate a room. Or maybe if you're like me, you'll just look at it and sigh and then go find more colors that you love....

I'd appreciate your input, if you like it and think it's interesting/useful to you, I will do more in the future. In the meantime, take some time to notice the beauty all around you this time of year.