Have you ever wondered how artists choose such amazing colors that just work perfectly together?
It’s time to share a secret… You don’t have to be good at choosing colors to produce a masterpiece!
The trick? Get your color inspiration from other art, photos, interior design, nature and everything around you. But it gets even easier, because there are a number of fantastic people who have already done the hard work in finding great pictures and drawing out the colors into easy-to-follow color palettes that you can simply match to your pencils and start coloring!
So I’ve gathered a list of 10 great sources where you can find color palettes that have already been assembled for you. The options are endless, there are palettes to suit almost any theme, page or mood, and they all look great!
Pictured: Page colored by Linda Franklin from “Color the Alphabet” by Sarah Renae Clark using a color palette.
1. Pinterest
Pinterest contains a massive amount of color palettes curated by artists from all over the world. You can either do a search for “color palettes” with your color or theme (ie. “winter color palettes” or “purple color palettes”) or you can find some good boards that collect color palettes and start following them.
Here are some Pinterest profiles worth following for coloring inspiration:
- Sarah Renae Clark
- Adult Coloring Book Community
- Design Seeds
- Color Palettes
- Sue Chastain
- Color Me Forum
Pictured: Example of a coloring palette from Pinterest used on a coloring page. Page colored by Linda Franklin from “Ultimate Art Therapy” by Sarah Renae Clark
2. Design Seeds
I’ve already mentioned Design Seeds on Pinterest, but they also have a beautiful website with all of their color palettes in well-organised collections, so you can find your palette based on a particular color or theme.
Pictured: Some of the color inspiration categories from www.design-seeds.com
3. Colorpalettes.net
Color Palettes is another from the Pinterest list with it’s own website. Each palette on this website is manually created and is the personal creative work of designer, colorist and photographer Alex Romanuke. You can also find his palettes at color.romanuke.com– although this website isn’t in english.
Pictured: An example of Color Palettes.net being used on a coloring page. Page colored by Emma Turnbull from “Enchanted Forest” by Johanna Basford.
4. From Pantone’s recommendations
Everything from fashion trends to interior design is influenced by Pantone’s predictions each year, so it makes sense to use their color predictions as color inspiration on whatever projects you are working on!
I’ve put together 30 of my own color palettes inspired by Pantone’s Top 10 color trend predictions for Spring 2017 HERE.
5. From your own photos
Why not use your own personal photographs and special memories to inspire your color choices? What a beautiful way to really make your art personal! There are a few websites that allow you to upload your own photos and will pull the color palettes from them for you, so you don’t need to be a Photoshop expert to do this! Although personally, I think you’ll get better results pulling the colors out yourself.
Pictured: A color palette created on Pictaculous from a photo. Photo credit: Pixabay
6. Akula Kreative
Akula Kreative regularly add new color palettes to their blog. Some of their photos are stunning!
Pictured: A color palette from Akula Kreative
7. Adobe Color
Adobe has a huge library of color swatches that have been submitted by other users. You can choose a palette and then make further changes to each indivual color. You can also set “color rules” to limit the selection to only analogous colors, complementary colors, triad colors, shades and more.
Pictured: A selection of swatches from Adobe’s color website
8. Colourlovers
Colourlovers is a community where you can create and share colors and patterns. They have over four million palettes to choose from!
A screenshot from http://www.colourlovers.com/
9.The Color Wheel
Choosing colors for your project is not just art – it’s science.
Check out my YouTube and blog post, because I can show you how to use the color wheel and some basic formulas known as “Color Harmonies” to choose color combinations that are appealing, cohesive and just look GOOD!
Here we cover basic color theory, the color wheel, primary colors and so many other concepts that will help you choose your palettes!
Now, over to you…
There are many other sources of color inspiration – these are just a few of my favorites. Now it’s up to you to find the perfect fit for your artwork or coloring page to set the perfect tone and create a masterpiece!
Do you have any other sources you’d like to see added to this list?
Ms Sarah…you are awesome. Living on the beach, my colors are always the normal blue-green beachy variety. You have provided me with a huge selection of color selections. What a help you are and you are so available with a variety of suggestions, hints and ideas—-Oh yeah, most important, pics. Thank you, you are a giving talent which we all appreciate…d
Love this Sarah. I’m always at a blank for coloring and super happy when given a palette will bookmark a few of these and I’m on Pinterest, so that as easy.
Thanks
Connie
Thank you!! Great suggestions!
Wow!! Thank you for this blog post, Sarah! It will be a tremendous resource to me not only as a coloring book colorist but also as an artist. I love colors so much that I get overwhelmed when trying to choose a palette for a project – so this will be a huge help to me. I’m bookmarking this post as well as the resources you listed. Again, Thank You!!
I never thought of that before to use the color scheme to get inspired I usually use it for my card making but with coloring interesting thought! Thank you for tips!
You’re welcome! Card making is another great idea 🙂
thank you for this post!
Color Pal app is one I use often. It’s convenient on your mobile and has search option of typing in your desired color giving results of many color pallettes with it.
Thank you for this article!
Thanks for the suggestion! I’ll definitely have to check it out.