The Color Secret Artists use to Maximize Creativity

To maximize their creative output, many artists choose a color palette and then use that same palette over and over again in one series or across many series. They’ve already done the hard work of coming up with a color palette they love. Why recreate the wheel (see what I did there)?

Creating new color palettes can be very time intensive with a heavy mental investment. I’ve personally spent many many hours and much creative energy pulling new palettes and it’s just not sustainable for a working artist to spend that much time not creating work.

And for artists and hobbyists alike, usually we don’t want to be spending our precious time in the planning stage. We want to get right to the fun part of making and creating art.

To show you an example from my own work, I used this trick in my Modern Triangle Quilts book. Instead of spending time and energy inventing a new, awesome palette for each quilt, I worked from only three different color palettes. You can see these palettes and a sampling of quilts from those palettes above.

Using this trick, I was able to invest more of my creative energy and time in making the quilts and triangle patterns. And, as a bonus I really streamlined my process. Also, having a ready made palette was really a confidence booster.