Why My Artwork Is So Colorful
Doing pop-up markets, festivals and being featured in art gallery shows, I get a lot of positive comments from people on my use of color. Spending five seconds on my website you can easily see that I enjoy using lots of bright, vibrant colors on my paintings, prints and illustrations.
One aspect is fluorescence, the colors that are reactive to ultraviolet (or UV) light giving a tremendously bright, vibrant glow that is unlike any other colors (and are very bright and vibrant in regular light as well). The reason they are so bright is because…..
The main reason I’m using so much gosh darn bring color is because when I was first starting out making art, I was AFRAID of using color! Especially in University when I became more serious as seeking art as a full-time career (more on that later) whenever I would create any artworks either for myself or for class it was the one thing I struggled with the most. Either they would be too bland, too competitive with each other, or just, well, didn’t work out.
In 2017 when I decided to relocate to Atlanta I had decided to make a series of paintings for some of my closest friends that somehow worked. I just took to the canvas, despite having made very few serious paintings before then, and the colors came out very well. It showed me that if I really put more of an effort into something, especially if it is at least art-related, I can improve. And if I give myself a challenge that is difficult and challenges my comfort zone with something that I do not normally do, I either fail at making it look like how I intended and learn a valuable lesson on that new aspect for next time, or I come back with fresh eyes at a later time pushing through and nailing something I am very proud of.
“Fresh Catch” - one of my more recent surrealist pieces
Moving forward a couple of years, early 2020 I had a fire burning inside of me. I didn’t have much of a social/friends group, and I knew I needed to change that if I was going to live in this city for any further length of time. I decided to try to make a pivot in my career, or at least my creativity, and expand into the art world with painting and illustration. I LOVED making artwork in University, why can’t I try to expand my network here by doing the same and at the very least improving at something I enjoy doing?
Coming back to using color, the big thing that really helped me to get better at color was to find other artwork that I liked and using those colors! Now I didn’t just completely copy their work, mood, composition and lighting, and the rest, but I used that color scheme that I saw working and used it as a spring board to get my piece on track.
I still do this, not for every piece, but if I am struggling with using color to get the end result that I am looking for, I go and find an art piece from Instagram, Pinterest, Designspiration.net, Muzli (a cool plugin for your web browser, I highly suggest you look into it!) and use that to start looking at how the artist used the colors in their piece for lighting, shading, depth, mood, and whatever else I am looking to convey or NOT convey in my piece. On top of that, for getting more colorful artwork, I started finding artists and artwork that feature more colors! Especially blacklight posters, which are in the works for the (hopefully near) future.
Hopefully if you’ve found this post looking for inspiration for putting color into your artwork it helps! Now get out there and make some art!
