Choosing Colors

Remember the post I did last month on color theory? I had so much left to say about color, I had to write a whole other post. This one in fact. Today we're talking more about choosing and using colors.

There are several factors you want to consider when picking colors for your project. They are: color scheme, warm or cool, and feel. Let's go over those one at a time.

Color Scheme

I covered the basic color schemes in the last post. If you want help creating color schemes, if you're having problems or are unsure where to start, all you have to do is research color scheme creators. 

They allow you can choose the type you want, monochrome, analogous, or triad, and they automatically place it for you. From there you can choose the tones and positioning. It's both easy and fun.

Warm or Cool

Most colors fall into two categories. Warm or cool. Warm colors have more red in them, and include red, orange, and yellow. 

Cool colors have more blue undertones, including colors like blue and green. Purple can fall in both categories, depending on whether red or blue is the more prominent undertone.

There's also a third, less official category, called earth tones. Those are colors like brown, green, and blue. If it makes you think of colors you'd see in nature, it's an earth tone.

Feel

Last is feel, the most difficult of all factors to understand. Different colors suggest different things to our minds. I don't know how that works exactly, but it's cool.

For example, colors like green and purple suggest evil to us. White and blue make us think clean. Pink makes reminds us of love. The list of examples goes on and on. But that's why villains always seem to wear black and red and heroes wear primary colors (unless you're Batman. Then you only work in black, and sometimes, really, really dark grey).

How to Use This

It's really easy to use this information for whatever you do, whether that's designing a book cover, making a piece of jewelry, or coloring a coloring page. First, look at what you're making. Figure out the feel you want first, if you want to have a specific feel. If not, skip ahead.

The next step is to decide your color scheme and what sort of colors you want to use. And remember, you can always just go with whatever you want. However, if you want to be professional, try to think about all of these things.

I hope you enjoyed this and it will help you whatever you need. Go forth and use color like a pro.

How do you like to use color? Do you like warm colors or cool colors better? Let me know in the comments.