A Festival of Color

If you need further examples of going all out with color, but maybe not as showy as Monday’s piece, Anarina Anar is the go to artist for slightly washed but very colorful work.

I don’t know if she plans her colors or not. They just feel so organic, like maybe they were a happy accident that happened during the Hindu Holi festival (Festival of Colors) or,  in the vicinity of her pan pastels, there was a localized tornado. Or cats. I’m going to go with cats.

But really, there is such abandon and yet cohesiveness in her color and her compositions. She keeps it all together with similar shapes and motifs as well as her signature faux ceramic look. She actually does do some limiting of her palette with some of her pieces but you hardly notice that since the colors wash back and forth in such brilliant saturation. It’s the use of the semi-opaque pastels and the layering and blending of the edges of colors that makes it appear muted. The constant shift keeps any one color from being overbearing which also makes it feel more organic.

Get other ideas about going wild with color while not being overly dramatic by heading over to Anarina’s Flickr site or her Etsy store.

Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Try using a lot of color but take it down a notch. You can mute the colors by adding a bit of black or white or even gray. You can antique the clay with washes of acrylic paint or inks in neutral tones. Or you can use pastels or colored pencils. Use at least 4 hues so you have both cool and warm colors. How do you make them work together?

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