The Advantages of a Limited Palette

So last week, we looked at work that used every color in the rainbow, or close to it and looked at how to use a lot of color without looking chaotic. This week, we are going to look at minimizing color using limited palettes where color is an accent. I know … I hear that collective sigh, knowing that brilliantly colored pieces will not be showing up here this week,  but I promise, you can be stunned by pieces that use very little. Wait and see.

Yes, many of us are polymer fans in large part because of all the color we can play with but the versatility in form, texture and application is really unmatched by any other medium, far more so than the color aspect. So if you limit or take away color as a primary design element, what do you work with? Well, you are forced to pay close attention to everything else. It is pretty easy to let color support the design and impact of a piece, so if color is your design ‘crutch’ (and I don’t mean that in a negative way … color is important and is quite valid as a focus) try moving away from it and explore form, texture, line, composition, repetition, negative space, etc. It’s a great exercise that, when you return to wider ranging color palettes, will take your pieces from rather pretty to simply amazing!

Eva Thissen‘s brooch here has an incredible impact, not only with little color but with brown–of all single colors to choose–as the dominant hue. And yet, it’s absolutely stunning. The texture and detail make the piece visually rich so that the small dots of subdued color are seen as accents rather than color supporting the design.

Enjoy perusing Eva’s Flickr pages and her enchanting pieces for to get further ideas about putting color in the background while using texture and composition to carry a piece.

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