I saw this fascinating art challenge circulating around the art community and thought I’d have a little fun with it! Attempting to match my own art to the colors on this wheel really emphasized to me how much I lean towards purple and reds.

I love the dark elegance of purples, especially, and often lean on this a muted version of a purple/gold Complementary color scheme for much of my modern digital work. What I like most about digital is my ability to more easily create shining and glowing effects, but too often I’ve relied on doing this by choosing very flat dark and muted tones with pops of colors. This isn’t a bad thing, persay, but it does make me wish my work wasn’t so reliant on black for shadows.

If anything, creating this wheel made me more aware of just how DARK my digital work is and how I can explore shadows with more creative use and understanding of color.

I was somewhat consciously aware of this, but realizing how much I lack warmer colored pieces encourageses me to more purposefully expand my color palettes to greens, golds, and oranges. Perhaps I’ll discover something I enjoy or new expressive moods?

It seems my more recent digital work is also on the dark, saturated jewel tone end, which I also would love to explore in a more purposeful way.

That Huevember challenge keeps calling my name to see what new aspects of my art might emerge through exploration!

I have also seen other artists explore the Pantone challenge to similar effect where they grab a swatch book and paint directly onto it.

Seriously, check out Sam Hogg’s Pantone challenge for some jaw-dropping explorations of surprising color palettes! I credit her with bringing this challenge to my attention, though I must work up the bravery to work directly on this paper after being so spoiled for fixing mistakes by digital art.

I have also explored a nearly full color gamut with my Birthstone Goddesses, which created a pleasant pastel rainbow of a wheel when I put them all together. Creating these goddesses were the only reason I was able to complete the green section at all on my first wheel!

I had so much fun being ‘forced’ to explore each birthstone’s color palette within each goddess painting. Doing so made every goddess a thrilling creative challenge! Perhaps I can find a way to assign gemstones to a color wheel to make a sort of themed Huevember exercise? I want to explore more oranges and iridescent combinations, in particular, and this would also be something else to practice!

My musings aside, what colors would you want to see me explore? Did you also put together a wheel? Show me in the comments. I want to see yours!

<3 Ang

Want to do this challenge yourself? Have some resources:

• Blank PSD template (attached)

• Online template thanks to zgymorph