My mentor pointed out my color palettes were all from the same 3 sites for a year straight.

I was showing her my portfolio and she asked, 'Jenny, where's the life in this?' after noticing every project used the same muted blues and grays from a single popular palette generator.

4 comments

4 Comments

stella222mo ago

Honestly, that hits home. My old art teacher made us pick a color from a random object in the room every day for a month. I got stuck with this ugly brown from a chair leg for a week straight. It forced me to see color differently, way outside my usual go-to pastels. Sometimes you need someone to point out the rut before you can climb out of it.

rowan_reed682mo ago

Used to think those kinds of exercises were just busywork. My teacher made us paint a whole series based on a single crack in the sidewalk. Sounded stupid until I actually did it. Found more color and texture in that one broken line than in half my other projects. Really makes you look at the boring stuff in a new way.

the_emma14d ago

And that crack thing honestly makes me think of the time my friend spent three hours photographing rust on a dumpster behind a gas station. He ended up with these wild orange and brown patterns that looked like satellite images of Mars or something. Ngl it kinda changed how I see those weird little stains and spots on everything now.

wendy322mo agoTop Commenter

That chair leg brown for a WHOLE WEEK, @stella22? That's brutal but kind of genius. My old teacher would make us mix paint to match a brick wall or a muddy puddle. You start out hating it, but then you see a hundred shades you never noticed. It totally rewires your brain. Now I can't walk past a parking lot without seeing fifty grays in the asphalt.