Playing with Color

Third color concept of wigwam-- warmer and lighter for better text contrast

The first set of color thumbnails showed me right away what might work and what definitely would not. In some cases it simply showed me that I had no concept, really, of how to color particular pages or spreads.

I played around with some of the original ideas (or lack of ideas) and adjusted colors in this second set of sketches.

Sometimes the colors were too dark or too red, for example in these earlier wigwam sketches seen to the right and below. But that's what thumbnails are for-- to spot and correct mistakes while it's still easy, or even to just play and see what feels right.

I'll continue with sketches like these (done in dry media like colored pencil) and then refine them further in larger, wet media sketches. Since watercolor will be the final medium, I'll get some practice for the final pieces in the "wet" sketches, too! Here are three early color concepts for the "tales" page:

The first concept: too dark and without clear structure, a mishmash of shapes and lines and hues!

The second concept moved to a more golden tone but still did not satisfy me.

The third attempt uses a clean white page with distinct objects in a "tetradic" color scheme.

Two color sketches of the same North America map page spread