Summer Colours

We created our spring colour palette in the midst of a mild Queensland winter. We were looking forward to the warm spring days ahead and filled our range with golden yellow in anticipation.  We also included two pinks in this first set – one a muted, ash pink and the other a cheerful salmon gum shade. We used Australian Ghost Gum to build the range of neutral tones; and to really set these colours off they were complemented with a bold matte black, a powerful red oxide and a strong green-grey. This palette set us up to make some beautifully warming and hopeful artworks for the Wild Garden collection.

With this initial colour set being so perfectly suited to our style it was hard to picture anything too different for our next collection. So as you can imagine I was surprised to suddenly be on the hunt for what felt like a completely new palette. You see, Brooksy called me one morning to tell me that she had a good feeling about grevilleas (you may have read my “Grevillea Daydreams’ post about this). At the same time she had told me about “grevilleas coming to her”, she also said that our new collection should be in deep greens and reds, both set off by smooth whites. And with that, I got off the phone confused about where we were headed.

But I am a big believer in running with random ideas, feelings and vibes when it comes to creative pursuits and I allowed my subconscious to play with it for a while over the next week or so. Then when I was least expecting it, I saw it in my head too! Then as I worked it over in my mind and figured out how it could work with our subject matter I found myself back on the phone pitching Brooksy’s own idea back to her. I think I wanted to make sure she understood that I “got it” too. Plus I really had some great ideas of how we could apply it to our work!

Our ghost gum neutrals would move to the smooth natural whites. We kept the green-grey and added a new richer green to compliment it, an Australian olive green. Brooksy was keen to see these colours in particular up against the gorgeous Australian oak frames. The green-grey also worked really nicely when lightened. It shows more of its blue base and comes very close to a blue gum leaf which was perfect for this collection. The red oxide also stayed to add a nice contrast to the greens. Finally, we also added a blue-green paint pen, a pink pen and a cream pen into our background layers to give them more depth. 

I can’t let the cat completely out of the bag just yet but I have included some samples of our new works so you can see how these colours play with each other in the finished artworks. Just as Brooksy had envisaged, the greens have been set off perfectly by the smooth raw oak frames. We are looking forward to sharing our new works with you and hope you love the new summer collection colour palette as much as we do!