Illustration - Limited Pallets

Prior to my time working at Jack Nightingale Artworks I had done a lot of Black and white representational art and I'd also done a good amount of colorful abstracts using Photoshop  What I had not done a lot of was colored illustration.

The majority of the designs we did at Jack's we're for tee shirts. Lot's of Screen printers have 14 color machines, however many of the jobs we did were smaller runs with local printers. Most of these printers had 8 color machines. So, for many, many years I had to do complex illustrated designs with a very limited pallet.

Cougar by M Francis McCarthy

Today's illustration "Cougar" is a good example of a limited pallet image. His colors are: Black, brown, orange, tan,cool grey, warm grey, white. The astute reader might notice that makes seven colors. 

Often the eighth color had to be reserved for a white flash plate in case the design needs to be to be printed on dark colors. It was always a good idea to keep this in reserve as buyers tended to change things and without a bit of leeway the design could be radically altered by a color being taken away. Also other colors might be required by other elements in the design like type for example.

I now have unlimited colors at my disposal to paint with but my many years of working with restricted pallets have served me well. I always consider the tonal pallet for each painting that will be most harmonious. Too many colors thrown at the viewer creates disunity. That said it's so awesome to free of the eight color straight jacket that I worked under for so long. 

Obligatory Disclaimer - This image was created for Jack Nightingale Artworks and they own the copyright. I show it here for review and portfolio purposes only. Cheers.