The palette of place

My gift to you is an art activity that I do on the regular, and it is appropriate for all skill levels. I call it The Palette of Place, and I’ve taught it to many students in workshops over the years. I hope you’ll try this out and enjoy the way that it engages both the intuitive and logical sides of the brain. I find that the best kinds of art activities are satisfying both while you are doing the activity as well as afterward, when you are looking at the results. This exercise absolutely fits the bill—I find that smooshing the paint around as I’m mixing the colors is so satisfying that I often can’t stop once I’ve started! That’s why I often use this as a warm-up activity for me, to get paint onto paper and get my engine started.

You’ll be instructed on how to go on an excursion outdoors to gather a variety of natural items in a variety of colors: your color palette. Back at your home studio, you will mix paints to match these items, creating swatch papers to match the colors, writing your paint “recipes” on the papers. You’ll learn about your own color sense in the natural world, color mixing, value, and saturation. Plus, you’ll begin to develop a library of personal paint colors that you have created!

I hope this activity gets your creative juices flowing! My greatest joy is inspiring, teaching, and mentoring artists of all levels. That’s why I created Let’s Go Deep. Would you like to go all in on your art? Want to create a cohesive body of work and need some guidance and accountability? Join me! Find out all about it here.

To accompany the video above, I’ve created a downloadable guide for you. This PDF includes detailed written instructions and more photographs showing examples of this exercise.

Get your step-by-step instructional guide

This instructional video and downloadable guidebook are my gift to you for your personal use. If you would like to share this content elsewhere, or use it in an educational or commercial setting, please contact me to request permission before using it. Thank you!