During my creative
journey, color has always been a little bit of a "Frien-emy". Up until about
two years ago, I worked exclusively traditionally. All traditional artists will agree, the color struggles span
from finding the right grouping of primaries to mix from, to avoiding muddy colors, contrast,
color palettes and so on.
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| Mixing it up Old School - Acrylic |
When I started using digital as part of my art process, I discovered there were "a couple" (sarc) of extra hurdles to getting the color right. One big one was my scanner not picking everything up as it was in real life. Another was my screen not showing me color correctly. I invested in a color calibration tool, but ultimately, there were still just too many shifts in the color from my screen to what it was in the real world. It was becoming incredibly frustrating, creating without color consistency. Plus, I had to jump through technology hoops to get the colors to come out the way I wanted. It was a huge time-suck!
At the peak of my frustration with color in my new medium, I
remembered that years ago, I had been gifted with a Pantone matching system fan
deck from a friend's father. He was retiring from the printing business and thought it might come in handy for me one
day.
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| An old Friend |
I dug it out and
started using that to select my colors. I thought it would take some of the
guess work out of the color process and create sort of a "control"
from computer to print. What a Godsend! The
fan deck was from 1987 and the colors had faded a bit, but it still was usable. It definitely helped me keep tabs on the
color when working on Little Dragon and the New Baby (Sky Pony Press March 2018).
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| First Digital Color Palette/ Promo Sheet |
Around the same time, an artist friend got me a brand new Pantone palette book, for
inspiration. I loved a couple of the palettes and went to play with those
colors in Photoshop, only to find out that my older version of PS
didn't have the colors that were in the newer book.There was also no way for me to reproduce the
color I saw, because there were no formulas for rgb or cmyk . And there was still
the fact that my screen was semi unreliable.
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| Pantone Color Inspiration - Chronicle Books |
With a new project on the horizon, I decided to go right to
the source...Pantone itself! I found out
that Pantone made a fan deck that not only had all the newer colors that I
loved, but also the cmyk formulas for an exact or pretty close to exact, match.
It's called the Plus Series Color Bridge
set. This set not only gives you
a huge color selection in both coated and uncoated, it also gives you a side by
side comparison the cmyk version that comes closest to the Pantone color. For
those that are designers too...it gives you Hex and RGB info as well. Yay!! Problem solved... or so I thought. It was an expensive
tool and timing was not right for me getting one, because my scanner was also
dying. I would need to choose, but they were equally critical to what I was doing. That circle of thought became a constant source of angst... UGH!
One day, last week, I was jolted out of my daily, technological
pity party, by the sound of the doorbell. By the time I got from my studio to the door and
opened it, no one was there, but I was greeted by a box with a big Amazon-smiley
and my name on the label. I immediately opened it and to my delight, inside was
a bright, shiny new Pantone Plus Series-Color bridge set and a note that said
"Happy Birthday"! I had been
discussing my new project color struggles with my Father (a more technical
creative) and he went ahead and purchased the set for me.
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| Best Early Birthday Gift!! |
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU, Pop!! I am so excited, and
grateful for the gift and can't wait to use it! It's going to be a HUGE time
saver on this new project and beyond!! (sorry for all the exclamation marks, but
there seriously are not enough in my book to convey how great this gift was...!) It will be a little
sad to have to retire that old fan deck. After all, it was my constant companion during
the creation of my debut book, resolved my color issues and saved me a ton in production time. However, I've been informed
that my Father will be happy to give it a new home.
To find out more
information about the Color bridge set and other Pantone offerings, just click
on the link below:
https://www.pantone.com/color-bridge-coated-uncoated
Website: www.deborahcuneoillustration.com
Blog: Creating Out Loud deborahcuneo.blogspot.com
Facebook: Deborah Cuneo Illustration
Twitter: @debcuneoart
Instagram: @ataleof2studios
