For Illustrators: Color Theory

Picture Books, Color Dictionary, and Picking Limited Palettes

Hello readers,

I hope you all had a fantabulous weekend! This letter is going out on Friday the 6th, but on Monday I have 2 kids graduating to the next level and moving up to new schools. As a mom to neurodivergent kids, I am so proud of how far they’ve come and excelled in school these past few years. They’ve made leaps and bounds and I can’t speak highly enough of their teachers who take care of them every day.

And you know what else that means? Summer break is just around the corner! Like, next week! And what does summer make me think of? COLORS!!! And what is this letter all about? COLORS!!!! See how I tied that all together so seamlessly?

As promised in my letter from last week here, I’m doing a deep dive into colors. Here’s a little looksie at the cute color wheel I made again:

In this letter we’ll be talking about color! Plus the different color palettes around the wheel. And then we’ll go further into limited color palettes and how to choose them, and I’ll give you examples of illustrations that use those palettes. So let’s dive in!

Color Dictionary

Now here’s just a little rundown on colors and the different terms and definitions: