Creating A Color Scheme for My Children's Picture Book

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I want to have a consistent color palette for my books. When I colored my first two books, I started with a color palette (the Frankentoon Crayon color set). Unfortunately, I didn’t keep track of my character’s specific colors — I made the mistake of assuming that I would always remember that Betty Burro’s hair was bright orange, and that Jimmy Jay’s shirt was a specific shade of yellow green. When I completed my books, I realized that I had given Betty pink hair instead of orange hair, and that I had used several different shades of blue green for Jimmy’s shirts. It took many hours to go through all 48 images and correct the colors. That’s when I made a rule to my Future Self: Get the colors right the first time.

So, before I get into the painting part of book three, I’m making this simple color chart so that I’ll keep my character’s colors consistent. I think of these colors as the “right out of the tube” colors. I’m free to de-saturate them or change their brightness, but I won’t change their hue.

Resources

Rebelle 4

Frankentoon Crayon color palette from his Procreate Cartoon Brushes.

Finalizing the Cover Page Color Palette

The more I tinker with the cover page color palette, the darker the page becomes. So…I finally admitted that I’ve gotten off track and screwed up the color harmony. I came to my senses and dropped the idea of getting fancy with complementary colors and reverted to the Frankentoon Crayon color palette that I’ve been using for the last 12 months. Obviously, I need to learn more about color.

Here’s the final version of the cover image without the ISBN number. I see that I may have to make the text smaller. It looks like it’s too close to the cut line.