Take color inspiration from the masters

Picking colors for a design, a piece of art, or a living room for that matter, has never been easy for a lot of us. Even the pros sometimes get lost in all of the potential variants and combinations.

Apps like Color CC (once called Kuler) and sites like ColourLovers have given us a way to store and share our favorite palettes. These are an invaluable resource. Once in a while, though, we can’t help but look to the masters.

After muttering something under our breath about how “Rembrandt probably never had a hard time picking colors, the jerk!”, we look to their work for examples of timeless, ageless, trend-transcending beauty. And now, you can steal their color palettes, thanks to Color Lisa!

Color Lisa is a curated list of color palettes based on masterpieces of the worlds greatest artists. Each palette was painstakingly created by color obsessed designers, artists, museum curators, and masters of color theory.

Just browse down through the page ‘til you find your favorite artists, and click through to see which of their many works have been boiled down into color palettes. Click on the view icon next to the title to remind yourself of the original artwork.

Here are some examples, starting with The Mona Lisa, by Leonardo da Vinci (because of course we had to):

Now, if you go through the whole list, and your favorite artist isn’t there, or you can’t find a palette based on your favorite work of art by one of the featured artists, you are free to send in suggestions. If your suggestion is approved, it will be dissected by the color experts.

Now, I’m not entirely sure who the “color experts” are, but I can’t deny that they do good work. Every color palette feels right for the source material.

Have a scroll through Color Lisa, see if you don’t come out feeling a little more inspired.

Ezequiel Bruni

Ezequiel Bruni is a web/UX designer, blogger, and aspiring photographer living in Mexico. When he’s not up to his finely-chiselled ears in wire-frames and front-end code, or ranting about the same, he indulges in beer, pizza, fantasy novels, and stand-up comedy.