Colors are like flavors.

The right combination makes a meal sing! And who says what the "right combination" is? I might not like that honey rhubarb ice cream, but ask someone else, and it may have opened up a whole new world to their senses.

Color is important to get right, but color is also highly personal.

Song by Sara Groves that inspired this piece… Play it while you read this post!

I've been working on coloring many of my recent drawings. It's challenging to assess a piece from an outside viewer's perspective—the thought, "This might taste good to me, but will it taste good to other people?" is a common visitor during my coloring process!

This hand-drawn lettering is lyrics from a Sara Groves song that I love, called "From This One Place." (You should listen to the song while you look at these pieces!)

1. I started out blissfully gray in pencil, concentrating on building the forms and connecting the words with curves and leaves:

First, hand-drawing the letters in pencil!

2. Then I began creating a few color combinations on the drawing in photoshop.

I started out feeling good, but ended up not liking the first round I created—they felt too heavy and saturated. I know I can tend to make my work too light and airy, but I didn't want to go too dark or loud. I walked away for a bit, and came back the next morning to revisit them. Thankfully, I played some more with temperatures and saturation, and came up with these two that I feel good about!

I think two words I want to feel like my work convey are "glowing" and "sculpted." Limited palettes allow me to retain the tactile feeling in my work. I want the viewer to feel the rise and fall of forms, and never want the color to distract from that. This purple option felt like it retained both of those words!

I was so surprised by this next combination. I don't know if I can ever get away from peach or pale pink - it just feels like icing, and who doesn't like icing? I wanted to capture some of the feeling I get when I hear Sara's lyrics—the song is about being in a place that feels cold or muted, but god "can see something else." I think the glowing pink edges of the leaves allude to a light source that is "off camera"—maybe a sunrise far away. You can't see it, but it doesn't mean it's not there. I think maybe it's quietly happy.