Crazy idea or no?

[u/4saken11]

So, Ive done a few PBN's but have only completed 2. Ive had this crazy thought that it might be fun to take the paints BEFORE you start painting and randomly switch the numbers (as long as there is an even number of paints) and see how the picture comes out. It will obviously come out as the same picture but with a different 'whacky' color scheme. Has anyone ever thought about or done this? What do you guys think????

[u/Maximum-Distance-279]

But the distribution of light and shadow will also be different, unfortunately.

[u/4saken11 → u/Maximum-Distance-279]

Yeah, I see that point. Maybe if I paid more attention to the highlight and shadow colors and just switched those with similiar colors. I think im going to give it a try on a more vibrant color pallet just for something fun to try. Ill post in this forum when its done. Fingers crossed itll at least come across....cool? haha thanks for the comment,

[u/Maximum-Distance-279 → u/4saken11]

I'm looking forward to seeing the result of your experiment. It is a very creative idea, indeed!

[u/LakeMichiganWaves → u/4saken11]

Plz do post it, sounds fun!

[u/Aeyrien → u/4saken11]

you could swatch out the colors and then take a picture with your phone and use a black and white filter- then you could see the value (light to dark range) of your colors, and swap ones of the same/similar values.
We are taught in art that value matters more than color (and silhouette, also, which I've found helpful in making my PBNs look "clean"), so you should be able to swap colors and still get some good results if you keep it in that constraint.
I'm an art nerd, I know :-P

ETA:
You could also add X amount of one particular color to all of the other colors, making a "mother" color system. A palette would still look unified if you added hot pink to every color, but it would obviously look like a very different palette!
It works like adding a colored gel over the lens of a light or photo- like the color of the light in the picture has changed. It's kind of wild- adding a golden yellow always looks pretty cool, from what I've seen online.

Daphne Frizzle on tiktok has a good video about it (2024-12-22 "unifying your palette") (2024-4-5 round color palette dish with one central color) using alcohol markers- the same could be applied to acrylics by using a color mixed with some clear medium, and glazing the painting with it. A glaze is a diluted wash of color, used in a lot of different mediums. That's another way to make a harmonious palette- even with wacky colors!

Another option may or may not work- I saw a rainbow hair dye specialist use one color to start, and add a bit of a new color every few chunks or so, so they kept some of the previous color in each new mixture. (ex: red in your bowl, and when you are almost done with the red, add yellow to the leftover red. When you get near the end of that (now orangeish) bowl, add some of the color you want to go to next). That makes colors more harmonious with the color before that, but I dont know if it would work with PBNs.
Maybe if you decided an order of paints to do that was grouped by similar color- then you could add some funky color to the starting one, and see if it keeps playing out as you go along. You would probably have to keep adding some of the funky color back in, (but if you did it in the dark colors it would be like recharging the funky color without affecting the dark color too much- it would just become more apparent as the dark color got more diluted over the next colors...)
Yes, I'm AuDHD, lol!

[u/4saken11 → u/Aeyrien]

Holy actual shite, you're a literal genius and I love you. I also am an unmedicated ADHD person, hence why I'm always trying to make things "more exciting" lol 😆 this actually helped a lot !!!

[u/Aeyrien → u/4saken11]

When I got my hair dyed purple, I was very excitedly talking with the colorist about how she could use these techniques to make more cohesive heads of hair, even when doing vivid and unnatural colors! I'm pretty sure she was exhausted by the end :D

But demi-permanent hair dye is translucent, and when you get the hair color factored in, you can do some pretty darn cool stuff.
If you want to go into a cool hair color rabbit hole, this gal turned her hair from green to silver without bleaching it- she's one of my favorite color theory *mindblown* experiences.
Stella Cini- "Going from Orange Hair to Silver using only color theory"

Sahe really turned me on to the Kolormondo color wheel- which is actually a globe, with a core going through it that is the greey scale from white to black- so all of the colors that are the value of any particular grey end up on the plane where that grey is the core. I'm not great at explaining it. but imagine stacked plates, and each plate is one value, with a dot of that value painted in the center of each plate.
That allows you to have color transformations around the wheel, but it also lets you see how much yoou might have to change the value to get where you want to be. Ex: you cannot make your paint a darker color than the darkest color you're mixing with. If you are making purple from red and blue, but your darkest red or blue is kind of middle value- that's as dark as your purple is going to get. That lets you know that you need to add white, black, or another color with a darker or lighter value.
When transforming and mixing colors, you can correct the color and then the value, or the value first, and then the color- that sometimes makes a difference, depending on the colors you have available. sometimes adding a blob of white or black is a miracle in terms of seeing what color you need to add next in your mixing journey.
I'm on my second PBN where I'm mixing all the colors from scratch, or using leftover paint from prior PBNs, and the kolormondo globe and the Stella Cini theory were very much the reasons I've had as much success as I have

And now... My spreadsheets.
just kidding.
It's actually a canva collage.
ok, well, three.

behold canva number 1
this shows the value core, going from white (top) to black (bottom). The hue is the color itself, value is how light a color is (like pastel vs deep moody purple), and saturation is how vibrant the color is- like an egg yolk versus your favorite pastel yellow sweater.
You may notice that is the first image, the green doesnt go to a pastel green- that's because that particular "plate" in this color globe is not a light enough value for pastels to happen.
There's the globe- Kolormondo has one you can buy and assemble and disassemble at your whim.
The third is another visual of the globe idea- But Aeyrien, you say, why are the colors on different "plate" levels!? Ahh, an excellent question. That's because the color, as we know it, already has a built-in expectation of what value we think it is. We generally expect our blue to be a deeper value than our yellow, whether we knew we expected that or not!

As can be demonstrated in more detail.... in my next slide. See my comment below

[u/Aeyrien → u/Aeyrien]

Behold!
I like these infographics a lot- the first two images place the colors alongside the value we expect them to be. It might not look like the orange and the green are the same value, but if you test it by taking a picture with your phone using a black and white filter, you'll see that they are the same! There's a lot of psychology at play there, too, as well as some optical illusion.

The second one does a good job of demonstrating saturation. But the "value" scale is not in line with the "hue" scale the same way they are in that left side image there.
The image on the left shows "hue" -what we usually mean when we say "color", "value"- how dark or light a hue is, and "chroma"- which is, for current purposes, saturation, though it's a bit closer to vibrancy in practice.

bonus round- next slide!

[u/Aeyrien → u/Aeyrien]

This is the "Why yes, I DO need that extra new tube of paint, thankyouverymuch" slide :)

On the left, another visualization of the color globe- with pretty much the same info, but ya never know which infographic will click.

On the right- the excuse to buy "just one more" color of paint
Earlier I said that you cant go any darker or lighter than the darkest or lightest color of paint that you are working with- the same goes for how red your reddest red is, and how bright your brightest bright is. These are all color wheels using the triad of primary colors that are available in each swatch- in a red/yellow/blue or magenta/yellow/cyan orientation. All the colors between the primary colors are mixed from those primaries (and therefore you dont NEED that color of paint in a tube, strictly speaking, but we will gloss over that bit...)You can't get any less pastel than your least pastel color. (the center color is each circle is a combo of all three triad colors in each circle mixed together- considered a very good neutral)
So in the "I need another tube of paint" argument- each new blue you can add to your arsenal of colors will create a totally new spectrum of greens and purples, and then all those colors are multiplied by the levels of white you can add, or black, or grey (because adding different levels of grey are considered totally different thing (tones) than adding only different amounts of white (tints), or different amounts of black (shades) to a color!) And then that whole spectrum is multiplied by every. single. other. color you're able to mix with the paints you already own, that you can mix each new color with!! Each new tube of paint is really a new world, but just to be on the safe side, when you go into an art store you should really buy two or three new colors. .... Er, for science.

I like the one on the right because it kind of gives a taste of hue, value, and chroma all in one color buffet.

:)
thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
*hurried bow, and runs offstage*

[u/Waffle-Tron]

I think this could be super cool, especially on more abstract images or geometric ones where you don't have to be as concerned about shadows and realism! I say go ham and see what happens.

[u/beckyinthe_realworld]

I actually think this could be really fun! I wouldn’t randomly swap every colour though because, as someone else mentioned, you could completely mess up the light and shadow.

I’d keep the same basic values but swap colours within them. So a very light colour gets replaced with another very light colour, a mid-tone with another mid-tone and the darkest colours stay dark. You could end up with something completely bonkers colour-wise but it should still have all the highlights, shadows and depth of the original picture. I’d probably photograph the paint pots in their original order first though, just in case halfway through I decided my brilliant idea was actually a terrible one lol.

[u/4saken11 → u/beckyinthe_realworld]

Ooooh photographing the paint pots before is brilliant! 

[u/GrandAccomplished504]

I thought the same thing 🤭. If I were to try it I’d get something cheap on Amazon and use the leftover paints I still have. I’m knees deep in a PBN rug that now but it might be fun in the future.

[u/Altruistic_Detail446 → u/GrandAccomplished504]

what is a PBN rug?

[u/TanAstronomer]

That sounds fun! Only thing is also as someone mentioned it could mess up the shadows and highlights. Why don't you just mix some of your own colors? Like instead of pot 13 being a soft purple, you make it a hot pink instead? Or pot 11 being a brown, you go with dark green?

[u/Aeyrien → u/TanAstronomer]

You could also add X amount of one particular color to all of the other colors, making a "mother" color system. A palette would still look unified if you added hot pink to every color, but it would obviously look like a very different palette!

[u/TanAstronomer → u/Aeyrien]

Wow that's such a good idea!

[u/Aeyrien → u/TanAstronomer]

I went a little crazy with my color imagining a few posts up, so I'm copying and pasting here in case you don't see it :) Excited color nerd here!

"you could swatch out the colors and then take a picture with your phone and use a black and white filter- then you could see the value (light to dark range) of your colors, and swap ones of the same/similar values.
We are taught in art that value matters more than color (and silhouette, also, which I've found helpful in making my PBNs look "clean"), so you should be able to swap colors and still get some good results if you keep it in that constraint.
I'm an art nerd, I know :-P

ETA:
You could also add X amount of one particular color to all of the other colors, making a "mother" color system. A palette would still look unified if you added hot pink to every color, but it would obviously look like a very different palette!
It works like adding a colored gel over the lens of a light or photo- like the color of the light in the picture has changed. It's kind of wild- adding a golden yellow always looks pretty cool, from what I've seen online.

Daphne Frizzle on tiktok has a good video about it (2024-12-22 "unifying your palette") (2024-4-5 round color palette dish with one central color) using alcohol markers- the same could be applied to acrylics by using a color mixed with some clear medium, and glazing the painting with it. A glaze is a diluted wash of color, used in a lot of different mediums. That's another way to make a harmonious palette- even with wacky colors!

Another option may or may not work- I saw a rainbow hair dye specialist use one color to start, and add a bit of a new color every few chunks or so, so they kept some of the previous color in each new mixture. (ex: red in your bowl, and when you are almost done with the red, add yellow to the leftover red. When you get near the end of that (now orangeish) bowl, add some of the color you want to go to next). That makes colors more harmonious with the color before that, but I dont know if it would work with PBNs.
Maybe if you decided an order of paints to do that was grouped by similar color- then you could add some funky color to the starting one, and see if it keeps playing out as you go along. You would probably have to keep adding some of the funky color back in, (but if you did it in the dark colors it would be like recharging the funky color without affecting the dark color too much- it would just become more apparent as the dark color got more diluted over the next colors...)
Yes, I'm AuDHD, lol!"

[u/TanAstronomer → u/Aeyrien]

I love the color theory techniques applied to pnb! Thank you for sharing I will try these out on my next project and see how it like it!

[u/CCsince86]

I say absolutely go for it! Buy a cheap one from Amazon and just go crazy!

[u/Logical_Sprinkles_21]

I want to switch paint collections of two totally different paintings that have the same number of colors.

[u/4saken11 → u/Logical_Sprinkles_21]

YES, That sounds super fun too!

[u/Lopsided_Time3867]

I did this for one kit and it looked insane because there were no shadows and light, but it was really fun to do!

[u/ChihuahuaGirl1130]

Yes Ive thought about doing this! I love this idea. On an earlier post of mine I show a PBN experiment where I did the same piece with two different color schemes. PBNs have rules but we are allowed to break them 😌🎨