The Painted Hand

Gourmet Shoot

Please go on another hunt for me and look for the November issue of Gourmet Magazine to check out the cover and the "Over the Top" spread on pg. 120.  There you will find these gorgeous pages filled with Thanksgiving food that my partner, Lish assisted on styling and making the food for the photo shoot (she is a freelance food stylist for various magazines and food tv shows).  The colors in this story were so rich as you can see from the cover image above.  The turkey is perfectly golden and the rosy apples with all the mysterious and murky blues as a back drop - it's really decadent.  If you can't tell yet I am in love with Gourmet's food spreads and think they do an amazing job with color as you can also see in these previous two posts here.  

Organic Fall Shades

In my opinion I think these colors are a good update to traditional Fall colors. Beautiful yellow-toned colors of Ochre and Saffron become interesting when paired together and instead of a typical bright red, there is a muddled tomato color combined with a the dulled blue. I think it is a lovely twist to Fall! I think these colors are also great because they were created with organic paints. I ran across this project in Central Park last year for Earth Day and there were literally hundreds of kid paintings all lined up - it was very inspiring.... Photos by me

Napa Heaven

 To think wine comes from grapes always blows my mind.  I fell in love with wine country in California last week...beautiful hills with row upon row of grape vines, sun glistening down on them and the smell of grapes turning into wine...and let's not forget the tasting part :)  I was really in awe of how blue the grapes actually were and not the typical purple that we automatically associate with them. 

 Also, I've decided to start naming my colors in hopes that I try not to repeat the same color and to try and keep some sort of an organizational system for me.  If anyone ever has any questions about CMYK colors, I also hope to provide you with that answer a little faster by naming my shades!  Enjoy!

Inspecting the Sidewalk

I'm back from my trip and am ready to dive back into this blog. I hope my readers will continue to check in more often as I promise to have tons of color eye candy for you all to get creative with. So, to get into the swing of things I discovered to never underestimate the little things you might find from looking down at your feet. When I was in San Francisco this past week (which was oh so fun!) I was waiting in line to go to the SFMoMA and found myself standing on this sewer lid that had scrapes of color all over it.  I told Lish to go ahead in line and let me take pictures of the sewer as I was so captivated by it.  I'm sure people thought it strange, but I can't help but snap pics of unexpected color happenings. I also really loved the patterns the octagon shapes made.  So, don't forget to glance in all directions when walking about and to really zoom in on random things that may hold many treasures for you. 

Shades of Montreal

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So, as I mentioned earlier I went to Canada in June for work and had a great time wondering the streets of Montreal and Toronto in search of emerging fashion trends. With two cameras in tow I managed to take a lot of pictures, and discovered many colorful little treasures mixed in with all the mood photography I was taking for work. My first stop was Montreal and have to say, I was really amazed with all the shades I found in their architecture. I hope you enjoy!

50th Post!

Hello to all of my fabulous readers! I am finally back after a month's hiatus and what a better way to get back in the swing of things by making it my 50th post! My new job has been taking up a bunch of my time (in a good way), but because of it The Painted Hand has been neglected. I have had a bunch of new ideas and been taking lots of pictures during my absence and will start to get them posted. So thank you to all of you who have continued to check in! I will be traveling to Montreal and Toronto this week for work, and will hopefully get some cool pictures from there. So stay tuned for that soon! These photos were taken a few weeks ago at Anthropologie. I loved the kaleidoscope beetle creations, but what really caught my eye was the slight use of watercolor to add a dash of color to the designs. They had a dusty feel to them and I especially liked the smoky tomato red with the teal and golden hue. I have seen a lot of bug/insect imagery in fashion and home design and think this is a refreshing way, especially since it also reminds me of lace . Enjoy!

Brushstrokes

Stumbled upon people painting in Central Park this weekend to celebrate earth day and then saw the Bergdorf windows afterwards where some of the dresses had painterly patterns to them. This is sort of an odd combination of colors to pair together, but I think that's why I like it. As a color forecaster part of my job is to create unusual color pairings that some of society might view as odd...and then eventually they come around and see that it's not so bad afterall. For this palette I love whitened lime green with the grey/taupe and the little dash of pale orange and brick red.

On a side note, I found out that I will be traveling to Montreal, Toronto, Mexico, Peru, Columbia and other parts of South America for my job this year! I'm so excited and hope to document any interesting color palettes that I find to post on the blog. I'll make this a worldy color blog yet : )

New Spring Palette

These are two little snapshots I took this past weekend as I shopped in Soho and Brooklyn. I loved the vibrant colors of the neon sign and the random flowers wrapped around the mint green barbed wire. This palette combines some funky colors together for a fresh Spring look...Enoy!

Happy Easter!

My partner snapped this photo for me when she was in Austin, TX working on Food Network's Rescue Chef (she's the assistant culinary producer). At any rate I was impressed that she saw this color combo for me - the smoky, pastel eggplant color of the door with the pops of pink from the blossoms mixed with the washed out mustard-green of the house. It sort of is a new twist on the traditional Easter colors. So....Happy Easter everyone!

Pops of New York Color

One of the many reasons why I love New York - because of the little peeks of shades that shine through the grit of the streets and buildings and remind me that this city is full of more shades than I will ever imagine. Oh how it makes me smile!