i've been posting a lot of my art from the last five or so years this week, and the observant viewers may have noticed i have a tendency to work with low-color palettes or at least with heavy reuse of colors. there are specific benefits this approach has for pixel art over other, higher-resolution art mediums, but it mostly comes down to the same reasons it's worth working with limited palettes in those other mediums:
- it forces you to make interesting decisions regarding what colors to use and how things are colored from those choices
- it necessitates looking at color as contrast, as limited palette slots puts you in the position of having to consider what colors could replace a single color's tint or shade in your mind
- it primes you to think about color through the lens of other aspects of the piece or subject, like the intended tone or utility of the final work
and for pixel art and other low-res art specifically:
- it pushes you to draw less subtly and focus on readable shapes, since you lack the wide palette with which to paint slight details
but all theory aside, at some point in the last decade-ish, limited-palette art became a comfortable space for me, one where the decisions come naturally and i can just let art happen. it's fun! so i wanna write a bit about some of the more fun limited-palette decisions i've made in the last several years that i like looking at/thinking about