appreciate it! i like to color (: my approach to colorpicking is kind of instinctual at this point, but it's strongly rooted in a desire to hueshift—that is, to avoid relying on "local"/"pure" colors (ie, primary red/blue/etc). many of my pieces feature yellows that are way greener or redder in reality, but "look" yellow compared to the rest of the palette. i am very deliberate about this.

i'm also generally hesitant to add too many base palette colors overall, tho i often "cheat" via layer modes/gradients. this stems from my background of dabbling in pixel art, which i actually highly recommend at least trying to people feeling like they struggle with colorpicking. i often felt like i wasn't "bold" enough with my color choices before that point, since it turns out that having a pale pink and a white directly next to each other in a 32px sprite is... usually unreadable.

beyond that, just paying more attention to hue/value/saturation for every color in the palette is another foundational skill i had to develop over time. and i never use the eyedropper tool for colors, even if i'm using reference material (a habit that forced me to train my "eye" for colors over time). however, i wiggle my palettes or even completely change them as i'm working on a piece quite frequently—i don't always go into my work with a "plan" for the colors, especially for less ambitious stuff.

this is, of course, all just my own process. everyone's different, there's no universal "correct way" to do any kind of art. i'm not even drawing much at all lately, for personal reasons. i will get back to it when i can. it's always there for me.

i've probably rambled about this before, but it would have been a long time ago, and my website is incredibly clunky to navigate. when i was still using neocities, they didn't allow things like PHP, making basic things like "using search terms" logistically impossible. the current iteration is a very weird javascript situation a friend helped me set up, and i don't see myself having the spoons to overhaul it anytime soon.

thank you for caring.