In this 1924 poster for the London Underground, Walter E. Spradbery limited his palette to just four colors: white, cyan, red, and green.
The resulting poster has a several advantages over an image with a full range of tones and colors. It's cheaper and easier to print, and the simplicity gives it more visual impact from a distance.
Here's a detail of the original painting in opaque water-based colors. Where possible he eliminates outlines around small shapes and lets them blend together.
It's a challenge to design a picture with just four colors. One naturally wants to subdivide, gradate, soften, and outline. But a painting gets its power from the grouping of tones, and this regime forces the artist to group, generalize, and simplify.
I also like the silhouette of the trees and how liquid the water looks and how perfect the lettering fits in.
ReplyDeleteA lovely poster in my eyes.
My art professors on more than one occasion referred to some of my early painting and illustrations as "garish" and "over-saturated," One of them suggested I experiment with a more limited palette, maybe even some monotone and duo-tone work. I can't say enough how helpful pulling back sometimes can be. Just because some of these companies offer 150+ colors of paints or pencils, doesn't mean you gotta use all of them on the same painting :)
ReplyDelete'Less is more' as my old Design I teacher, Polifka, used to say.
ReplyDeleteI'm all for a limited palette although, those particular 4 colors together are rather disturbing to me, especially in the print, but maybe it works better when viewed from afar. I like the posterization. - mp