For those of you not already using ColourLovers as your single point of resource for anything to do with colours, then perhaps the following samples from two of their most popular articles will help to alter your opinion of this community as they use Art & Nature to create the pefect colour schemes:

Color Inspiration from the Masters of Painting

The world has seen thousands of artists and millions of great pieces of art, but we chose just a handful of pieces of art from some of greatest masters of painting to show a little of how they were inspired by color…

The Water Lily Pond by Claude Pierre Monet
		The Water Lily Pond was in the collection of the Havemeyers, who considered Monet the greatest impresssionist landscape painter. At the turn of the twentieth century, Monet became the most popular impressionist painter in the United States, as well as the one best-represented in America.

Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh
		Painted in 1889 and embodies an inner, subjective expression of van Gogh’s response to nature. In thick sweeping brushstrokes, a flamelike cypress unites the churning sky and the quiet village below. The village was partly invented, and the church spire evokes van Gogh’s native land, the Netherlands.

The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli
		The Birth of Venus depicts the goddess Venus, having emerged from the sea as a full grown woman, arriving at the sea-shore. It is suggested that the painting may have been created in 1483 for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco. The inspirations Botticelli used where of second century art and history.

Marilyn Monroe by Andy Warhol
		Warhol created several mass- produced images from photographs. Gracing his creative flair with things in heavily in the public eye, Warhol created prints during the 1960s featuring Jackie Onassis, and Elvis Presley. His most popular images during this time are of Marilyn Monroe and Cambell’s Tomato Soup.

La Promenade by Pierre-Auguste Renoir
		La Promenade depicts a young man helping a woman up a sloping path into the wood. In doing so, he backs into the trees and bushes and becomes a “green man.” He gestures into the trees; she looks away, as if wondering whether she really wants to surrender to the trees and his green embrace, to be tumbled and cradled beneath the dress the trees, soiling her radiant white dress.

Colorful Beauty in Nature: Butterflies

One particular place to find amazing colors in nature is the Butterfly and lucky for us there are 17,500 species of butterflies in the world. They use their bright colors to ward of predators by tricking them into thinking they are poisonous (some actually are) or by camouflaging themselves into plants or bigger insects.

Swallowtails again

Papillon bleu

Monarch Butterfly

Waiting To Fly