10 Free Color Palettes From 10 Famous Paintings

If you want to learn a thing or two about color, why not look to the true masters whose artistic work has stood the test of time? Great painters almost always possess a keen understanding of color that is truly impressive when you stop to appreciate it.

Follow along as we pull color palettes from ten of my favorite artists and paintings and learn a thing or two about art history in the process. You’ll be able to see each palette as an Adobe Color CC swatch, and drop it right into Photoshop!

Starry Night

Starry Night was painted in 1889 by the infamous Vincent Van Gogh, a Dutch post-Impressionist painter who cut off his left ear, wrapped it in newspaper and handed it to a prostitute (and you thought your Friday night was wild). The painting supposedly depicts the view from Van Gogh’s sanitorium room window in Southern France.

He may have been a wee bit eccentric (ok, nuts), but the man certainly had a feel for color. The bold, cool color palette that occupies most of the canvas is nicely violated with the intense, warm tones of the lights and stars.

Download from Adobe Color CC

Click here to view and download the palette from Adobe Color CC and save it to your library.

Mona Lisa

Sfumato and chiaroscuro: two funny words that help describe the interesting style of Leonardo Da Vinci’s most famous work, Mona Lisa. Sfumato describes a method of blending colors together in a subtle fashion, this is what gives the painting its almost smoky look. Chiaroscuro refers to the...