Art Nouveau Sage
- Jugendstil palette
- Belle Epoque colours
- Mucha palette
Sage and soft mauve with old gold, every colour greyed down, on ivory.
Opens an image model with the palette in the prompt. The same words work on a video model.
- #2F6A6A
- #3E5B52
- #7D9B78
- #B7A3B9
- #B8912F
- #F0E9D8
What it is for
Art nouveau is the first palette in this shelf chosen against something. It is a deliberate rejection of Victorian density and of primary colour at the same time, which is why everything in it is softened but nothing in it is pale.
Greyed colour also holds a black outline better than clean colour does. The style is built on line, and a dulled hue lets the line stay the loudest thing on the page.
How it works
Take each hue and mix a little grey into it. Sage rather than green, mauve rather than purple, old gold rather than yellow.
Set them on ivory, not white. The ground has to be warm or the greyed colours look dirty rather than soft.
Keep one colour deeper than the rest, usually a peacock teal, so the picture has a floor.
When to use it
Use it for posters, packaging, botanical subjects, stained glass, anything with flowing line work and lettering.
Leave it alone when you need urgency. Nothing in this palette shouts, and pushing the saturation to make it shout destroys it.
Told apart from its neighbours
Rococo pastel lightens every hue with white. This dulls every hue with grey, which keeps the picture in the middle of the range rather than at the top.
Victorian parlour uses the same deep green and gold but keeps them dark and dense. Art nouveau lifts them and drains them.
Where it was used
Mucha printed his theatre posters in exactly this range because a greyed colour let his line drawing stay in charge. Tiffany chose the same sage and mauve in glass, where the light behind it does the work the paper cannot.
- Alphonse Mucha posters
- Tiffany glass
- Paris Metro entrances
The prompt
Run it as it stands, or drop the colour clause into a prompt you already have. It works in an image prompt and in a video prompt.
<subject>, art nouveau palette of muted sage green and soft mauve with old gold and one deep peacock teal, every colour dulled with grey, ivory ground, flat areas with dark flowing outlines, no primary colour anywhere
What goes wrong
The colours return clean and bright and the picture looks like a modern illustration. Say every colour is dulled with grey.
The ground comes back pure white. Say the ground is warm ivory.
Leave out
primary red, primary blue, bright yellow, high saturation
Watch for
Every colour is greyed. Say dulled or muted or the model returns them clean and the period disappears.
Questions
Paint it
Pay for the one run. No subscription, and the price is on the model page before you sign in.
