My mentor pointed out my color palettes were all from the same 3 sites for a year straight.
I was showing her my portfolio and she asked, 'Jenny, where's the life in this?' after noticing every project used the same muted blues and grays from a single popular palette generator.
Honestly, that hits home. My old art teacher made us pick a color from a random object in the room every day for a month. I got stuck with this ugly brown from a chair leg for a week straight. It forced me to see color differently, way outside my usual go-to pastels. Sometimes you need someone to point out the rut before you can climb out of it.
Used to think those kinds of exercises were just busywork. My teacher made us paint a whole series based on a single crack in the sidewalk. Sounded stupid until I actually did it. Found more color and texture in that one broken line than in half my other projects. Really makes you look at the boring stuff in a new way.
And that crack thing honestly makes me think of the time my friend spent three hours photographing rust on a dumpster behind a gas station. He ended up with these wild orange and brown patterns that looked like satellite images of Mars or something. Ngl it kinda changed how I see those weird little stains and spots on everything now.
That chair leg brown for a WHOLE WEEK, @stella22? That's brutal but kind of genius. My old teacher would make us mix paint to match a brick wall or a muddy puddle. You start out hating it, but then you see a hundred shades you never noticed. It totally rewires your brain. Now I can't walk past a parking lot without seeing fifty grays in the asphalt.