Limited Palette

Since I started back painting, I have been collecting tubes of paint.  I have so many beautiful colors, but I would never use them all in one painting.  Each painting I do, I might vary the palette somewhat.  Since I have been packing up , going out, and painting plein air I have tried to limit my pallet to just a few colors.  But still I change the colors when I go out.  I decided this past weekend that I would pick a palette, explore it, and stick with it.  So, I spent Saturday picking the colors and doing color charts.  I should have done the color charts much sooner!  Oh I have done color charts before: greens and value scales, but I have not mixed each color that I will be using together.  (Not all at once, just one to one.)

The colors that I picked to use: cadmium lemon, cadmium yellow, naples yellow, alz. crimson, cad. red light, d. purple, pthalo blue, ultramarine blue, viridian, raw sienna, burnt umber, paynes gray and titanium white.  I wanted a warm and a cool variety of each primary color plus a few extra colors thrown in for their usefulness or just because I like them.  I may vary from this in the future but it is good to become familiar with the way the paints react with each other.  Especially when you are trying to beat the sunlight!

I mixed the lighter colors together but when I got to the darker colors, I would add white to the mix.  Some of the mixtures surprised me.  I never realized that mixing paynes gray with lemon would make such stunning greens. I should have though!   And naples yellow mixed with anything is beautiful!

We are supposed to have rain for the next few days so I guess my painting outside will have to wait a bit!