Experimenting with a Limited Palette

WARM AND COOL

Trying to figure out what is "warm" or "cool" in paint terms can be confusing. This is actually just a way of saying how a color makes you feel: yellows/oranges/reds are generally associated with the sun and a warm day. Blues and violets are associated with cold. 

But each color has a warm and cool on the spectrum, but it is actually more that it has a BIAS or it leans toward a warm or cool color. Example, all blues are COOL in that big category of warm or cool. But some lean toward green, which gives them a green bias. Other lean toward violet, which gives them a violet bias, so they are considered a "warm" blue.  Yellows are ALWAYS warm: but they can have a BIAS. A lemony yellow has a green bias....you don't see any orange in it. So that yellow is a cool yellow. But it's still a warm color.

Painting with a Limited Palette

Why paint with only a few colors?

The experiment today was to choose a set of primaries and see how many colors you can make with it.

You can change how much of each color is in a mix. Make light values and dark values. Make browns and grays, and neutralized colors by adding their complement.

Here is a set of 4 pictures I did that demonstrate. The colors I used were permanent rose, French Ultramarine, and a medium yellow.

Top left, I mostly used the French Ultramarine and rose to make snowy blues and violets. I mixed all three to make the brown for the tree, and muted the red barn with some blue/yellow to create gray.

Picture #2, the spring scene. Same colors. The blue was muted a little with an orange made from the yellow and red; the green is French and yellow; pink is just very watered permanent rose.

The summer scene: yellow and blue to make a natural green; a little yellow in the rose to make the barn bright red. And in the fall scene, orange made from the rose and yellow; grass a more muted green by putting a little red in the green mixture.

Four season, four different feelings, with 3 colors.

So choose three primaries you want to experiment with. Here's a hint: what is the most important color that you want to make stand out?  If you want a pretty green, choose a blue and yellow that leans toward green. If purple needs to look pretty, choose a cobalt or French, which leans toward purple, and a magenta or permanent rose which lean toward purple.

Do a sample of each color and the secondaries (orange/violet/green) you can make with them.

Then find a picture with simple shapes and experiment to see how many colors you can create.

Here I used a warm yellow (Quin Gold); Cool Red (Alizarin); and Warm Blue (French ultramarine)

In the one on the left, I opted for a lot of grays, with a pure yellow shining. (Grays are just opposite colors, or all three colors, mixed together. The orangery the mix, the browner it will be; the bluer the mix, the grayer it will be) In the second one I began making a very warm background with the gold and red, which makes the blue in the lighthouse stand out.

In this third one, I muted the blue a little for the sky, leaving some soft whites for clouds. I mixed some greens for the hill in the foreground. The brown is a thicker version of adding all three colors.

You can also try different combinations until you get a combination you like.

Why try a limited palette?

• Color Harmony and Cohesion: Because all colors are mixed from the same few pigments, the finished piece possesses a natural, unified, and harmonious appearance.
• Improved Technical Skill: It forces artists to master color mixing, understand color relationships, and focus on the "value" (lightness or darkness) of a color rather than just its hue.
• Simplified Decision Making: A limited selection reduces the overwhelming choices of a full palette, which helps in avoiding "muddy" colors and simplifies the painting process.
• Efficiency and Cost: It is more economical and requires carrying fewer materials, making it ideal for plein air painting.
• Specific Mood Creation: Using a restricted range allows the artist to evoke specific, deliberate, and sometimes moody feelings in their work. 

Before I make a detailed painting, if I take a few minutes to do a small version of the basic shapes and paint it different ways, I can make better decisions about what colors to use. This avoids making mistakes that would be hard to correct later on.

PAiNTING WET TO DRY

One question we had was "Where do you begin a painting? With the center of focus? With background?"

That doesn't really have one answer, but I found this interesting video that you might find helpful, especially with landscapes.

painting and chocolate landscape wet into wet

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/35H-vH8qF_I

Below I tried a version of that process doing a lighthouse.

First, I wet the entire paper, making sure it was wet but not puddly. Just shiny. I painted in the softest blends. As the paper loses its shine you can paint in things that will have soft edges or are more distant.

The dryer the paper becomes, the more control you have over shape and edges. So on the left I painted all my soft edges and distant hills. I left the lighthouse area dryer. Then when it was completely dry, I could paint in the hard edges and details of the lighthouse.