When we were in grade school we all envied the other kid who owned the giant-size Crayola set. In the art store we still ogle the all the delicious colors.But it’s a good idea to limit the range of color pigments or the “palette” that you use on any particular painting. There are at least four good reasons to limit your palette.
1. If you have all the colors squeezed out around the edges of your mixing surface, you might tend to use them all in a single picture. I present my own book cover illustration, called “Glory Lane,” as a negative example. I did this painting as an experiment in bad taste. This is what happens if you use every color in the spectrum and fill the whole canvas with details. Visual cacophony!
2. If you construct a picture out of fewer colors, the resulting mixtures are more likely to be unified and harmonious—and more interesting. Every color you mix is automatically related. It’s easier to convey a mood or to explore strange realms you wouldn’t normally choose. Magazine illustrators in the 1920s and 30s were often required to paint in two-color palettes, like the black and orange painting above by Mead Schaeffer. The two-color discipline made those old illustrators into very resourceful colorists.
I painted this head study in a sketch group with just a blue and black and just a hint of warm. I wouldn’t have tried this color scheme if I weren’t forced to by a limited palette. Below is the actual color of her forehead, the warmest the colors ever get in this scheme:
3. The third reason to limit the palette is to force yourself away of color mixing habits. If you have colors called “flesh tone” and “grass green,” you’ll probably reach for them when you’re painting skin or a lawn.It’s a good idea every once in a while to leave of all your browns and greens in the cabinet and mix them from the primary colors instead. The legendary background painter of museum dioramas, James Perry Wilson, never used browns or black because he wanted to keep his mixtures more pure. There’s nothing wrong with black or brown or green, but you should know how to mix color without them, too.
You can make color wheel tests to preview the range of possibilities with limited palettes. Click to enlarge and see their component colors. Painting from one of these limited sets is like writing music for a string quartet instead of for a symphony orchestra.4. The final reason to consider limited palettes is that they’re portable and you can save money. In fact you can paint almost anything in nature with just four or five colors. There are a lot of limited palettes that still give you a full range of mixtures. Below: a plein-air painting I did in Windham, New York.
One simplified palette that I particularly like for landscape painting in oil is from John Stobart in his excellent book, “The Pleasures of Painting Outdoors.” He recommends:Cadmium Yellow Light, Winsor Red, Burnt Sienna, Ultramarine Blue Deep, Permanent Green (optional), and Titanium White.
You can get a good “black” from Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine. This is a good palette to use in miniature plein air kits, like thumb boxes. You can paint almost anything in nature with Stobart’s six colors.
Sometimes, like a madman on a crash diet, I like to jettison even more colors from this already spartan palette. Here’s a painting that I did with just White, Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Sienna, and Winsor Red. Doing without green or yellow was a challenge, but I enjoyed pushing the limits.
Here’s another painting with just black, white, and burnt sienna. I starved myself from blue, yellow, and red. The reason was that I just wanted to think about form, not color.There are lots of other formulations for limited palettes, both for oils and watercolors, but that’s enough from me. Your turn. Please chime in.
53 Comments on Gurney Journey: Limited Palettes
Some of my favorite watercolor paintings have come from using a few colors I had left on the pallet and seeing what I could come up with. It's a fun challenge and forces you to experiment and see things differently.
Brian
atomicbearpress.com"
Thanks again for this informative post!"
With a palette like that it's impossible to match what you see, but the effort of trying forces you to work very cleanly with your color mixing, more so than you would do with a full palette, where you are always greying down the components."
Dean"
so does this mean that if i like glory lane i'm a fool? haha, because i think that painting is awsome!
is that for another book? or is it already out?"
I also like the idea of using only two or three colours for a nearly monotone effect. This can have some stunning results as you have shown us.
Thanks once again for a stimulating series."
Maybe there's an aesthetic principle here: whether good taste or bad, if you push any visual idea to the extreme (in this case lots of detail and loud colors) it almost works somehow."
I work with a limited palette and it works for me.
I really think about what color I need and how to get it instead of guessing which color is closest to what I need and like you said, graying it.
I have really enjoyed the last few posts James.
Just wish commentors would use their name and not anonymous. Have been trying to find a nice way to say that and this is the best I could come up with."
(comment 11)"
While a limited palette unifies the entire composition, it also allows for a splash of color to make a dramatic impact. (For example, a red bow seems a lot brighter when it's the only strong color in the composition)
I really enjoy reading these informative posts! :)
-- Linda
www.lamgallery.com"
Yes, that Anonymous (#11) is me, but it was an accident. I just forgot to type in my name.
Linda, I'm glad you brought up that point about dropping in a splash of contrasting color outside of the range of the limited palette. The risk with limited palettes is dullness, and those little tasty accents are the cure!"
I like doing portraits with 2 or 3 colors, but I've never tried it with landscapes. I should try that.
After your last sunday post I cliked on one of the links one of the commenters posted, and the website they linked to said the real primary colors are a certain shade of cyan, yellow, and magenta. They said red, blue and yellow are outdated. I was wondering what you think about this theory."
Franz Hals did some incredible paintings with a very limited palette; especially later in his career."
You reminded me about Hals, Rembrandt, and Velasquez, who did some of their greatest masterpieces with amazingly few colors. Does anyone know the exact pigments they used?
ZD:
As you may already know, the basic primaries of red, yellow, and blue apply to paint pigments, but not to printing inks, which are a little different. And the primaries of light itself are different altogether.
This is beyond the scope of what I can deal with on my blog, but I'll recommend "www.handprint.com," specifically the link: http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/color5.htmlwhich for a thorough and technical discussion of primaries."
Hansa is a good substitute for cadmium if you'd like to buy less expensive and less toxic paints, and was recommended by a teacher. And by recommendation, I mean, I had to buy it for class.
But yes, limited color palettes, I've found, can save a beginners life if you start to get off track wtih color. Especially skin tones."
The so called Zorn palette of Flake white, Yellow Ocher, Cad Red Lt. and Ivory black. Zorn is the one who got into using black a lot for his blues.
17 century colors:
Lead White.
Yellows: Lead Tin Yellow, Yellow Ochre, Orpiment, Lead Antimonate (Naples Yellow)
Reds: Vermilion,Earth Reds, Red Ochre, Cinnabar,Minium (Red Lead),
Hematite(kind of like alizarin)
Blues: Azurite, Lapis Lazuli(Ultramarine Blue),Blue Ochre (Vivianite), Indigo, Smalt, Blue Bice.
Greens: Malachite, Green Earth (Celadonite), Cold Green Earth (Glauconite), Verona Green Earth, Green Bice.
Earth colors, Ochres from blue to orange, Sienna's, Umbra's.
Bone Black(Ivory), Mineral black,
Vine Black.
The old masters had more colors than we think, the idea of limited palettes that are being talked about here are from the 19 century
when painting outside became possible. Turner and Constable painted out of doors but it was not that easy as they did not have tubes yet as we know them.
You can find all the colors mentioned at: http://naturalpigments.com
For those interested:
Constable’s metal paint box c.1837; Containing eleven paint bladders, a piece of white stone and a glass phial of blue pigment.
According to this information and our research, the oil palette of John Constable most likely consisted of the following colors:
* Lapis lazuli (lazurite) Constable thought artificial ultramarine inferior to the natural pigment, and it was little used following its invention in 1826-8. It was therefore unlikely to have been used by Constable during his lifetime.
* Cobalt blue This pigment became available to artists at the beginning of the 19th century, and so it may not have been used in his earliest works.
* Emerald green
* Chrome yellow
* Vermilion
* Madder lake
* Lead white
Of course, it is likely he used umber, Sienna and ochre pigments as there is evidence of these colors in his work. Other colors that were available at the time Constable was working include:
* Prussian blue
* Cobalt green
* Brunswick green
* Scheele's green
* Chromium oxide green (opaque variety)
* Indian yellow
* Patent yellow
* Chrome orange"
Great post. I have been reading blog for about 60 days and love it!!!
I have two relative "newbie" questions on limited palette. I am sold on concept, but have confusion in details:
1) Do you vary base colors depending on medium (oil v. watercolor)?
2) How about transparent v. opaque? I like layered transparent washes, but also want opaque sometimes. . . I am thinking of around 8 colors for watercolor box with Cad yellow/Transparent Yellow, Cad Red/Aliz Crimson, Winsor Blue, Ult Blue, Burnt Sienna, and White. Or am I just over complicating things?
3) I like almost none of the greens on the market; the exception is Winsor green in waterscapes. Besides permanence issues, I think Hooker's green, sap green, etc. make predictable and flat foliage. I would be interested in hearing your view."
Watercolors do have a slightly different set of colors. My wife, who watercolors more than I do, swears by gamboge, for example.
Whether you're using oil or water-based media, all colors change when you go from transparent to opaque. Generally they get cooler, duller, and flatter.
So it takes some work to get opaque passages to sparkle the way transparents will do automatically. You can experiment with this either with oils or with watercolor and its opaque cousin, gouache.
The colors you suggested look great, but I'm told that alizarin crimson is not too permanent. Also, I think you're better off without greens at first until you're really used to mixing them from primaries."
I remember being blown away by the painting in person.
The 'every color possible' was perfect for the subject matter portrayed in the book.
Another stellar post!"
I really enjoy these plein air and limited palette topics because I've been wanting to do this with oils.
For your palette, do you mix it before you go out to paint?
When painting, are you starting with the same underpainting washes that you show in your dinotopia demos?
Thanks,
Ron"
Thanks so much, and I'm glad you're enjoying the book. Here are the quick answers, though I hope to give more detail in a future post about plein air methods.
I choose a limited palette on the spot, or premix the colors I'll be using. And my plein air method is different from what I do in the studio. I don't use pencil at all, but just dive in with paint on an oil primed board. The post from October 26 shows the palette for a given painting."
Thanks!"
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I am painting something for my Christmas card this year and decided to try a limited palette of red and green. However, I'm finding it a bit challenging. have you ever tried this palette? If so, do you have any tips on specific colors?
Thanks for the awesome blog. I read it all the time!
-Julia"
I've done a couple of paintings with the Zorn palette lately. I'd not heard of the Stobart palette. I want to try it!
Fred"
Yellow Ochre and B Sienna work? I've bought so many paints and used so many other artists paint selections but my paintings do not look cohesive. Thanks for your help!"