Saturday, May 26, 2012

Painting with a limited palette


This 6x8 painting of a bottle of clove oil was a study using a favorite limited palette of mine. The colors are:

-Titanium/Zinc white mix
-Cadmium Lemon
-Quinacridone Rose
-Prussian Blue

I enjoy working with this palette a lot. You can mix a really amazing range of color with it. I've always preferred to work with a limited palette for a few reasons, though the main benefit has to be gaining a better eye for color. Not only does it teach you to mix color better than anything else, but it helps you learn to see color better. Not to mention it makes the painting look much more harmonious. It's also cheaper to buy just a few tubes of paint compared to a couple dozen... I could go on.

Another great limited palette (which is used by Scott Christensen) is:
-Titanium white
-Cadmium Lemon
-Permanent Red (Winsor & Newton "Bright Red" is good, or any sort of pyrrole pigmented red)
-Ultramarine Blue

I find this second palette better for landscapes. Colors are a little more subdued compared to the first.

I also realized the perspective is a little off in this one. I need to check my ellipses more. That's what I get for painting so many landscapes and forgetting how to paint cylinders.

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