In my blog, I am trying various color schemes to expand my painting vocabulary. To that end, I am selecting a different color scheme/limited palette each week and basing three little 8 x 6 paintings upon that color palette.
I love Cerulean Blue-especially for skies! I’m especially fond of it with Cadmium Orange and painted these three paintings using primarily Cerulean Blue and Cadmium Orange. In addition to Cerulean Blue and Cadmium Orange, I also used a bit each of Cadmium Red, Cadmium Yellow, Viridian and, of course, Titanium White.
Recently I decided to branch out and try different limited color palettes/schemes in my paintings. In my painting, I am primarily concerned with expressing the mood that a scene evokes in me and color is such an important component of expressing mood. I prefer painting with a limited color palette to avoid muddy colors, to create harmony and, (let’s be honest!) for simplicity. There is enough to consider in painting (drawing, composition, brushstrokes, etc.) without having to choose between 20 different colors on your palette!
I looked online to see various color palettes to try and was disappointed to see that there was surprisingly little about this online. Some pages discussed color theory(which I’m quite familiar with!) at great length. Some mentioned unique color palettes, but did not show examples of what the color palette looked like.
Therefore, since no one had generated this for me, I decided to experiment myself. I hope to use a different color scheme to execute three small 8 x 6 paintings per week. Even though I’ll no doubt miss some weeks, I hope to explore at least 40 color palettes(and execute at least 120 little paintings!) by the end of a year. This knowledge should enable me to express myself more effectively through my paintings. If you are reading this blog, I hope that my experiments will be helpful in your painting as well.
The color palette I tried this week was
Cadmium Yellow,
Ultramarine Blue
Ivory Black
Titanium White.
All of the colors in the three paintings below were mixed using only the colors listed above(other than the red stop sign in the third painting!)
I hardly ever paint with black -but since I do have a tube of it-I gave it a try. I found that black mixed with yellow makes a really nice, subtle green. I discovered that this palette would be great for going out to paint in spring or midsummer, as you can see in the three paintings above, which I executed using this palette. You may wonder if it isn’t better to go out and buy a tube of green paint, but the greens out of a tube often look pretty garish, whereas the greens you mix yourself look much softer and more natural.
