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.  If you have any suggestions of color palettes I should try, please email me at nvenhuizen@gmail.com. ( I’d love to have a comment section on this page, but I haven’t yet figured out how to do that!)

It is almost Easter, and I decided to try a pastel colored palette this week, as Easter decorations are usually in pastel colors.  Basically, a pastel color is any color that is mixed with white.  I mixed a darker green and a darker gray/brown mixture for accents, but basically used only the pastel versions of the following pigments.  Because I used pastel colors for these paintings, the paintings are in a much higher key than most of my paintings.  I like the bright, cheerful look that a pastel palette imparts so I will definitely be using this palette again!  Before I began, I mixed each of the below pigments with an approximately equal amount of titanium white.  The photo of my palette(below) was taken when I was about midway through doing the following three paintings-

Dioxazine Purple

Viridian

Ultramarine Blue

Cadmium Orange

Alizarin Crimson

Cadmium Red 

Cerulean Blue

Cadmium Yellow

Palisades

Old Railroad Bridge

Garden Trellis

Pastel Colored Palette