Limited Palettes
I haven't had a lot of time for drawing and painting lately, and when I find myself unable to manage sustained practice, I try to find small things I can do to make progress in the nooks and crannies of my day. One of those things is to mix limited palettes of three colors to better understand what your colors will do. Here's a page of triads I've been slowly working on in my notebook that I keep exclusively for color experiments. (Aren't colors beautiful?!!!) The benefit of tying out triads on a single page like this is that you can see the moods and broad possibilities of three colors alongside the moods and possibilities of other triads, and this is a very helpful for selecting a palette for a particular painting. For example, I've been going through photos of our family's trip to the North Shore in MN this summer, and those cool, bright colors of 1) Hansa Yellow Medium, Ultramarine, and Alizarin Crimson, as well as 2) Winsor Lemon, Cobalt Blue, and Permanent Rose, would work really well with pure purples, blues, and greens of that region. And after seeing what high chroma colors you can achieve with a triad, you can test its the range of neutrals. The second, more subtle watercolor painting of hydrangeas I did in August (see Paintings) was painted with Winsor Lemon, Cobalt Blue, and Permanent Rose, and as you can see, you can get very muted, calm colors from that same palette that I intend to use for the bold, singing colors of the North Shore. I didn't have a plan when I started this triad page, but if I could start it over again, I'd consistently mix three greens on the right (yellow-green, green, blue-green), three purples next (red-purple, purple, and blue-purple), three oranges after that (yellow-orange, orange, and red-orange), and, finally, see what can happen by mixing all three in different quantities. That way I'd be able to see the greens, for example, by sweeping my eye down the page, instead of having to bounce them around the paper to make comparisons. What are some of your favorite triads?
