Yesterday Jane and I headed to Salem Willows for a little painting. My goal today was to get a handle on my sky and the forms of the trees. Whilst painting I realized that the palette I’ve included in my pochade is not completely right for what I’m doing. Jane and I also had a discussion about palettes and how somethings are right for some things but not others, like portrature verses landscapes.
My current palette is as follows:
- Cad yellow light
- Cad yellow Medium
- Cad Orange
- Aliz Crimson
- Pthalo blue
- Cobalt Blue
- Ultramarine Blue
- Unbleached Titanium white (Titan Buff for you Golden fans)
- Titanium White
- Mars Black
Now to be fair I’ve never included a black in my pochade palette in the past and I just sort of tossed it in on a whim, which is strange to think given how damn small this pochade is and how much smaller it is than my last box.
It is also interesting to note that I don’t have a single earth tone in here- not a drop of raw or burnt umber or sienna. Again, an oddity given my love of earth tones and their heavy use in my watercolor palette. Perhaps I was unconsciously rejecting my watercolor palette? Who knows, but an earth tone or two will be included in the next packing of the pochade. Also, yellow ochre is nowhere to be see.
It’s as if I closed my eyes and picked a palette not really suited to the sort of painting I was planning.
The all of the color except unbleached titanium were colors that my Painting 101 instructor listed on the “to buy list” for the class. Perhaps I was just grabbing some old familiars?
I’ve been trying to mix all the shades of green that I want but the truth is that it’s making me smash my head against the wall. Color mixing is entirely different for watercolors and acrylics. With watercolors it is much easier to mix the shades of green you need from just a few shades of blue and yellow. It is not the same for acrylic. I’m adding pthalo green to the mix. It will replace one of the 3 blues, which I’m not sure but right now I’m leaning toward ultramarine getting kicked out. I’m replacing the black with burnt umber.
This will shock people, given my love for this particular color, but I’m considering kicking Alizarin Crimson out of the box. It’s a great shade of red but for the space in the pochade I can get more mileage out of Napthal red. If I add nappy red (as I like to call it) I’ll also get rid of cad orange. Nappy red makes great oranges with either of the cad yellows. I will keep both cad yellows as they mix with the blues and the pthalo green to make different shades of green.
Cobalt blue may be replaced with cerulean blue but I’m not sure yet. This leaves me with the following:
- Cad yellow light
- Cad yellow Medium
- Cad Orange-
- Aliz Crimson- Napthol red
- Pthalo blue
- Cobalt Blue (questioning this one)
- Ultramarine Blue- Pthalo Green
- Unbleached Titanium white (Titan Buff for you Golden fans)
- Titanium White
- Mars Black– Burnt Umber
After I got back from my art adventure I headed to my studio and dumped the contents of the pochade out and started making color swatches of the colors in the box, to see what colors I could mix by mixing each color with the others in the box. It was enlightening and led to the switches seen above. Then I look through my swatches and I debate removing ultramarine from the mix…
Next up will be mixing a series of swatches from my studio palette. That will take substantially more time, I have 20 or 30 colors of paint. Then… I'll be doing this with my watercolors. This will certainly cut back on my cult of stuff purchases. I have that in check with watercolors, as I've always kept a list in my planner of the watercolors I need to replace. INterestingly enough I rarely stray from that list. Though on the rare occasion i have, I've ended up with colors that I use regularly, like indigo and red ochre.