How limited??
A palette can be limited to one colour as in the Haliburton painting below, which utilizes black is diluted with water to produce a range of values. |
| Haliburton Inlet |
This can be exciting, but also can be ultimately boring for those of us that love colour. In the last series of paintings, I used two basic colours plus white. I did add a tiny amount of hansa yellow in one or two paintings. I want to show, in a very crude fashion what can be achieved by limiting the palette to quinacridone burnt orange, anthraquinone blue and zinc white. The base colours are the top two on the left column. I have done nine paintings utilizing basically these two colours.
- White OR for watercolour: - Raw Sienna, - Burnt Sienna - Ultramarine blue
There is much to be gained by limiting your palette:
- economy by purchasing less paint
- colour harmony in the painting
- less chance of creating "mud"
- encourages more attention to values
- easier to pack.
Of course with all limited palettes, at the end of a painting it can add excitement to introduce a small touch of unexpected contrasting colour as a bit of visual eye candy eg. a bright orange leaf in a predominantly cool painting.
Anders Zorn 1860 - 1920 was a Swedish artist. He is best known for his portraits, domestic scenes and nudes in outdoor settings.
Of interest, however, is his reputation for using a palette limited to to only four colours - yellow ochre, cadmium red medium, ivory black and white. A much better representation than mine, of the myriad of colour produced by a few colours is the Zorn palette below.
Four. One to throw bulbs against the wall, one to pile hundreds of them in a heap and spray-paint it orange, one to glue light bulbs to a cocker spaniel, and one to put a bulb in the socket and fill the room with light while all the critics and buyers are watching the fellow smashing the bulbs against the wall, the fellow with the spray-gun, and the cocker spaniel.
