If you’ll recall, in this post, I showed you a tiny travel palette I bought in the Netherlands.
Here’s what I did with it:
All paints are Winsor & Newton, except the Raw Umber. I believe that’s Holbein.
I did a little research for urban sketching palettes. I used Jane Blundell’s 12 color palette as a basis since I had 12 spots to fill.
I liked the idea split primary palette, mostly because I’m comfortable with a limited primary palette. For my warm primaries, I used Quinacridone Gold, Cerulean Blue, and Winsor Red. I’ve seen the Quinacridone Magenta mentioned as a warm red, but I’m not convinced. I threw it in because it makes nice violets.
For the cool palette I chose Bismuth Yellow, which is too opaque for me, but I didn’t have another cool yellow. I’ll never use it otherwise and it’s just for sketching so I can live with it. Permanent Alizarin Crimson and Ultramarine (Green Shade). The Ultramarine makes a nice gray when mixed with the Burnt Sienna and I use French Ultramarine in my classic palette along with Permanent Alizarin Crimson and Quinacridone Gold.
The cobalt turquoise was an accident, but I’m not mad. I picked it up instead of the cerulean and didn’t notice until it was too late.
The last color I took from Jane’s list as well, Sap Green. Mostly because green is the worst color for me. You may notice, it’s almost never in my paintings. I may change it to Viridian green in the future just because Viridian and either Permanent Alizarin Crimson or Quinacridone Magenta makes a great black.
I prefer mixing burnt siennas, etc, but it’s nice to have them handy so I also used her 3 earth tone of yellow ochre, burnt sienna, and raw umber.
I am testing out layouts for when I add the palette to my official palette record book.
Look at those violets.
I would like to add Transparent Orange at some point, but I don’t know which color I’d replace. Perhaps the raw umber.
Ironically, this “travel” palette has triple the pigments of my typical limited palette. It’s scary and more than a little exciting.
Days spent in my studio focusing on color theory are some of my favorites.