Mike Daikubara is an urban sketcher based in Charlotte, NC and the author of Sketch First, Think Later and Color First, Ink Later. Sketch First, Think Later encourages you to get out and sketch quickly with a minimal kit; Color First describes a slightly more involved, wild style where you put down layers of dripping color to capture light and shadow and color interplay, then draw ink lines and details after it dries. I enjoyed both books, though the Color First method seems a bit advanced for me!
Today, I’m going to talk about Mike’s palette as described in Color First.
Mike Daikubara’s Palette
Mike uses 20 Holbein colors. He breaks his palette down into what he calls “color buckets” or families, similar to my idea of slots:
- Lights (including yellows) – for underlayers/first layers
- Browns – most used colors for urban sketching
- Reds
- Purples
- Greens – for natural elements
- Blues – for skies and glass reflections
- Darks – for dark values and to mix/darken other colors
I don’t have many of his colors, so I tried to mix some of them for this illustration.
| MD Category | MD Color | My Slot |
|---|---|---|
| Lights 1 | Permanent Yellow (PY74, PY83) | Middle Yellow |
| Lights 2 | Cadmium Yellow Orange (PO20, PY35) | Warm Yellow |
| Lights 3 | Jaune Brilliant No. 2 (PO20, PW6, PR108) | Warm or Earth Yellow |
| Browns 1 | Yellow Ochre (PY42) | Earth Yellow |
| Browns 2 | Light Red (PR101) | Earth Orange |
| Browns 3 | Burnt Umber (PBr7) | Brown |
| Browns 4 | Sepia (PBr7, PBk6) | Brown |
| Reds 1 | Rose Madder (PR83) [aka Alizarin Crimson] | Crimson or Magenta |
| Reds 2 | Cadmium Red Deep (PR108) | Scarlet or Middle Red |
| Purple | Mineral Violet (PB29, PR122, PBr25) | Violet |
| Greens 1 | Olive Green (PY150, PG7, PBr25) | Green (Warm) |
| Greens 2 | Permanent Green No. 1 (PY3, PY53, PG7) | Green (Light) |
| Greens 3 | Hooker’s Green (PY150, PG7, PY110) | Green (Middle) |
| Greens 4 | Terre Verte (PG17, PG23) | Green (Earth) |
| Greens 5 | Shadow Green (PBk31) | Green (Dark) |
| Blues 1 | Horizon Blue (PB15, PG7, PW6) | Cyan |
| Blues 2 | Royal Blue (PB60) | Violet-Blue |
| Blues 3 | Prussian Blue (PB27) | Cyan (Dark) |
| Darks 1 | Payne’s Gray (PB15, PR122, PBk6) | Black/Gray |
| Darks 2 | Lamp Black (PBk6) | Black/Gray |
My personal taste runs more toward the “modern” primary colors (magenta rather than red, etc.), optimized more to sunsets than cities, so this isn’t a palette that appeals to me personally. Still, I like the idea of dividing my palette into buckets, which releases some of the pressure to justify each individual color.