Blues and Browns Only

While Johnny Thomas’ sky challenge is still ongoing – I dip in and out occasionally – over the last six weeks he set the limited Blues & Browns Only challenge (#bluesandbrownsonly), painting a series of six reference photos using only shades of blue and earth tones.

I was eager to take on this challenge to stretch myself to see the chromaticity in earth tones. Historically I’ve preferred brighter colors, but my appreciation for more subtle colors has been trending slowly upward. Could this challenge convince me to finally become an earth color person?

What count as blue or brown?

The first challenge was defining the terms! JT was vague but firm that we should define the rules personally in a way that challenges ourselves.

Blue was relatively easy to define. Essentially I went with any pigment starting with ‘PB.’

I decided that turquoise counts if it’s blue enough; so I eliminated Cobalt Turquoise because it’s a green pigment, PG50, which might make it too easy to mix greens, but accepted Phthalo Turquoise, PB16, which is more bluey anyway, and almost the same color as Phthalo Blue Green Shade.

Mixed colors are a judgment call; I’d be inclined to rule in colors that “read” as blue even if they have other pigments, like Indigo, but in the end I didn’t use any mixed colors.

Defining brown is trickier. Some possible definitions:

• Browns look brown: The most restrictive definition would only rule in colors that “read” as brown, like Burnt Umber, Raw Umber, Sepia, and Van Dyke Brown. This seemed boring to me. What appealed to me about this challenge was the effort to push muted colors to their most chromatic, but it’s not really possible with just straight brown.
• Browns start with a ‘PBr’ pigment number: This includes all the PBr6 and PBr7-based colors that are mostly the ones that read as brown (burnt & raw siennas and umbers). This felt arbitrary, as it rules in Naples Yellow Deep (PBr24), which looks so much like a buttery yellow that I almost felt it was cheating, but rules out more muted colors like Yellow Ochre (PY42 or PY43).
• Browns are earth tones: Earth tones is also kind of a fuzzy definition but it includes natural or synthetic iron oxides (ochres), including those PBr6/PBr7 browns, yellow ochre (PY42 or PY43) and red ochre (PR101 or PR102).

I went with the “earth tone” definition as it seemed to give me the most ability to play around while also keeping me muted for the challenge.

Week 1: Sky

I liked this reference photo so much that I took three runs at it.

There are things I like about each of these. The soft clouds and layered mountains are nice in attempt 2, but ultimately I think I’ll call attempt 3 my canonical version because I like the composition and values the best.

Fun fact, attempt 3 was also my first attempt at a new technique where, instead of taping down the paper, I wet both sides, as explained in this Matthew White video. It stays wet longer, and because surface tension adheres the paper to the board, it dries flat without tape. It worked like a charm!

Each of these attempts uses roughly the same set of colors.

1. DS MANS (PBr7) or WN Gold Ochre (PY42) as the gold underglaze. I used both in different paintings and didn’t see much difference for this use case.
2. WN Venetian Red (PR101) in dilute for the coral cloud edges. This was my hero color! I loved it! Glad I kept this in a drawer after trying it – it wasn’t on my A or B team palettes.
3. DV Cerulean Blue Genuine (PB35) for the blue in the sky.
4. DV Ultramarine Blue (PB29) mixed with…
5. DV Indian Red (PR101) for the gray-violet clouds.
6. DS Indanthrone Blue (PB60) mixed with…
7. DV Burnt Umber (PBr7) for the dark blue-black mountain silhouettes.

I realized after the fact that I was supposed to choose a palette of six colors for this challenge, and I used seven in this painting alone. D’oh! If I’d been trying to keep my palette more minimalist, I could used just one of Ultramarine and Indanthrone Blue, especially since I used them both in mixes.

But I insist that I needed both Venetian Red and Indian Red, even though they look so similar. Venetian Red doesn’t mix as nice violets, and Indian Red doesn’t make a nice corals.

Week 2: Substitute Junco

I didn’t do the prompt this week! It was a picture of a fish that I found uninspiring. Instead, I used my blues & browns palette for a subject of my choosing: a dark-eyed junco.

This time, I only used 5 colors:

1. HO Yellow Ochre (PY42) – though I kind of wished I’d used MANS for more texture in the rocks.
2. DV Burnt Sienna Deep (PR101) – Although I only used it to make gray with Ultramarine (for which I could have used Burnt Umber), idk, for me, this is just better.
3. DV Indian Red (PR101) – with a little YO, a diluted IR makes the bird beak pink. Also used in the background and to make a light gray with Cerulean.
4. DV Ultramarine Blue (PB29) – for mixing dark grays
5. DV Cerulean Blue (PB35) – for mixing light grays

Bonus Week: Glacier National Park, Canada

This was not for a specific Blues & Browns week, but I did use blues & browns for this near-grayscale painting.

• DS Indanthrone Blue (PB60) & DV Burnt Sienna Deep (PR101) for the mountain grays/blacks
• DV Cerulean Blue (PB35) + DV Indian Red (PR101) for the blue-gray sky

Week 3: Dandelion

I did this long after actual week 3, as I kind of dropped out of everything for awhile.

Again, I used 5 colors, very similar ones:

1. HO Yellow Ochre (PY42) – my main yellow
2. WN Venetian Red (PR101) – my main red/orange
3. DV Cobalt Blue (PB28) – used for the blue parts at the top and bottom though if I had predicted that I would use Ultramarine as well, I might not have used this.
4. DV Ultramarine Blue (PB29) – used to mix dark black colors because Cobalt Blue did not get it dark enough. The dark shadows along the sides are a mix with the Yellow Ochre and Indian Red. The main silhouette also has…
5. DV Burnt Sienna Deep (PR101) – used only to mix black.

Week 4: Peaches

While I had some trouble with water control and edges here, I’m pretty happy with the way the colors turned out. The reference photo’s colors are too chromatic for a blues and browns palette, but I think that Gold Ochre, Venetian Red, and Indian Red did a good job of appearing contextually orangey despite their relatively low chroma.

This is an example of a palette I never would have used for this reference, but after I did it, I realized how great it is. Opaque PR101s just have this wonderful softness to them which conveys the fuzzy texture of the peach.

Colors:

1. WN Gold Ochre (PY42) – more orangey and slightly higher chroma than the Holbein Yellow Ochre, ideal for a peachy mix.
2. WN Venetian Red (PR101) – my warmest, brightest earth red, to mix red-orange tones with the Gold Ochre.
3. WN Indian Red (PR101) – for those deeper crimson sections of the peach and the shadowed peach.
4. WN Phthalo Turquoise (PB16) – I used a high-chroma blue to mix the leaf green, though because my yellow was Gold Ochre, it still didn’t end up being terribly vivid.
5. DV Ultramarine Blue (PB29) – dropped into shadows and backgrounds. Not sure I’m happy with this because, as UB always does, it dried brighter than I thought. Still, the blue-ness of it contrasts nicely with the orange and may make it look brighter.

Week 5: Coastal Landscape

It felt luxurious to be able to use bright blues for the sky and water. I really wanted to use a lighter yellow for the flowers, but I reluctantly settled for plain ol’ yellow ochre. In context I think it looks fine.

Colors:

1. HO Yellow Ochre (PY42) – my main yellow
2. WN Indian Red (PR101) – for browns, though if I had been more faithful to the color scheme of the reference, TRO might have been better
3. HO Phthalo Blue Red Shade (PB15) – for the sky, sea, and greens. My first time using this color in this project! I made the turquoise with Yellow Ochre and PBRS to avoid adding another turquoise color.
4. DV Ultramarine Blue (PB29) – mostly mountain shadows, also darkened the sea and in some brown mixes

Week 6: Henge

JT provided the reference in grayscale but instructed us to paint in color, so I went for kind of a golden hour look with a gray-blue sky and yellow-brown stones. I think that I made the blades of grass too prominent and therefore made the henge look like children’s blocks, but that’s ok. I like the sky.

Colors:

1. HO Yellow Ochre (PY42) – my main yellow
2. WN Venetian Red (PR101) – to warm up the yellows
3. DV Ultramarine Blue (PB29) – for shadows and grays
4. DV Cerulean Blue Genuine (PB35) – kind of the hero color of this sky
5. WN Phthalo Turquoise (PB16) – for mixing greener grass

Final Palette Roundup

I violated the rules a bit by adapting my palette for each painting, but I enjoyed myself more this way. Sticking to a palette I had chosen arbitrarily at the beginning, before seeing all the references, would feel stifling; I preferred using the process to refine my choices. Here are some things I learned:

• I still don’t like Burnt Umber (which I tried for the first painting) or Van Dyke Brown (which I reconsidered but didn’t even make it into a painting). I find these browns boring, easily mixed with earth orange + Indanthrone or Ultramarine Blue, and texturally unpleasant.
• Opaque PR101s came into their own, as I repeatedly used both Indian Red and Venetian Red! Venetian Red especially impressed me with its ability to make vibrant coral colors, especially lovely in dilute.
• I also tried the violet version of opaque PR101, Caput Mortuum Violet, but found it a bit duller and less useful. It makes nice dark indigo colors when mixed with blues, but so do a lot of earths.
• I knew I would rely on high-chroma blues, like PB16, to make up for the low-chroma in the warm side of the spectrum, but I surprised myself by frequently turning to “earthy” granulating blues like Cerulean, Cobalt, and Ultramarine, as compatible partners for ochres.

In retrospect, based on my most commonly used colors, here’s my six-color minimal palette for this challenge:

1. WN Gold Ochre (PY42) – my favorite earth yellow, a gorgeous hue at every level of concentration. It’s relatively high-chroma though a bit on the warm side, especially for mixing greens.
   
   Runner-up: Holbein’s Yellow Ochre (PY42) uses the same pigment but is a bit more green-toned (though still fairly warm for a PY42) making it read as yellow rather than orange.
   
2. DV Burnt Sienna Deep (PR101) – an earth orange for mixing browns, grays, and blacks with warm blue. BSD is a relatively orange-toned version that could also be used for fairly chromatic oranges.
   
   Runner-up: DS Transparent Red Oxide is another PR101 option, but I went for the higher-chroma, smooth version considering the rest of this palette is relatively low-chroma and typically granulating.
   
3. WN Venetian Red (PR101) – my favorite earth scarlet red, unlocks lovely dilute corals. This was my all-star of the challenge!
   
   Runner-up: Indian Red is similar to Venetian Red but a bit cooler (less toward orange, more toward violet), so it mixes lovely earthy violet-grays. Note that DS Venetian Red is basically the same hue as DV Indian Red.
   
4. DV Ultramarine Blue (PB29) – mixes neutrals with earth orange, and is a bright blue in its own right.
   
   Runner-up: Typically I like Indanthrone Blue in this slot, as it’s more convenient for mixing darks, but considering the overall low chroma of this minimal set, I figured I better go with something that can do double-duty as a bright blue.
   
5. DV Cerulean Blue Genuine (PB35) – mixes soft, light grays with earth red, and is also very pretty in skies. A color I have generally underappreciated but come to really love in these limited palettes.
   
   Runner-up: Cobalt Blue (PB28) is another mid-chroma soft earthy blue with some similar behavior but an unmistakable “blue’s blue” hue.
   
6. WN Phthalo Turquoise (PB16) – this bold synthetic turquoise mixes a range of bright greens, and serves as a high-chroma antidote to the gentleness of the other colors. Sky blues can be mixed with Ultramarine to warm it up.
   
   Runner-up: Phthalo Blue Red Shade if you want something a little more true-blue and less green.

Careful readers will note that given the runners-up (which I did use in several paintings), this is actually a twelve-color not-so-minimal palette!

Conclusion

This was a fun challenge because upended the way I usually do things. It was fun to try to squeeze as much chroma as possible from muted paints, as opposed to my usual effort of toning down bright paints. I often err on the side of making paintings too bright, and it was simply impossible to do that – at least on the warm side of the spectrum, with only earth colors. I found myself continually surprised by how chromatic my paintings ended up looking, and how bold the ochres could look while contrasted with grays and slate blues.

I did feel some frustration occasionally at colors I could not match. In the coastal landscape, I was struck by the bright lemon yellow flowers in the foreground, and earth colors really can’t approximate that. Learning to deal with it is part of the lesson of working with a minimal palette, I suppose!

I’m excited to get back to my usual bright palette, but I think that I will take some of these lessons with me – renewed interest in Venetian Red and Cerulean Blue, as well as a more solid trust that muted colors can appear plenty bright in context.