As a big-palette enthusiast, I really need practice with limited palettes, which is where Hazel Soan’s 2022 book Art of the Limited Palette comes in. In the book, Soan extols the joys of using a limited palette – how it can make your paintings look more color-rich, less muddy, and more harmonious, while also making your life easier as a painter.
What makes this book convincing is how much I love use of color in Soan’s paintings in the book. Is this because she uses limited palettes, or because she’s generally good at painting? Hard to say, but her limited-palette paintings certainly don’t appear to be limited in hue or value. On the contrary, they seem to glow and vibrate with color!
Hazel Soan’s Most Used Colors
Soan typically chooses three colors for any given painting, usually a primary triad consisting of a blue, a yellow, and a red. Sometimes, she may use four colors, e.g. adding an earth or a pop color to the triad; other times, she may use only two colors (typically a blue and an earth).
She is not an advocate of only owning three colors. She selects colors from a larger library, and emphasizes the skill of color choosing. Much of the book explores how you go about choosing colors for a given scene; for example, she advises that you begin by identifying any dominant colors, then by choosing the blue that will best support the greenery, shadows, or other mixes needed.
Many of the examples in the book consist of a triad mixed-and-matched from these six.
- Aureolin. Traditionally the word ‘Aureolin’ refers to fugitive cool yellow PY40, but since Soan typically uses Schmincke paints I wonder if this may refer to SH Aureolin Hue (PY151).
- Indian Yellow. The Schmincke version of this color is a mix of PY154 and PY110, which is the same pigment combination as DS New Gamboge.
- Cadmium Red (PR108). An opaque, bold scarlet often used for pop colors such as a bright red T-shirt, or as the primary red in paintings where orange dominates such as red rocks. I used Pyrrol Scarlet (PR255) in my paintout, a substitution which also makes this palette nontoxic.
- Ruby Red (PV19). This is Schmincke’s term for Quinacridone Rose. It is a warm, reddish QR more similar to WN Perm Rose, DV Red Rose Deep or DS Quin Red than DS Quin Rose. Soan marks this as her “cool red” of choice though many of the example paintings use Alizarin Crimson, which is a bit darker and warmer.
- Ultramarine Blue (PB29). Occasionally Soan specifies French Ultramarine or Ultramarine Finest, so she seems to use a variety of variants. Ultramarine Blue is useful in a triad because it can get dark values, but also could be used in dilute for a blue sky; works well for shadows; and mixes muted greenery (which many artists prize above bright greens for landscapes).
- Prussian Blue (PB27). A much greener dark blue that also has the range to make deep darks, can be diluted to work in a blue sky, and mixes lusciously vivid greenery. This is a color that can darken with light exposure. For that reasons, given the low opinion of Prussian Blue by many of my pigment nerd idols, I was a bit surprised to see that this is Soan’s cyan of choice, but when you think in terms of limited triads it makes complete sense that darker colors would be valuable if you are not adding extra black and Neutral Tint and so on to deepen the values. Soan writes about choosing the blue first and building the triad around that, and it seems clear that she uses blue as the value-setting backbone of the color set. Personally I quite like Prussian Blue but for those who demand higher lightfast standards I imagine Indigo would be a good option.
Other frequently used colors
Here’s a more comprehensive list of colors used in the examples in the book.
Click on the links in the table below to see my Color Spotlight for the specific color (where applicable), and the “color slot” I typically put it in, with suggestions for similar alternatives. I’ve also indicated whether they are typically ‘used as’ the primary red, yellow, or blue in the book. Only a few colors are not used as a primary; Sepia and Indigo are shown in monochrome paintings, for example, and Viridian is only used for pop detail.
Stars (⭐) indicate Soan’s most used colors as listed above.
Hazel Soan typically seems to use Schmincke Horadam watercolors, but also occasionally mentions colors that are clearly from other brands (e.g. Winsor Blue), so I wasn’t always able to tell which pigments were used.
Conclusion
The book was inspiring in the description and use of limited palettes. Limiting my palette is something I’ve frequently tried and forgotten to do, or actively resisted, but after reading the book I’m reinvigorated! I love the way Soan makes limited palettes look expansive, not limiting at all.