Here’s a question that was raised for me when reading Hazel Soan‘s The Art of the Limited Palette. The concept of a “limited palette” revolves around counting the colors you use in any given painting. So what counts as a color?
Color is an ambiguous word
The word “color” can refer to:
- A hue, or position along the color wheel.
- A pigment, or a specific chemical preparation used to create a color in the material world.
- A paint: a suspension of one or more pigments in binder.
So what are we talking about when we talk about limiting our colors in limited palettes?
It’s not hue
We can eliminate “hue” right away. It’s pretty clear that in watercolor, when we talk about limited palettes, we are not talking about limiting the number of hues in the final painting.
Some forms of artwork and graphic design limit the number of hues in a given piece for artistic purposes, but watercolor blends so readily that it would be quite difficult. Watercolor’s greatest strength as a medium is easy blending and mixing, and the smooth gradients creating infinity hues between two points.
Watercolor limited palette discussions encourage creating as many hues as possible from a limited number of components.
Pigments vs. paints
For artists who mainly use single pigment paints, the words “pigment” and “paint” may feel more or less interchangeable. But what about situations where they are not the same?
One pigment, multiple paints
One way to differentiate is to look at paints that are very different, but have the same pigment code. PR101 is one classic example of a pigment that can have many different personalities. For example, I have 3 versions:
- Transparent Red Oxide is orangey and transparent.
- Indian Red is scarlet and opaque.
- Mars Brown is pinky-brown and semi-opaque.
Do these all count as one “color”? It’s ambiguous in the book. At one point Soan does imply that one way to keep your color count small is by using multiple versions of the same pigment, e.g. Raw Umber and Burnt Umber (both PBr7). But this doesn’t seem right to me. Looking at my PR101 examples, I use them for rather different things and I think they appear to be different colors on the page. It almost feels incidental that they happen to have the same pigment code. There exist much more similar colors that happen to have different pigment codes. You’d have to have pretty insider knowledge to visually inspect two colors and know whether they’re the same pigment or not.
So no, I don’t think using multiple paints of the same pigment is any kind of backdoor around keeping your color count low.
Verdict: Multiple colors can be made from the same pigment number. If you got it from a different paint tube, and it has a different name or manufacturer, it’s a different color, even if the pigment number is the same.
Commercially mixed paints
Do commercially mixed paints – that is, paints made by mixing multiple pigments – count as one color or more than one?
Soan never directly addresses this conundrum but I believe, based on the colors she uses and the way she uses them, that she considers commercially mixed colors with multiple pigments to be one color for the purposes of a limited palette. Case in point: one of her main colors is Schmincke’s Indian Yellow, which is currently a mix of PY110 and PY154. (It’s possible she is using older tubes which were PY153, but by the time the book came out the color had changed formulas and she does not address it.)
Having used Schmincke’s Indian Yellow in its current form, as well as DS New Gamboge which is very similar (PY97 + PY110), I think these mixed colors do count as a single color for limited palette purposes.
When you look at this paint, you don’t see it as two colors; you simply see it as a warm yellow. It’s pretty indistinguishable from single-pigment warm yellows like PY65 or PY139. It’s completely random and incidental that some hues can be achieved with a single pigment and others require a mix of multiple pigments. Let go of the dogma of single pigments.
Now, there are some commercially mixed colors that do look like two colors. Many artists enjoy “color-separating” mixes (e.g. Rose of Ultramarine, Schmincke’s Supergranulating paints). I don’t think I would count these as a single color in a limited palette painting even if commercially premixed because you can always see the individual components, but others may vary in this opinion.
Verdict: Commercially mixed colors made from multiple pigments can count as one color.
Self-mixes
If commercially mixed colors can count as one color in a limited palette, how about mixes you make yourself at home by combining multiple single-pigment paints? And if self-mixes count, what’s the difference between a “limited palette” using Schmincke Indian Yellow (PY110, PY154), vs. a “not so limited palette” using both Yellow Orange (PY110) and Pure Yellow (PY154)?
To me the difference is divisibility. Commercially mixed colors are consistently and fully mixed, and not divisible. You cannot unscramble the egg. By the same token, I think self-mixes can also count as one color if you fully mix them ahead of time, but not if you let them mix on the page – because mixes on the page are variable and may show random patches or hints of their unmixed component colors.
Verdict: If you can see the individual component colors, it counts as two; if they are always mixed in the exact same ratio, it counts as one.
The bottom line
When we talk about limited palettes, I believe we are talking about limiting the number of component paints.
With that in mind, here are my highly specific rules for a limited palette painting:
- A limited palette contains 4 or fewer component paints.
- Component paints may use different or the same pigments. They count as being different if they are noticeably visually distinct.
- A single component paint can be a mix of multiple pigments or multiple other paints, but the entire batch of this paint used in the painting must use the same recipe/mixture/ratio.
- Your final painting can contain any and all hues that can be created with mixes between the component paints.
With all this in mind, I can see how a “limited palette” way of working could actually make commercially premixed colors more useful than they have been previously in my color library. I have generally had the view that “there is no point in owning a mixed convenience color if you have the component pigments separately,” e.g. it never occurred to me to get Schmincke Indian Yellow before because I have both PY110 and PY154 as separate paints. But if it’s important to you to minimize the number of building-block hues in the painting, then it can be quite convenient to have them premixed so you don’t have to keep careful track of the mixing ratio each time you want to use them as a unit.
Kind of funny how I can turn a way of “limiting” my palette into an excuse for more shopping!