After my first limited palette study was on an unusual, almost secondary triad, I went more traditionally primary for one of my favorite subjects: sunset.
For my blue, I picked Phthalo Blue Red Shade, which is my favorite blue for the sky.
I then chose Gold Ochre for the yellow because it makes an intense but not garish sunshiney golden yellow, similar to my favorite sunset specialist Naples Yellow Deep; but it is more transparent so it makes darker blacks, which makes it more useful in a limited palette.
Of course my red was always going to be Quin Coral (PR209), my favorite sunset red, vibrant and warm.
In this exploration, I used Da Vinci Quin Red (PR209), Holbein Phthalo Blue Red Shade (PB15), and Winsor & Newton Gold Ochre (PY42).
Color Wheel
All three colors together get some interesting pinky browns, green-grays, shadow violets, and near-blacks.
Individual Pairs
Quin Coral + Gold Ochre
The coral and gold together make a range of peach-to-grapefruit shades that I find delightful for sunset skies. The earthiness of the Gold Ochre keeps it from becoming too straightforwardly orange.
Phthalo Blue RS + Gold Ochre
These really don’t make green very effectively at all, which is annoying for landscapes but great for skies.
Phthalo Blue RS + Quin Coral
Although orangey tinted, PR209 mixes like a pink in that it makes violets with blue. These aren’t the most vibrant violets (as one might expect since PBRS is slightly green-toned and PR209 is a warm pink), but they’re certainly not grays like PR255 or similar scarlets make with Phthalo Blue. These are nice sky violets.
Painting
This painting is a tribute to the sunset hour in Vancouver, when every evening, hundreds of crows fly overhead to their roost in Burnaby. I like a lot about this painting, including the paper towel lifted clouds and most of the crows – it’s just a shame that I did the worst with the one in the foreground!
I think these colors worked very well!
I knew PR209 would be great for the reds and it was. Love ya babe.
Gold Ochre was everything I wanted: warm, golden, and transparently mixable. I was pleasantly surprised by the deep blacks I was able to get for the crows, as I thought I’d have to add Payne’s Gray or similar. Nope! That’s just all three colors mixed.
As often in sunset paintings, I think I was a bit heavy-handed with the blue; I always think the upper sky should be dark to represent night coming on but in real life the sky remains quite light as long as the sun is up. I don’t know that this is necessarily a color issue, as I could just dilute it more. I like the violety blue from mixing some coral into the PBRS.
Conclusion
I knew this would probably work well because I have used PR209 and PBRS successfully in sunsets before. For the last year, I have been on a kick of using Naples Yellow Deep in sunsets, but its opacity can be tricky, so I was glad to confirm my suspicion that Gold Ochre can be substituted with all the same strengths:
- Intense and bold, not too dull, glowing appearance in sjy
- Yet also earthy, not too primary or fake looking as straight orange or yellow can be
- Looks more orange in masstone (along the horizon) but dilutes to a delicate yellow
- Does not easily go green with blue
Plus, being transparent, Gold Ochre can mix gorgeous dark blacks! I think Gold Ochre is a bit trickier to grade evenly, but I was happy with how it came out in this painting.
Overall, this triad worked extremely well for sunset! It’s one I’ll definitely return to.