I’ve been using my autumn palette outside and in timely paintings for about a month, and I feel I have gathered enough experience to quickly review the colors and see if my expectations matched reality.
Top Tier Colors
I’m using these a lot:
- Hansa Yellow Medium (PY97) – a great yellow, rich and bold. I could have used my usual PY151, but the slight warmth of this this yellow was a nice seasonal change that’s minor enough that I can substitute the color without thinking about it.
- Hansa Yellow Deep (PY65) – optimal yellow-orange for autumn leaves, bold sugar orange maples, and quickly mixing with PV19 to make a primary middle red.
- Quin Coral (PR209) – mixes bold sugar maple oranges.
- Quin Red (PV19) – mixes bright reds with a slight pinky undertone – perfect for red maples. The combination of PV19 and PY65 for leaves is so perfect because not only does it make a vibrant middle red, but if you vary it you get other great leaf oranges.
- Quin Magenta (PR202) – surprisingly useful for mixing dark reds. I thought this might be reduplicative with PV19 red or rose, but despite looking fairly similar unmixed, it mixes differently, achieving deeper reds and burgundies with blues. I used to not really like this color and consider it a worse PV19, but I’m liking it a lot more when I have different expectations of it. For example, it mixes brownish colors instead of oranges with yellows, which can be useful if you are expecting it, but it would be disappointing if you were expecting orange.
- Gold Ochre (PY42) – earth yellow useful for yellow leaves in shadow, dried fallen leaves, and other fall harvest colors.
- Transparent Red Oxide (PR101) and Indanthrone Blue (PB60) – my usual brown and gray mixers, needed for tree trunks, shadows, etc. TRO is also useful for dried leaves.
Also Good
- Nickel Azo Yellow (PY150) – Occasionally used for certain types of sunlit landscapes or dispersive mixes, though I tend to use Hansa Yellow or New Gamboge more often for foliage specifically.
- Phthalo Blue RS (PB15) – There is still a lot of green in the landscape and green is often part of the mix of fall foliage, even within a tree. Another blue might also be useful here (e.g. Phthalo Turquoise); but PBRS is useful in this slot because you can also use it for skies without mixing.
Borderline
- Transparent Pyrrol Orange (PO71) – while I do drop this into foliage mixes, it’s not really necessary since the other colors above do a good job of mixing oranges. It might be a hat on a hat. It’s useful to pull magentas to red, but Hansa Yellow Deep can also do that in smaller amounts. For semi-muted transparent oranges, Quin Coral and Nickel Azo Yellow do a good job.
- Perylene Red (PR178) – I’m of two minds about this. It’s a bit of a liability as it’s tempting as a convenience red, but generally I find the reds I mix from PV19 and PY65 more likeable. In my autumn leaf studies, I used it to make dark reds with blues, but now I’m finding PR202 more useful for that. It can add a solid bricky “red-ness” to red mixes and can also be used to modulate greens.
Not used as much as I expected
- Rich Green Gold (PY129) – Tempting to use for sunlit greens, but I often found that I was switching mid-painting to Nickel Azo Yellow to make warmer yellow-green mixes or just mixing Phthalo Blue with a yellow to make a deeper or more muted green.
- Indigo – It just doesn’t occur to me to use this much.
What am I missing?
I don’t really feel like I’m lacking much! Typically when I’m out painting a scene, I find that I have the colors I need. Here are some colors I have had passing thoughts about adding.
- Oddly, I found myself reaching out of the palette a couple of times for Cobalt Turquoise (PG50), which I do not think of as an autumn color, but it it’s useful for lichen, clouds, and sky horizons that contrast with scarlet.
- I enjoyed having Phthalo Turquoise (PB16) last year for deeper green mixes. Prussian Blue would also work and was in my “dark autumn” triad.
- An earth red, such as Venetian Red or Indian Red, might be useful for warmer brown mixes and faded oak leaves. This might be especially useful in the later part of the season.
- Napthol Scarlet (PR188) might be reduplicative with mixed scarlets, but could be good for certain types of scarlet trees.
- A granulating blue, such as Ultramarine, Cobalt, or Cerulean, could be useful for adding even more texture to gray/brown mixes.
Conclusion
Although Peak Leaf is over, I’m making some minor adjustments for the remainder of the season:
- Removing Rich Green Gold, adding Cobalt Turquoise
- Removing Indigo, adding Prussian Blue