Watercolor Dirtbag
I recently enjoyed reading Joyce Hicks’ Painting Beautiful Watercolor Landscapes: Transform Ordinary Places into Extraordinary Scenes (2014, North Light Books) and painted out a palette inspired by the one she describes in the book. Of all the palettes I’ve explored, I think this might the best one I have enjoyed the most and most wanted to emulate in my own painting!
I loved Ron Ranson On Skies (1996, Studio Vista), a book that mixes careful observation and teaching about cloud and sky natural history with practical painting techniques. Let’s see what colors Ranson used to paint skies!
Lee Angold is a Canadian botanical and scientific illustrator focusing on plants and other natural subjects. One great resource on their website is a spreadsheet of pigments compared across brands. They’ve also done cool experiments like painting a blue subject from green and purple. I love a person with strong opinions about color.
Let’s take a look at their palette as of June 2021 from the post “What’s in my studio palette.” Be sure to visit this post for more about the reasoning for each paint.
One of my favorite gouache artists is Kelley Vivian, who paints gorgeous nature scenes typically in New England settings. She has painted numerous National Parks across the US, but her local park, like mine, is Acadia in Maine, and I just love her homey-looking Maine landscapes and seascapes, complete with lots of evergreen trees and rocky beaches. I especially like the way she treats golden hour and sunset light, with glowing sunlight flashing through the trees.
Kelley’s work was an inspiration to me picking up gouache, and I consulted her site when choosing my gouache palette. Here’s what I learned.
So far, I have mostly profiled contemporary artists in the Artist Profile series, except for my first entry of Monet; but I’m on an art history kick after reading Watercolor: A History by Marie Salé. One of my favorite painters profiled in that book is the English painter JMW Turner (1775-1851), who is perhaps better known for oils but whose watercolors are fresh and lively.
Barry Herniman’s book Sketching Outdoors: Discover the Joy of Painting Outside (Search Press, 2023) is a wonderful inspiring manual to getting outside to make quick and lively plein air sketches in watercolor. I love his style which is both fast and evocative.
Sarah Burns is a Scotland-based landscape watercolor and gouache artist from whom I’ve learned a ton especially about gouache. She’s shared her palettes for each medium on Youtube, so I’m going to explore each of them!
When a person is into color as much as Mimi Robinson, author of Local Color, I naturally find myself asking “What paints does she have in her palette?”
Just as I took inspiration from Lisa Spangler’s winter palette in winter, I’m taking a look at Barbara Luel’s spring palette as I transition to spring! Belgian artist Barbara Luel is the queen of spring florals, and I really enjoyed taking a cherry blossoms class with her last April.
What I love about Barbara Luel’s spring palette is that it captures the pops of joyous, bold color but contrasts them against more muted colors which I think is the essence of spring: the earth is drab and gray and then there’s just these sparks of green, pink, and gold! Barbara uses a lot of granulating colors with have an earthy, yet sparkling look.
I discovered the artist Lisa Spangler (@sideoats) through Art Toolkit, where she sometimes teaches classes. Lisa recently posted a “What’s on my palette?” post, which as you know, is my cue to explore a palette!