I’ve learned so much about paint from Oto Kano’s Youtube channel, including comparing similar colors to each other, and finding my favorite version of such-and-such a color with their Colossal Color Showdown series. Recently, I became a patron, so I’m receiving a steady stream of multi-brand dot cards to feed my color curiosity!
Oto lays out their palette in a really unusual way: it’s a circular palette laid out in a color wheel. Colors are chosen in complementary pairs so that the colors opposite each other on the wheel are always complementary. It’s an incredibly systematic way to keep track of color theory information!
While moving some of my watercolor stuff, I found the key to the first complete watercolor palette I put together from professional paints after I switched from Cotman student grade! I made it in an Etchr ceramic mini-palette with 19 wells. I carefully researched what I was going to put in here, picturing that it … Read more
Carrie Luc, the author of Watercolor Misfit, specializes in fun, colorful, modern illustrations. I really enjoy her blog posts on technique and mindset, and she has a love of bright colors that I share!
My Desert Palette, which I used to paint my Vegas travel sketches and post-travel paintings, contained 26 carefully chosen colors. So which ones did I end up using the most? And which could I have left behind? Most Valuable Colors These were the colors I found myself reaching for again and again: Also Good Liabilities … Read more
Top: Mission Gold – Green Gold (PY150), a Nickel Azo Yellow. Bottom: Daniel Smith – Rich Green Gold (PY129).
Both of these golds are metal complex azomethine yellows: PY150 made from nickel, and PY129 made from copper. Both are highly transparent, smooth, and dispersive. They differ in hue; Nickel Azo Yellow (PY150) is more of a yellow – warm and ochreish in masstone and cool and lemony in dilute – while Rich Green Gold (PY129) is more, well, green! It looks to me like pickle brine. Both make glowing yet subtle, naturalistic greens with Phthalo greens/blues.
They have the same role as green mixers, so which of these should I pick for my palette?
Tonya at Scratchmade Journal has been a wonderful resource for me as I research different colors. Her blog lists her 2018 palette, along with info about why she chose most of the colors, so I’ll attempt to offer alternatives that let you build a palette with a similar spirit out of your collection!
My partner’s sibling is getting married near Las Vegas in a few weeks, and even though it will be a short trip and I’m not sure how much time I’ll have to paint, I’m excited to prep a new palette for a new biome (I’ve never been to the desert!) and to bust out some not-usually-used colors.
My much less skilled imitation of Nikki Frumkin’s Eldorado Peak at Sunrise. HO Quin Magenta (PR122), LS Sunflower (PY74), HO Ultramarine Deep (PB29), DV Diox Violet (PV23), WN WInsor Blue (PB15:3), HO Iso Yellow Deep (PY110) on Arches Hot Press.
Nikki Frumkin, aka Drawn to High Places, paints dreamy, colorful mountainscapes that blend precise line art with bold, wet-on-wet color blends. I love this art (I have several prints!) and one the cool things about it is that Nikki doesn’t really seem to use all that many different colors! A bold, limited palette can seem endless in the right hands.
DV Red Rose Deep (PV19), top, vs DV Alizarin Crimson Quinacridone (PV19), bottom
I chose my watercolors by slot: my favorite green-blue, my favorite black, my favorite yellow ochre… Of course, slot boundaries and malleable. Over time, I broke out reds into several categories: bright magenta/rose, bright orange-red, deep crimson, and deep scarlet. My bright orange-red (which varies between Quin Coral or Scarlet Lake) is pretty different from my deep scarlet (Deep Scarlet), so no problem there. However, when it comes to my “cool reds,” I think my bright and my dark are too similar!
My quin rose choice is Da Vinci’s Red Rose Deep, and my crimson choice is Da Vinci’s Alizarin Crimson Quinacridone. They both use the same pigment, PV19, and now that I look at them together, I’m wondering if they’re basically… essentially… the same color?
This is the problem with choosing colors one-by-one like this: as your slots become increasingly fine, you may end up with some pretty similar colors. In fact, you’re likely to, since the common denominator is you, with your same aesthetic preferences. In my case, apparently, I tend to go for lively, cheerful, deep pinks! RRD is one of the more “crimson-like” roses, and ACQ is one of the more “rose-like” crimsons.
So, are these colors reduplicative? Do I only need one, and if so, which one? Or do they actually serve different palette roles?
Swatching out all the greens I can make was useful to me in determining which mixes were promising and which ones I wanted to explore further, so I did the same with oranges! I did these tiny, so they fit on one page.
Mixed orange color chart
Reds and red-oranges are the rows, and yellows are the columns. My thoughts below…
