Benefits of a Limited Palette

This past Inktober I decided to take on the challenge. My Instagram is usually full of sketchbook work in a blog like fashion showing what I was up to. I wanted to fill it with more considered art. Not exactly show pieces but not the workhorse art you do to get the skills to make the better stuff. I already had black Winsor and Newton ink but I wanted some colour. Liquitex Professional inks seemed like the best bet. These are acrylic inks, artist quality and lightfast. I'm getting quite sensitive about lightfast ratings! With these considerations comes cost. Artist quality materials cost cash. Which leads us to our first benefit of a limited Palette:

Cost

Paint ranges are like a Dulux colour catalogue. You don't need 50 colours in your collection unless you have medium that can't mix that well like markers. A lot of ranges will contain 'true' primaries; magenta, cyan and yellow. These are the colours on your printer cartridges and your printer can mix every colour on the screen. In ranges where this isn't available the good old red, blue and yellow can be enough. Consider the cost of a simple primaries palette. A bottle of Liquitex Professional Ink is currently £4 at Cassart. Shockingly expensive if you are only thinking blue is blue and red is red but red and blue make purple, you don't need a purple bottle. Blue and yellow make green, you don't need a green bottle. By understanding the colour wheel you will end up paying less for better materials.

Coherence

During Inktober I noticed how my inktober sketchbook looked 'together'. You often hear about style but it shocked my how colour choice can play into that style. By using Pyrole Red, Yellow, Cerulean Blue, Black and White the sketchbook looked like a body of work by the same artists. It didn't matter what I drew the connection was there in the palette. The red in one piece matches the red in the other. An instant visual connection is made. One of my peeves are artists who depict the same thing over and over again but I've never felt I can bring together my own work with that coherence. I was able to do that in Inktober, not just by drawing the same subject ad nauseum but because my palette matched across the work.

What Palette should I be choosing?

I've mentioned the basic palette of primaries, these are the most flexible. You'll notice that sets of paint usually come in sets of around 12-13 and comprise the following:

White and Black

Blue: Ultramarine and Cerulean (a light and a dark)

Green: Sap and Viridian (a light and a dark)

Red: Cadmium and Crimson

Yellow: Lemon and Ochre

Brown: Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber

Perhaps a Purple in there too

These are all purpose sets with the blue and green tailored for landscapes. We've discussed how the Greens are probably unnecessary. Brown is made from all three primaries mixed together. The better you get at art the less colours you should need.

Myself, I am quite lazy in colour mixing. This is something I need to work on. My current palette would be Cad Red Hue (no toxic Cadmium here!), Ultramarine, Lemon, Ochre, Burnt Sienna (add white for a flesh base tone), Black and White. Perhaps adding Umber for an easy chromatic black.

You will also see artists talk about having a warm and a cool version of each colour on their palette. Its fun to experiment with odd colour combos as well. As long as you keep the number down the more professional your art will look.