Your Watercolor Palette
In the last episode, we delved into choosing your sketchbook, where I briefly explained important paper qualities and introduced my favorites for watercolor painting.
If you haven't checked it out yet, you can find it here.
Today, let's navigate through selecting your palette or, more precisely, choosing your colors within that palette.
Watercolor Palette - My Definition
Essentially, for me, an Aquarelle palette is a more or less fixed selection of watercolors—whether it's a box, maybe just a plate for dabbing from your tubes, or a small box containing your tubes that you grab as needed.
Put simply, a palette is a specific choice of colors that remains more or less constant over time.
There's no strict rule on how large your palette should be or how many colors you should have.
I categorize them into three types:
Limited Palette
Expanded Limited Palette
Unlimited Palette
Limited Palette
This is generally reduced to 3 primary colors—yellow, red, and blue. It's the most minimalist form of a palette.
From these primary colors, you can mix secondary colors (orange, purple, and green) and tertiary colors.
Tertiaries are like intermediate colors—yellow-orange, orange-red, etc.
Sounds great, right?
Three primary colors on your palette, and you're good to go!
But it's not that simple.
Without delving into pigment details, it's just not possible to mix all the colors of the rainbow from 3 colors.
Try mixing regular blue with regular red; no, it won't give you a fantastic purple, maybe a brownish one, but not the one you envisioned.
Which brings us to the next palette.
Expanded Limited Palette
For some, it's a middle ground, for others, the ultimate go-to palette.
You still work only with primary colors—yellow, red, and blue, but now you consider the temperature of these colors.
Cold colors, warm colors, and maybe even cold-warm colors.
For example:
- Cold colors: Lemon yellow, magenta, cyan blue
- Warm colors: Cadmium yellow, vermilion red, ultramarine
By mixing only cold or warm colors, you get much more beautiful, purer tones.
Example of cold colors:
Magenta + Cyan = A Great Purple
An expanded limited palette offers significantly more possibilities to achieve your desired color.
You might still have quite a bit of mixing work, though, which could be exactly what you want.
#Nojudgment
Not quite what you're looking for?
The next option might be just right.
Unlimited Palette
The principle? Put all the colors I want into a box and ready-to-go!
Well, not quite...
Limited palettes, as you learned in the previous descriptions, exclusively consist of primary colors.
The unlimited palette simply means having more than just primary colors in your personal selection.
My palette is an unlimited one, including:
Cold primary colors
Warm primary colors
Colors I prefer not to mix
Specific single-pigment colors that I'd otherwise have to mix.
Primarily, I use colors from Schmincke Horadam, with a few from Winsor & Newton and Sennelier.
Building this palette took time and effort, exploring watercolor properties and comparing different manufacturers.
The good thing about it is, that now I know what´s important.
Some more guidance
If you need more guidance on creating your own unique watercolor palette, grab my concise guide with essential questions to answer before making a purchase.
Included are my most important questions that I needed to answer through my own research and served me well in my artistic journey with watercolors.
For You: Craft
Your Watercolor Palette
Answer these 10 questions to
gain clarity about your needs
for less frustration after purchasing
and painting with absolute joy!
Of course you get the guide for ZERO money!
Have more questions?
Drop them in the comments, and I'll happily provide answers!
