Tag Archives: color palette

My Watercolor Palette – Limited but Changing

You might have heard me banging on about how I use a limited palette of colors and how this gives many of my paintings a tranquil feel. But a limited palette shouldn’t mean a stagnant palette, so for my latest sketching trip to Africa, I changed some of the solid half-pan colors in my Windsor & Newton field watercolor set.

I’ve noticed over the years that some of these half-pan colors can be difficult to tell apart when I’m painting outdoors, because they appear very dark in their solid form. When mixed with a little water, of course there is no problem, but I often need to get straight to the correct color when time is of the essence. So I made myself a little color chart before I left home. Here it is.

It fits nicely inside the lid of my field box set and is covered in wide cellotape back and front.

Alison Nicholls’ watercolor field kit

For all you artists out there who are interested in these things…here’s the list of colors I took with me this year (exactly as shown in the photo). Those in red were new this year.

Cadmium Red		Cerulean Blue
Alizarin Crimson	Lemon Yellow	Cobalt Blue	Davy’s Gray	Titanium White
Magenta	Cadmium Yellow	Windsor Blue	Leaf Green	Burnt Sienna
Ultramarine Violet	Naples Yellow	Ultramarine Blue	Oxide Chrome	Burnt Umber
Venetian Red	Yellow Ochre	Indigo	Hookers Green	Sepia

I immediately loved the Indigo, Sepia, and Davy’s Gray – which I mixed with almost everything – notice the large hole I created in the half-pan! I had to remember which of these I was using though, because Davy’s Gray is a very subtle hue, requiring several brush-loads to make its presence known, whereas the Indigo and Sepia required just the slightest touch of water to shout their presence to the world!

So it appears that the number of colors in my field box set is increasing…but the number of colors used in each painting is still limited to 2 or 3.

Until next time…keep painting.
Alison

www.ArtInspiredbyAfrica.com

Part 2: Fashionable Color Palettes – Artistic Smart Move or Sellout? An Artist’s Opinion.

Color is a very, very important part of my art and my color choices are carefully considered. I often use color to indicate a time of day – reds and oranges for the heat of midday; blues and purples for dusk. I also use combinations of colors to suggest a mood – limiting my palette of colors to create a tranquil feel for a painting.

New Limited Edition Giclées by Alison Nicholls

Paintings by Alison Nicholls

Given the way I think carefully about my use of color, you might expect me to be completely averse to artists using seasonal color palettes, like Pantone’s Fashion Color Report, but in fact, I’m not.

Being an artist means different thing to different people, but generally I think most people would agree that art has no formula and that every artist decides on their own path, the path that is right for them. Some artists change continuously, constantly experimenting with new colors, new styles and new media. They take their inspiration wherever they find it. Others (and I admit to being one of them), move more slowly, sticking to a distinct media and hoping to improve in my own niche. But even an artist like me, who seems to carefully control her use of color, is influenced by outside forces more than you might imagine…

The 1st time I realized I had unknowingly been influenced in this way was in Moremi Game Reserve where I spent a couple of hours sketching a herd of impala, standing stationary for minutes in uncomfortable positions, afraid to move an inch in case they saw me. I ended up with a nice little pencil sketch, came back to camp and decided to use a deep red-brown watercolor to complete it. When I’d finished, a friend commented on this being an unusual color choice for me, and I agreed. Only several minutes later did it occur to us that this was the exact color of the huge flowers of the sausage tree above our heads!

Roses photo by Alison Nicholls

This week I had another example. I started a painting using a dusky pink- brown and was considering where to go with the next wash of color. I headed downstairs to make a cup of tea and decided that a vase of roses on the fireplace should really be thrown out. The roses never opened or dropped their petals, they just seemed to have dried, but they were still beautiful, so I decided to keep them in my studio for a while, thinking that the muted colors would make a lovely color scheme for a painting. As I walked into my studio with the vase of flowers I realized my current painting was already the exact shade of pinky brown as the roses!

My point is that you will almost inevitably be influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by everything around you. I may not decide to paint my next painting in Peach Echo or Serenity just because they are part of Pantone’s Spring 2016 Color Report but if these colors start appearing in clothing and all over the internet in all kinds of products, I may unwittingly find them sneaking into my art. But maybe that is because these are fairly natural color choices for me anyway. Should the fall colors include lots of metallic grays and greens, it is unlikely that you’ll be seeing these in my Art Inspired By Africa!

Alison
www.ArtInspiredByAfrica.com

Fashionable Color Palettes – Artistic Smart Move or Sellout?

A while ago a good friend of mine pointed out that most of my paintings in a certain color palette were sold. At the end of each year I look at my sales and try to determine trends, including general color schemes, but I have never made a point of checking out the current season’s ‘fashionable’ colors and using them in my art. Instead, I have used color to indicate the time of day, or mood. But, like most people, I do have my own favorites, colors that I turn to again and again in my art. So my friend’s comment got me thinking – would checking out and using some of the seasonal color palettes help me get out of a color rut, when I’m tempted to turn yet again to my favorite colors? Would it increase my sales? And do I want to go down that road?

New Limited Edition Giclées by Alison Nicholls

Before I tell you my own opinions (in next week’s post) I’d like to ask you for your opinions. Are seasonal color palettes, like Pantone’s Fashion Color Report, useful tools for a savvy artist, or do they interfere with your unique artistic vision?

Let me know your thoughts and I may feature them in my post next week.
Until then…
Alison
www.ArtInspiredByAfrica.com