Be careful of bold statements made by apparent experts.
So much of art talk is people repeating what they’ve heard or read somewhere else, without bothering to test it for themselves.
I’ve taken bad advice a few times, especially when I was starting out. So I decided a long time ago that I would only believe what I could prove to myself, through doing it myself.
I have to admit I’m pretty surprised now by some of the stuff I see people say about colour. And sometimes, frankly, it winds me up.
Because I know that much of it is going to waste peoples’ time, hold back their development and keep them from learning.
I’ve had that happen to me, so I desperately want to make sure it doesn’t happen to other people, as far as I can.
The counter balance to that, of course (which I’ve been guilty of forgetting at times and probably still am) is that I’m still learning. I have much further to go than I’ve already travelled. And of course, I get stuff wrong too.
My perspective, too, is limited by my experience.
Well, today I’m throwing caution to the wind, here’s my bold statement: It’s a mistake to limit your palette.
But bear with me.
Because I’m not just going to leave it there. I intend to test this assertion and to open it up for discussion here. I want to get input from other artists – as long as it’s thoughtful, well reasoned input. And preferably based on a lot of experience, brush in hand at the easel.
I’ll tell you a secret.
When I see people making assertions about colour that I find questionable, the first thing I do is a google search to find some of their work. If they can paint well, then I’ll take what they say seriously. I’ve got to tell you, that’s rarely the case.
For myself, I’ve already done quite a bit of testing the use of limited palettes as a way to learn colour. I took all the advice about painting with a limited palette so seriously that I did it myself, for years.
I certainly got better at value.
But I certainly did not get better at colour.
When did I get better at colour?
Well, I’ll get into that later. First, let’s have a quick look at some of the common reasons people give for limiting your palette – especially for learners:
- Constraint makes for creativity
- It improves your colour harmony
- Stretches your skills
- Forces you to consider value and composition more
- Helps you learn warm and cool
Creativity
I do agree that constraint can make for creativity. But it doesn’t always hold true. You can’t apply it blindly to everything. Learn to play on a rubbish violin and you’ll never learn to play well. Learn to walk with one leg strapped up and well…you get the point.
Does painting with few colours make you learn to get more out of them? It does help you to learn well what those colours can produce, yes. But that’s not the same thing as learning colour.
Harmony
As to whether it improves your harmony, I think that’s highly debatable.
If you limit yourself to very low chroma colours of a few hues, like say the much vaunted Zorn palette, then yes, your paintings will be more harmonious because none of those colours clash. You’re basically drawing, really.
People say that the black looks like a blue on Zorn’s paintings. Honestly? It looks like black to me. When he wanted blue he used one.
And if you paint with a limited “primary” palette, there’s still plenty of opportunity for creating poor colour harmonies – which after all, must be ultimately somewhat subjective.
To me, this one is too vague to be meaningful. If you want to create good colour harmony, practice with colour until you can. Don’t just use so few colours that you can’t create any harmonies at all. It’s just not the same thing.
Skills
No. I don’t believe for a moment that painting with a limited palette develops your skill with colour.
When I painted with a very specific, very limited palette for a year (burnt sienna, ultramarine blue, white) I got better at value. Because I was basically drawing. Here’s a couple of the studies from that time:
(I think that one may have had yellow ochre in it too…)
The thing is, I did that for a year. But when I expanded my palette, I still struggled with colour.
You can’t learn something without actually doing it.
Value and composition
Well, I suppose painting with limited colour choices can make you consider value and composition more because you’re not spending brain power worrying about colour.
Seriously, though, if you really want to develop your value practice value.
Take colour out entirely and run exercises focused purely on value. Take composition out too. I have a bunch of value exercises that you can do if that’s what you want to learn.
Same for composition. You want to learn composition? Get hold of a good book on composition – one that follows the tenets of deliberate practice and is chock full of exercises rather than theory and “rules”. A book like Composition by Arthur Wesley Dow. Get that book, and do the exercises. They’re actually very rewarding and a lot of fun!
That’s how you get better at something, by focussing on it and practising it.
Warm and cool
Ah, this again. I have a slightly different take on colour temperature – useful for lights, not for paints. I’ve been there already and probably stayed too long.
Accepted Wisdom
Now I realise that much of what I’m saying here goes against accepted wisdom.
But we realists lost so much knowledge in the years following impressionism. So much that was once common knowledge is no longer commonly known and has been replaced by untested assertions and misconceptions.
Don’t paint with black. Never use a rubber. Technical skill stifles creativity. The masters based their compositions on the Golden section.
Painting with a limited palette will help you learn colour.
I believe that we’re in a position now where we can no longer accept accepted wisdom. We must test it for ourselves.
And to be perfectly honest, I don’t see too much of that happening. Not many people are really prepared to commit to testing an idea – like, say, the limited palette – for a whole year.
Well I have. And looking back over that, now that I understand colour much better, I can tell you that it didn’t help me get better at colour.
I did get better at some other stuff, because I was painting. But when I expanded my palette again, I was just as confused as I was when I started.
Because I still hadn’t learn to paint with a full palette.
All right. I know I’m inviting controversy. But I have to call it as I see it, and hope that it helps someone.
What’s next
Over the next few blog posts, I’m going to go a little further into this subject, and I’m going to test what range of colour is actually available in some of the palettes I see recommended. I’m going to share the results here.
If I can, I’ll go into what they might be good for, where they come from and anything else that might be useful.
I’ll start with the basic primary palette, and then cover the popular “split primary” palette.
If I come across any other really popular ones, I’ll cover those too, and if you have one you’d like me to test, let me know what it is in the comments.
Now I know that a lot of people out there reading this won’t agree with me.
If you’re a teacher, you might even be giving this advice, right now, to your students.
I don’t expect ever to put arguments over palettes to bed, or even to dissuade most people from the benefits of limited palettes.
But I do hope to give you a different perspective that might at least persuade you to question the accepted wisdom.
Please give my points at least enough consideration for that, and I’ll do the same for you.
Best wishes and thanks for reading,
Paul
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Thanks Paul-You really have opened a colorful can of worms. Just spent a couple of weeks with a limited palette-like going on a fast. Mainly interested in exploring value in relation to color. And it IS great for simplicity-You might enjoy Tad Spurgeon’s website chock full of free information and VERY unusual and interesting palette ideas. Wonderful resource.
Can of worms indeed, I nearly didn’t publish it 🙂
I’ll have a look at Tad’s site, thank you.
I’m glad you did Paul, this is a very interesting subject and I look forward to your future posts on it.
Excellent article . My path over the last 40 plus years has been remarkably similar to yours. The desire to grow and continue to advance sometimes means you need to step back and dedicate yourself to exploring other palettes and techniques! I personally spent the last 18-24 months doing that ! And I am glad I did.
Brilliant Steve. Its great to see someone actually testing stuff out at the easel – and yes, it does take a lot of time and effort to find your answers. The great thing though is that then you’re not prey to misinformation and misconceptions 🙂
Best of luck, Paul. My only gentle advice in this matter is to insist on distinguishing colorants, pigments and dyes, from color. A limited palette can mean a small number of pigments (and the paint they make) or a smaller gamut of color, the colors achieved when paint is mixed together. What frustrates me about the Zorn palette, which is the former, is that it doesn’t do anything particularly well for ones color gamut. It is deficient in chroma for the dark yellows and reds and quite chromatic for the reds in the middle and high values. I can’t see how this helps color design.
Oh good point Graydon, thank you!
I particularly have in mind palettes with a drastically restricted number of colourants – assuming that’s what you mean by tube paints as oppose to pigments. So, a palette with only three tubes plus white, say.
Although, that generally means a severely limited gamut as well of course. I’m half way through testing the gamut of a “primary” palette of alizarin, ultramarine and cad yellow with white against the highest chroma available on the main hues of the Munsell wheel – 5Y, 5GY, 5G etc. I was expecting it to have a really small gamut but even I’m surprised at how limited it really is.
Wondering what you people mean by colourants and becoming aware that theres stuff to learn about what colours are in paint? Also iv just become aware of an artist using cmyk pallette plus additions, where apparently magenta mixed with yellow makes red. Therefore red is no longer a primary colour! The artist is called Carla Forrest in new mexico she talks about spectral luminesence which is a thing but i cant quite discern what it is! Anyway her plein air paintings have a definite vibrancy you dont often see.
So i got some cmyk paint and thought id try it painting a satsuma, thinking that these are the colours used in printing so all the colours should be able to be mixed. However imediately it was lacking . The mix betweeen magenta and yellow made orange but it was too low in chroma , just not as good as a tube of orange paint. So when people say you only need three primary colours to mix any colour its not true.
Yes I’m going to have a play with that palette later in this series. I will attempt to be unbiased, I have a test I’m going to subject them all to which is very structured, but I must admit I think this palette is a pretty crazy idea without even having tried it! I’m not at all surprised by what you found. Printing relies on optical mixing created by incredibly tiny, very regularly spaced dots which we could never hope to replicate with a brush. Machine printing is just an entirely different medium.
I love your test though, painting a high chroma piece of fruit. That will certainly stretch a palette and show you what it’s capable of.
By the way, regarding Carla Forrest’s work, it’s very high chroma you’re seeing, which can be achieved similarly with any palette that’s capable of reproducing those colours. The palette choice in itself isn’t creating that vibrant impression, it’s high chroma, contrasting colours of similar values placed side by side. It is indeed very vibrant, but you can reproduce those same colours with a more expanded palette too – there’s no mystery to it that a CMYK palette particularly allows.
Today we look to save time. If you say the limited palette is a poor colour teacher then even your 12 colour palette is limited in its own way. Both are the same.
Ah, but I’m not saying that a 12 colour palette will teach you anything about colour by itself. People do say that about limited palettes, though.
I think you need a practical method of learning colour and no palette by itself will teach you that. But if you have a good, practical method, then a wider palette isn’t a problem.
Thanks for this Paul. An exciting and interesting topic I’ve been hoping to learn more about. I apologise for not responding to your further emails sent out on issues in colour due to hospital, so am glad to see this series. I too, overwhelmed by colour, started to think I would turn to virtually monochromatic art in this confusion and differing advice (and even chose to focus on 2 colours I love, the same as yours!) … but since have seen some other amazingly beautiful paintings which seem to ‘break’ many colour ‘rules’ especially of limited palettes. Stunning, and the painters, after building experience, discovered they could go ‘beyond’ and the colours came by instinct, bringing joy or sadness – the expression making such an impact. Yet still when I’m confronted by all those colours (and told to also focus primarily on value), my brain is not yet developed to combine the two – colours and value – when I simply don’t yet fully understand colour and still always learning value! Loving both bold and muted colours but how not to complicate and lose values too! Hope that made sense?! Thank you again for this; love your paintings 🙂
It does make sense Megan and I’ve been exactly where you are.
What finally cracked colour for me was discovering Graydon and Munsell. When you understand colour in terms of hue, value and chroma, and learn to control each of those separately, colour opens up to you, becomes understandable and is no longer a struggle.
Why do I feel like I’m preaching? 🙂
Seriously though, that’s what finally unlocked colour for me. Of course there was much practice involved too. But colour stopped being mysterious when I understood it in those terms.
Wow that was quick.. Thanks again Paul. Being a relative ‘baby’ 🙂 – these terms have often scared me away with everything else but now I will definitely look into this and Graydon and Munsell more. Rather exciting! (And no, you’re not preaching) 🙂
Well that’s a relief, that I’m not preaching. I probably will later tho 😀
If you have any questions you know where to find me Megan, just fire me an email.
Thanks so much Paul 🙂
And I look forward to your ‘preaching!’
Hi Paul
As you know from your Creative Triggers group, I’m just delving into the world of colour though watercolour so I’m not at all qualified to participate in the conversation. A couple of things did jump out though;
“Helps you learn warm and cool”
I’d watched a few videos on youtube prior to dipping a brush in the water so to speak, they were consistently saying about warm and cool, I think they were talking about blues at the time. Honestly, however many times I watched, adjusted the brightness on the screen, tried to convince myself that one blue was cooler on the spectrum than the other – but no, I couldn’t have told you which was which.
So, I put it down to inexperience on my part, even though it was allegedly a beginner tutorial. Which brings me to the second part which jumped out;
“You can’t learn something without actually doing it.”
Which is precisely what I’m doing, and so far, it seems to be working out OK.
I’m sure there are plenty of artists out there who have never read a book, watched a video or found out “the RIGHT way to do it” – but have learnt from just chucking whatever colour around, seeing what works and what fails, or rather what has different than expected results.
Hats off to those guys, and to anyone that proves by doing such as yourself :o)
Steve
Well said too Steve! 🙂
I hear you about the blues in watercolour!! I’ve taught watercolour and done watercolour for years…still can’t tell which blue is cool and which is warm. And one person will say Cobalt is warm and the next person will say it’s cool. The only way I look at this is blue next to another colour. Depending on THAT other colour the blue may look cool, or it may look warm next to that colour. This is the only practical method I have come up with and it usually works.
I am looking forward to seeing the limitations of the pallette. For me, a limited pallette is a good place to start to figure out how colors mix and interact, and add new colors one at a time to see what it does with the pallette. Otherwise I have been so haphazard with color. This is why this class is so important. To learn color. Love to hear more.
Hi Paul!
Thanks for introducing yet another interesting issue. I enjoy your posts, but haven seen fit to comment, though this time I thought I’d offer my two cents…
I coach my beginning color students to start with the purest primaries I can find for them, and white. Then they work to become familiar with the variety of colors they CAN mix by doing complete color charts.
When they ask, “Why can’t I match the color on that vase?”. I introduce them to another tube, talk about its pigment content, home value, saturation, tinting strength manufacturer, etc. I show them where it might be placed on a color wheel, and why it its warmer or cooler than their pure primary color.
Then I ask them to mix it with the other two primaries and compare the chart to their first study charts with the pure primaries. Then they look to see if they can find a good enough mach for their “vase”.
So, my Opinion: The single primaries are a great place to start asking questions, and can take you on a solid and logical color-learning journey! Long ago before I had teachers, workshops, or youtube, I painted with the three primaries for several years before it occurred to me that I might expand my vocabulary!
Best,
Priscilla
Well said.
I started years ago with tubes of every appealing color. Several years ago found I could mix anything with a warm and cool of each primary plus white. This takes time and effort, but gets easier with experience.
An example, Naples yellow is so often recommended. It’s a warm, lovely, light soft creamy yellow. But reading the tube it is yellow pigment plus white. I can do this. The hardest part is getting only the smallest bit of yellow on your brush. Then should need be, I can alter it to a warmer with red or cooler with blue.
Taking a workshop next week. The artist only uses four colors ultramarine, cad red, alizarin, cad yellow and white. Pleased with practice so far at home. However contemplated mixing something like a yellow ochre at home and tubing it myself. Silly. Purchased tubes do present convenience. I want to follow the instructors methods, but may stick a tube of yellow ochre in my backpack.
In regards to warm and cool, this is all relative to what’s around each color, stroke. Look at what you are painting and ask: What hue is this area? Is the value lighter or darker? More it more intense or dull? Warmer or cooler? I certainly don’t get this right each time yet, and I think I need to push this to keep gaining more diversity of color. However, I’ve had excellent teachers all help me with this direction.
Good discussion, Paul. Love reading all the learned comments. Thank you.
Aloha! I go back to my Composition book by Dow frequently when I want to practice my value and composition skills.
I studied disciplined realist painting and then worked in a contemporary museum, being exposed to amazing works of art by abstract painters, even holding a French impressionist work in my hands. Up close, I learned to appreciate the technical work and vibrant use of color.
As a researcher, I investigated their methods, which led me to basics of even the old masters. Conclusions that deny the so called experts on limited palette, Rembrandt used black. The grisaille system was a practical step in past discovery, but I think even Vermeer , Rembrandt, and Degas May have appreciated the use of computer enlargements to get a shape instead of wasting hours measuring. Get right to the paint.
And they were experimenters, developing their colors in the studio, grinding the pigments available to them. Today as as our own researchers, experimenters and developers, I applaud your openness to trying all the colors available to us today. If we feel like an art store is our candy store, can you imagine how the old masters and impressionists might feel having so much color available now?
I recently discovered Pyrrole Red by Sennelier when I was trying to find a substitute for Cad red medium. I love it. It’s Ferrari red. Lovely glow.
I often experiment with a color idea by using a value key to move into an id a. Trying out a color sketch of a subject in high key, mid key, and low key. Pushing or subduing the light makes me have to change the colors. Fun and instructive.
Thank you for your posts. I look forward to reading more of this experiment. Thank you, pam
Oh, I’m looking forward to your next communication with all of us, Paul!! This should be fun and interesting!! You go, guy!!
Couldn’t agree more, Paul. I’ve wasted lots of time following some of these “commandments”. It’s not quite the same thing but there is a teacher who promotes his techniques on the net and who sells his own oil paints (made with lots of clove oil added—ugh) and recommends a system based on only 4 colours (his paints come in burnt umber, ultra blue, pyrol ruby and cad yellow only) which he claims can produce virtually any colour known to man. Oh dear. There is so much false information out there, much of which is held to with an almost religious fervour. Good to see you’re helping to tilt things back towards truth on the colour front.
Hi Paul,
Great post! I agree it is always good to question the conventional wisdom and try/test to find out for ourselves what works.
I’m currently reading Stephen Quiller’s book, “Color Choices, Making Color Sense out of Color Theory.” The most useful part of it for me has been his color wheel, which has 68 common pigmented colors, based on 10 years of his own research. Since I have many tubes of oil paint, I find this color wheel useful for identifying where each tubed hue lies on the color wheel and what its primary complement is. Also, when I take a class and a teacher gives us a supply list of specific colors, I can use the Quiller wheel to find workable substitutes I already have on hand. As far as his own painting goes, I like Quiller’s recent work (of trees after a local forest fire) much better than the paintings he uses to illustrate this 1989 book.
Actually, I don’t like the forest paintings as much as I did at first. However, check out his color wheel. It is available in Google images.
Wow. I would be interested in hearing what you have to say about Mark Carder (of Mix Draw Paint fame) video “The Benefits of a Limited Palette for Oil Painting” (https://youtu.be/DYGi18U4D4M). He’s obviously and accomplished realist painter. Also I though I am not as skilled in realism as you and he ( hope to be some day) I have been using a limited primary pallette (sorta) for several years successfully I think. A couple of blues (mostly Ultramarine), couple of reds (mostly Scarlet Lake), and two yellows, Bismuth and New Gamboge (I paint mostly in watercolor btw, but have recently been experimenting with something similar in oil). I don’t use black, mix it instead, and have gotten very good at making all sorts of low chroma colors with these. So I am very interested in what your posts will reveal. I don’t think using burnt sienna, ultramarine blue, and white for a year is a good test of trying to get a full color range across a wide chroma/value scale respectfully. All this said… I think you shoot the moon and you continue to be an inspiration to me as an artist. Thank you for all you share.
I like working with limited colour, especially with pastels. I don’t have many so it’s an interesting challenge to choose from what I have and see what I can do with them. The result isn’t natural colour obviously, but the moody effects aren’t unpleasant. I sometimes do the same with oils. Not trying such things would make my art life feel limited.
Hi Paul,
It was interesting to hear what you had to say about the limited pallette that so many seem so fond of, particularly in the modern ateliers. I have to say I have not actually tried painting this way, but I have always been somewhat repelled by the very idea of it. My intuition says if you want to learn color use color, as you say in your blog. Otherwise you are basically only drawing. I just signed up for your free course on color and am very much looking forward to it. Thank you for doing what you do!
HelloPaul.If you dont understand colour mixing, then no palette is any good.
Exactly 🙂
Thanks Paul.
You suggested a book for composition. Is there also a book that you suggest for drawing?
I will graduate soon and I am considering to self teach drawing. I would like to have a corner in my home where I can unwind and draw.
I eventually would like to use colour pencils or I don’t know something else but I suspect I need to start with drawing.
Would you please guide me how to start?
Thanks,
It’s difficult to give a definitive list Ella, but have a look at this:
The 3 Best Books I Know For Teaching Yourself to Draw
I’d also have a serious look at the Waichulis/Ani arts academy Language of drawing program.
Just as another data point, these are not the reasons that I was given.
The first thing I was told was budget. You should always work with the good materials, so having a few decent colours you can afford is better than having a lot of colours that are bad quality.
The second thing was psychology. Fewer colours is less overwhelming for a beginner.
Take from that what you will.
Paul, good work. The responses are definitely more positive than when I tried to address the reasons why glazing does not produce colors that cannot be mixed in any other way.
Looking forward to part deux.
Thanks Rich 🙂 I’m a bit distracted at the moment but we be back and updating the series soon – have now realised I need to address the CMYK palette too!
Thank you Paul for everything you do to help other Artist! I think you are doing a great job, I have personally learned quite few things from different areas of your website. I am working my way into portraiture in Oils, I following Andrew Loomis Head and Hand Painting and found your page and introduction/explanation quite helpful.
Thank you very much.
Mike Chaple
@ChapleArt
Fantastic! Such a great topic. I know I am starting late on the conversation. However, thank you for pulling back the curtain on this subject to deal with imperial facts, evidence not lore.
Great scorn was heaped upon my teacher, Ted Jacobs, and his students when he was teaching a night class at the New York Academy by many of the full time students there querying why he had so many colors on his palette. He was a great colorist and probably could have achieved many of the effects with less colors on his palette but saw no need to limit himself. And the high chroma reds were not achievable by the limited palette. I found the shadows on the flesh tones from a limited palette very brown and not at all attractive. There is a certain range in the flesh tones limited pallet does well. Yes, I know flesh is low chroma but I don’t like the color in the shadows with the limited palette. Just looks dead. Ted studied with Reilly (or attended his class) but had the luck to have first studied with Dumond. I’m sure there must have been some reason for him to attend Reilly’s class, but Dumond got to him first.
Ted’s work is amazing. I didn’t know he’d studied with DuMond though (who I think studied with Lefebvre?) I should look again at DuMond’s prismatic palette, I’d forgotten about it – thanks for the reminder!
Thanks, great post, Paul. I worked with a limited palette for many may years and now find it very difficult to incorporate new colors. I bought a huge array of colors and haven’t used them yet. I feel like I need to learn about color all over again. Thank goodness I came to the right place. I consider you my go-to color expert. I bought one of your color videos a while back and lost track of it and could never find it again after my computer crashed.
I love limited palattes…. so much so I probably have 5 different versions of it…LOL. I consider anything under 10 colors to be limited. One of my favorites is one that has a warm and cool of red, yellow, blue and green now the only issue I have with that is my paintings tend to trend too much to being to chromatic if I am not careful.
My other limited versions include the Zorn and what I like about a few of the 4 & 5 limited sets I have is that they allow me without much effort to capture a feel…for example portrait work that does not look over colored and cartoony, retro vibe paintings when wanting to replicate say that 50’s adversiting feel and then another set that goes super bold with the CMK for pop style paintings.
For me a limited palatte sets the feel and I do like when I travel I can grab the set I need and know I will be work.