Limiting the Color Palette
Over the years, Cara Brown has refined her color palette to create more cohesive paintings
Over the years, Cara Brown has refined her color palette to create more cohesive paintings
The way I see it, there are at least two facets to an artist’s relationship with color. First there is a love affair. Those of us who use vibrant color in our paintings are likely to be smitten by it. Viewing and being surrounded by color is nourishment to me—i can’t imagine living in a black-and-white world. Color conveys emotion and energy; it is mysterious and very personal. Color is life. Second, making paintings requires an artist to work with color in a very practical way. Interpreting what I see in the physical world and in my reference images into paintings means I need an understanding of my materials— notably paints and pigments. The color that ends up in my paintings is based on my choosing, combining, mixing and layering paint. When I began painting in watercolor I collected tubes of paint based on recommendations by my workshop teachers or art instruction books as well as those that appealed to me in art stores or mail-order catalogs. If I liked it, I bought it. I documented this initial collection in a painted “inventory” that included 61 different tubes! Limiting the paints to use in my paintings wasn’t in the realm of my imagination for a long time. I still don’t limit myself too much. My current watercolor palette has 32 wells— all filled, plus blobs of additional paints in the corners here and there. Today, I mostly don’t plan the colors that I’ll use in a painting. I start out with whichever colors strike me in the moment and end up with a selection of about a dozen different paints for a given painting. The paints that end up in that selection are based solely on my intuition. But in recent years I’ve made the decision— before I sit to paint—that I’d limit myself to a specific set of paints. In one painting, it was only three paints. Limiting colors makes for more cohesiveness and harmony in a painting. With fewer colors popping up in different places all over a painting, the set of colors more readily create a world of their own. Working with
a limited palette also provides the opportunity to practice really seeing and mixing color. As you attempt to mix a color your options are reduced, which in a way can make things easier. For example, if I’ve limited myself to just three primary colors: phthalo blue, hansa yellow medium and quinacridone rose, and I want to mix an olive green, I start with the yellow, mix in a tiny bit of blue, which results in a vibrant light green. No amount of additional yellow or blue will transform this color to an olive green, which means that I must need to add some rose to the mixture. I find a certain simplicity and an unexpected freedom in painting this way. There are three main ways to combine paint/colors in watercolor, any and all of which can be used in any painting. Artists often prefer one way more than the others. We can either: Mix paints on the palette to come up
with a new color altogether. Combine paints by introducing different colors, straight from the tube (or pan) into water on the paper, allowing them to mix right on the painting, or we can glaze or layer color over those already painted to shift existing colors. Of the three, I am a mixer. I see a color in my reference image and I attempt to create it— according to my own perception, inclinations and preferences—by combining two or more paints on my palette, which I then apply to my paper. Though I always attempt to mix the “right” color at first, it’s rare that I don’t find what I’ve painted lacking in some way after the first application, prompting me to paint a layer of the same (or another) color. This is part of the beauty of watercolor; because of its inherent transparency, we can easily shift color, tone and feeling by glazing multiple colors over one another in our paintings. In this sense, “missing the mark” with color can make for more richly colored and interesting paintings. The more pigment, the more color—which brings more intensity and impact to our work. When I get the feeling something is missing or off, I ask myself what it needs— considering various options of what to add in. I almost always find my way to the color that lands that part of the painting. Though I’ve always layered color like this—to build richness and depth in my paintings—i’ve begun intentionally layering single colors, one over another, in order to allow each one to shine through. Artists who are still finding their way with combining colors are often concerned about making “mud.” Layering fresh, clear color is one way to keep the colors in our paintings fresh. In the reference image for my painting Flourish, the flowers in the lower third of the image were in shadow and the colors captured by the camera were dull. Not wanting to
replicate dull colored flowers, I applied the colors in separate layers, enabling each color to be seen on its own. The five main flowers of Flourish were painted with Daniel Smith Manganese Blue Hue, Daniel Smith Hansa Yellow Medium and Winsor & Newton Permanent Rose. I used several additional colors in the surrounding areas of the painting too. In separate layers I painted the three colors one after the other. Permanent rose went wherever I saw rose, or violet or peach— any color that had a rose component to it, then Hansa yellow medium where I saw yellow, peach or green, followed by manganese blue hue for all the blues, violets and greens. For the brownish colors at the centers of the roses I went back to mixing colors on my palette first, but I stuck to the same three paints for cohesiveness and consistency. Regardless of whether we mix, layer or combine color on our paintings, the most important ingredients are: listening to our intuition, allowing a sense of exploration and paying close attention to the results we’ve achieved—and whether or not we liked what just happened. This is the only way to find our own voices—what we have to say with color.