Working with a Limited Palette: The Seven Sisters

I love art.  I love to draw, paint, and color.  One of my favorite places is the art store.  I love perusing the multitudes of brands of paints, brushes, canvases, oils, mixtures, mediums, and varnishes every time I go.  Its easy to become overwhelmed! However, thankfully, I learned about the wonders of a limited palette which not only helps my ability to learn how to mix and see colors, but also helped my pocket book when it comes to avoiding having to pay for those Series 5 and 6 colors!!

There are unlimited ways in which you can combine colors to work with a limited palette.  I've seen limited palettes of 4, 5, 6 and 7 colors, sometimes including brown or black.  I recommend playing around and finding which colors you tend to use the most and which combination allows you maximum color creation.

To the left are what I lovely refer to as the Seven Sisters.  The Seven Sisters consist of Blue, Green, Crimson, Red, Orange, Yellow and White.  Once in a while I might like to throw in a pre-mixed color, such as violet, aquamarine, pink or sage green, but over all, these colors do the trick quiet well.  With these seven colors I able to make every color under the sun.  The only thing that limits me, is the time it takes to mix and make them.

The benefit of working with a limited palette is it really teaches you to see colors more so than ever before. 

Take this brown color for example:

 

It will take some time experiencing the mixing process before you know which colors you will need to combine to make a brown of this color.  Learning how much or how little actual paint you will need to add to make the color is a huge part of obtaining the color you want.  I use Winsor Newton Artist Oils which are very high pigment, so it takes very little of a color to see it take effect.  Now, if I wanted to create this brown color above using the Seven Sisters, one way would be to add Green, Crimson and Orange:

How to I know this? Practice.  Having an eye to see what colors are absent in the color you are trying to make is the goal of working with a limited palette.  When I first started mixing, I felt lost.  Reading colors was like reading Chinese for me.  But, how could this be?  I've always painted and colored.  I'm no stranger to the art store.  Yet, color mixing is a language all its own and as with any language, once you are immersed in it, you learn it quicker.  Once I started working with a limited palette, not only could I start to see deeper into each color and know the essence of how it was formed, but I also was able to advance my technique by using more varying shades of the same color.

Whenever you look at mixing a color, its important you ask yourself, "What colors are missing?"  For the brown color above, you might think that on top of the 3 colors I mentioned, that you might even add a pinch of yellow, or a hint of blue, as everyone see's colors a little differently.  There is no wrong answer as long as the color you create is what you wanted to accomplish.  Minimal tones of other colors will only enhance the vibrancy of the color you are cooking up and make it more mature, but you must stay true to your base colors of that shade or you will find yourself wandering out of that color and into another.

Think of it like a Cappuccino and a Latte.    Both are in essence the exact same.  Yet, by giving more foam and less milk to the Cappuccino the flavor becomes stronger, while in a Latte you have more milk to balance out the Espresso. 

This is nearly the same correlation between pigment mixing.  Take the colors Blue and Red.  Mix them together evenly and you get a purple, add more red you get more of a maroon, add more blue you get more of a violet.

Now, if you want to obtain Black, you might think its logical to mix all colors on your palette.  The ironic part is this is incorrect, as well as slightly accurate.  In actuality, you only need to combine two colors: Crimson and Green.

These two colors produce the best, the truest, purest, most blackest black-ity black-black that you can get.  Why these two colors?  When you break it down, it makes complete sense.

Put on your thinking cap and go back to Elementary School.  Everyone learns about the 3 primary colors that all other colors are based from: Blue, Yellow and Red. 

By combining Green (Blue and Yellow) and Crimson (a deep, rich shade of red), you are combining Blue, Yellow and Red (the basis of all colors) all at once.  This is why I said its slightly accurate of a thought that you would need to combine all colors on your palette to achieve black.

I hope this little diatribe on the wonders of a limited palette has helped and inspired you!  I highly recommend everyone starting out their artistic journey on a limited palette, but if you're like me and start mid-journey, rest assured you can still learn and benefit from this technique.