My intention is always to set up palettes so I can paint any subject - landscape, figures, florals, urban landscapes, seascapes - rather than specialist palettes. I make pigment choices based on what type of palette it is and what sized paintings it will be used for - small travel sketches or larger studio paintings.
If I am setting up a travel or plein air palette, I will tend to include Cerulean and Ultramarine for painting skies, for example, and may well include primatek colours that are fun for extra granulation. I may also tend to put more granulating earth colours to capture the landscape. My studio palettes only contain pigments I have tested to be lightfast and very predictable as I do most of my botanical paintings in my studio. Photos of a range of palettes can be seen on my website. Here are the paint-outs.
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| Herring Compact half pan palette set up with 24 half pans of Daniel Smith watercolour, covering the thumb hole. |
This is the Herring Compact palette from the UK. This can be set up in a number of different ways. This is my favourite configuration - 24 colours with a space for a travel brush. You can see other variations on my website here. It is plastic, so nice and light, but has excellent mixing wells.
The colours are Buff Titanium, Hansa Yellow Medium, Quinacridone Gold, Transparent Pyrrol Orange, Pyrrol Crimson, Quinacridone Rose, Ultramarine, Phthalo Blue RS, Cerulean Chromium, Cobalt Turquoise, Phthalo Green BS, Perylene Green, Undersea Green, Sap Green, Rich Green Gold, Goethite, Raw Sienna, Transparent Red Oxide, Burnt Sienna, Indian Red, Piemontite Genuine, Burnt Umber, Raw Umber, Jane's Grey.
This palette is wonderful for plein air as there are so many greens, interesting granulating earths and the Transparent Red Oxide and Piemontite are wonderful for painting rust.
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24 colour paint-out of a wonderful plein air palette. #Daniel Smith watercolours painted in a handbook watercolour sketchbook A5 landscape.
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| Mijello palette set up with 18 Daniel Smith watercolours |
The Mijello palette is a great design for larger brushes and I am using this for demonstrations when teaching. There are 18 paint wells so I have included less convenience mixes than the above palette.
Colours are Buff Titanium, hansa Yellow Medium, Pyrrol Scarlet, Pyrrol Crimson, Quinacridone Rose, Ultramarine, Cerulean Chromium, Phthalo Blue GS, Phthalo Green BS, Perylene Green, Yellow Ochre, Goethite, Raw Sienna, Burnt Sienna, Indian Red, Raw Umber, Jane's Grey. This is my Ultimate Mixing Set, along with yellow ochre, raw sienna and perylene green - a great range of single pigment colours.
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| Mijello palette painted out on Stillman & Birn Alpha paper. 18 colour Daniel Smith watercolour palette. |
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| Little lipstick palette set up with 7 Daniel Smith watercolours. |
Colours are Hansa Yellow Medium, Quinacridone Gold, Quinacridone Rose, Ultramarine, Perylene Green, Burnt Sienna and Jane's Grey.
The smallest palette I will actually use is 7 colours, though I love to come up with extremely versatile limited palettes. This is one of three 7-colour palettes I have. The others are a locket and a keyring :-)
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| Paint-out and mixes of a versatile 7-colour palette of Daniel Smith watercolours, painted in a Stillman&Birn Alpha A4 Sketchbook |
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| Robertson style Paintbox with 20 colours. |
This is my studio palette - a lovely handmade brass palette based on the Robertson designs. The 20 colours are a wonderful range with some convenience greens and great dark blues and greens. These are my basic colours to paint with in my studio, though I have other extras for special purposes.
The colours are Buff titanium, Hansa Yellow Medium, Quinacridone Gold, Transparent Pyrrol Orange, Pyrrol Crimson, Quinacridone Rose, Ultramarine, Indanthrone Blue, Phthalo Blue RS, Cerulean Chromium, Phthalo Green BS, Perylene Green, Undersea Green, Sap Green, Goethite, Burnt Sienna, Indian Red, Burnt Umber, Raw Umber, Jane's Grey.
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| My favourite 20 palette colours. Daniel Smith watercolour, painted in a Stillman & Birn Alpha sketchbook, A4. |
I carry this palette with me when sketching and use it in my studio. It is more convenient having the gouache ready to paint in the palette than squeezing it out freshly each time.When I use up the yellows I will probably replace them with cadmium pigments for greater opacity.
I paint a palette chart on the first page of each sketchbook. As gouache is an opaque medium I have painted this chart in the Strathmore toned tan sketchbook. It's not a perfect sketchbook for watercolour or gouache but I'll just paint on one side of the paper.
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| My opaque palette - largely a gouache palette with a mix of Schmincke and M.Graham gouache, along with Buff Titanium and Indian Red DS watercolours. Painted in a Strathmore Toned Tan sketchbook, 5.5"x 8.5" portrait. |
This is my Little Lady, a tiny bespoke brass palette set up with my basic palette of 20 colours as painted out at the top. It has 4 extra colours on the right which I can change around. Currently it has Cobalt turquoise (great for copper domes), Serpentine Genuine (great for grassy areas), Green Apatite Genuine (lovely for foliage) and Lunar Black (an amazing granulating black) as the extra colours, though I sometimes put in Piemontite, Transparent Red Oxide and/or raw sienna if I am sketching more urban scenes.
This palette lives in my handbag, in a sketching kit. The waterbrush is an extra short one as seen in the very top photo - this is a really tiny treasure!
This is a little travel palette from Singapore, designed to hold 12 half pans but adapted to hold 14 of my Ultimate Mixing Set. It's just missing Indian Red, but you mix and Indian Red hue with the palette colours Pyrrol Scarlet and Phthalo Blue.
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| Travel palette with 14 watercolours - from my ultimate mixing set. |
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| My Ultimate Mixing set of 13 Daniel Smith colours (plus Jane's Grey) in a travel palette. |
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| Travel palette with all 15 of my Ultimate Mixing Set |
Update - thanks to MagaMerlina (comment section) I have squashed the metal divider down (it is very well attached so will take some serious tools to remove completely) and squeezed all 15 of my Ultimate Mixing set into this little palette. I have used the slightly more square Schmincke half pans and sanded a little off the ones in each corner, though if you have the smaller Winsor & Newton pans they will fit in even better.
Indian Red added - I do love this colour not only to create a lovely earth triad with goethite and cerulean chromium, but also for its softness in portraits - lips, eyes and cheeks, if really watered down.
Now to get on with some painting!
Very informative, Jane , as per usual. Attended your talk at the Gosford Gallery. Excellent. Still not sure when to use the Buff Titanium. Can you help, please?
ReplyDeleteNice to hear from you Ray. As you can see, Buff titanium is an absolute favourite of mine. I use it for painting beaches (with Goethite though another yellow earth colour would work) and sandstone (with goethite and burnt sienna), for gum trees, for fair skin in portraits, to make the soft pastel greens of the gum leaves and for many building textures. If you don't do any plein air work you may have less use for it, though it is also lovely for protea studies and animals!
DeleteIf you pull out the metal divisions attached to the palette and use original Winsor and Newton half pans, you can fit 15 in your little travel palette and include the Indian red.
ReplyDeleteI've done it, you can see mine here http://www.magamerlina.com/2015/10/my-favorite-watercolor.html
Love your blog, I keep comming back all the time for the extense info about colors.
Thanks for that, though I don't think I have that many Winsor & Newton half pans since it isn't a W&N box - but I'll do a search and see :-)
DeleteI couldn't remove the metal insert - it will take some pliers and a lot of strength and may deform the palette, but I squished the middle ones down almost flat and was able to fit the final colour in. The Schmincke half pans that I had used take up a little less space than normal universal pans and I still had a spare. Now I'm happy :-) Thank you!
DeleteJejeje I just saw you managed to fit the 15 half pans to have your ultimate mixing set complete, isn't it great?
DeleteYou're welcome ;)
Hello! I love reading your blog; your posts about mixing colours has been incredibly helpful. :)
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking of palette options for gouache paints, and was wondering if you would advise putting gouache into metal pans (like those of the Pocket Palette)? Or is it better to put them in plastic pans instead?
I have put gouache into the Pocket Palette metal pans but I did spray them with enamel first. I don't think that is a necessity but it does give them a bit of protection.
DeleteI see. Thank you! :)
DeleteAre you going to share what brand and model that extra short travel water brush is?
ReplyDeleteIt is a Pental brand waterbrush that I bought in Hong Kong. The package writing is all in Chinese but I took a photo of it - send me a contact form and I'll send it to you.
DeleteDear Jane,
ReplyDeleteI have only recently discovered your blog after re-discovering watercolour myself - I've painted acrylic for 20 years but not touched watercolour in 15 and I am so happy - painting it again is like finding an old friend. I adore your painted-out palettes - so pretty! I'm inspired by the jolly angles on the Daniel Smith one and I am going to plagiarise the idea forthwith for my own notebook - it's much nicer than just painting it out as a grid!
I have two questions if you don't mind my asking - some related, one not! I work in Winsor and Newton Professional Watercolours as tube paints, FYI, which I then lay out into Frisk palettes myself - mostly because W+N Pro are readily available at my local art store, but I could get other things on Amazon UK.
1) Pinks - I love the colours of Opera Rose (sensu PR122 - such a bright and wonderful shade!) and Genuine Rose Madder (NR9 - infinitely better than the hues), which are of course sadly fugitive - are there any colours by any manufacturer that are not fugitive (or as fugitive) and that replicate these two colours much better than e.g. Permanent Rose (PV19) and that are staining colours? I don't know other ranges as widely as someone with your experience to find a good match.
2) Greys/blacks - something I've read many of your posts on! I want to do some B&W (ish) paintings on white by making pre-mixes straight from tubes of a few greys then set them in a grey-only palette. Other than the pretty standard mixes like Ultramarine/Burnt Sienna and so on, I've been playing with Brown Madder/Ultramarine etc etc - just wondered if there were any more unusual 2-paint mixes that could give me a range of red-blacks, green-blacks, blue-blacks etc etc - given your knowledge of greys, I wondered if you knew of a few suggestions or maybe already had a post on it that I can't find?
Many thanks
r
Dear Rich
DeleteAs I paint out a palette swatch chart on the first page of every sketchbook, I rather like exploring different ways to do it. Sometimes I use a template to create circles or squares or rectangles, sometimes I trace around a pan or half-pan, sometimes I rule them up. It would be quite interesting to post them all up in one blog - many to look at!
As to your questions - 1) the pigment PR122 that is used in Opera Rose is not the real problem - it is rated 2 - 3 where 1 or 2 is ideal for watercolour so while it's not ideal it is usable - the real problem is the fluorescent dye that fades out. So you could use a Quin magenta PR122 instead, but it isn't as pink. I prefer PV19, which does stain to some extent, and in W&N is called Permanent Rose. It's a lovely primary red option to have as it mixes beautiful purples and also very clean oranges. In Daniel Smith it is called Quinacridone Rose, as seen above in many of my palette paint-outs.
The closest Rose Madder hue is made by Art Spectrum with PV19 - somehow they have turned it into a fairly soft granulating rose pink, very similar to Rose Madder genuine.
An alternative for a granulating dusky rose is Potters Pink, with a little Permanent Rose added. Potters pink is a very gentle granulating colour but a good pigment. You can see all these on my website in the Painted Watercolour Swatches section http://www.janeblundellart.com/red-watercolour-swatches.html
2) There are so many great greys and blacks you can mix!
My blog is searchable. Here are some of the grey posts
Jane's Grey - http://janeblundellart.blogspot.com.au/2014/02/custom-made-watercolour-mixes-janes-grey.html
Jane's Grey and other mixed blacks and greys http://janeblundellart.blogspot.com.au/2012/11/gorgeous-greys-in-watercolour.html
Three-pigment greys and other mixes http://janeblundellart.blogspot.com.au/2015/10/custom-watercolour-mixes-question-of.html
This one shows a number of opposites mixed to create greys. http://janeblundellart.blogspot.com.au/2014/08/colour-exploration-single-pigment.html
Others to explore are Burnt Sienna + Phthalo Blue GS for a cooler grey (You may need to use W&N Burnt Umber)
Phthalo green (winsor green) + pyrrol crimson DS for rich blacks - the W&N red closest to the richness of DS pyrrol crimson is probably cad red deep. Their permanent alizarin and perm carmine are more pink than crimson. Or use perylene maroon.
Perylene Green + Perylene Maroon for a deep black
Cerulean + burnt sienna for dusty greys (though I am talking DS Burnt Sienna which is PBr7 - W&N is PR101 so may not mix the same grey. You might try it with W&N Burnt Umber instead)
Phthalo blue RS (Winsor blue RS)+ Pyrrol Scarlet (or you warm red - Scarlet Lake?) for almost black greys and wonderful deep indigos.
Perylene green + quin rose (Permanent Rose) for purple-greys
Imperial purple/Dioxazine purple and a warm yellow for more purple-greys
Also look at my watercolour mixing charts for more ideas. http://www.janeblundellart.com/watercolour-mixing-charts.html
Happy mixing :-)
Jane - you are an incredibly generous person with your time and information! Thank you so much! As the tubes/websites are quite naughty, for "Opera Rose", only PR122 is listed - they had not mentioned BV10 (Rhodamine B) - so I'd assumed PR122 was the fugitive. I of course recognise now rhodamine B - I'm a bacteriologist, we get through buckets of the stuff. As long as the breakdown products aren't a funny colour I guess it's ok. I use "Permanent Rose", but it's just not as pink or as "alive" as "opera rose" for me.
DeleteThe greys advise is wonderful and a lot to take on board - I've been playing with Brown Madder, Indian Red, Venetian Red, English Red, Magnesium Brown et al. with different ultramarines at the moment. Caput Mortuum with Green Gold gives some interesting colours. I'm playing at the moment with painting landscapes/etc where I use browns only and instead of white-to-black values, I use yellow-to-red undertones - comes out like an old sepia photo, in an odd way!
Many thanks again
r
Have you ever done a rewettability comparison of gouache? Is there such a thing as gouache that is not rewettable or does not re-wet well? I am grateful for your generous contribution to the art community by publishing all this amazing information free.
ReplyDeleteI was about to reply to Jane for her reply to my query and saw yours and thought I would reply to it. I regularly paint from gouache I've dispensed from tubes and dried into pans and I've got paintings a few years old that haven't flaked etc. There's a lot of information out there that says you can't do it but both W+N and D+R Designers' Gouache (they miss the apostrophe out on their branding but it annoys me so much I have to add it back!) seem to re-wet in my hands - I guess they may not be as good as direct-from-tube but I've never noticed. I do add 2 drops of glycerol to each half-pan - it needs more than I would use for cheap watercolours (1 drop) as they crack otherwise but they are still useable even if they do crack tbh.
Deleter
Many brands of gouache contain 'fillers' (chalk) to make the gouache more opaque. These can make it more difficult to rewet the gouache and get nice thick mixtures once they have dried. Adding glycerine really helps, but I have chosen to use gouache that doesn't contain fillers - the MG and Schmincke - so I am still using pure pigment. It means that colours like the phthalos are not opaque, but they are pure pigments and will intermix with other watercolours happily.
DeleteSo sorry to trouble you again Jane - I have forgotten *twice in a row* to ask you this question! Is there a good alternative to Buff Titanium in watercolour form? Obviously W+N Pro has nothing very similar - DS uses PW6:1 (titanium white buff) but I can't find any other watercolours containing that. Can I warm up a titanium white with a drop of something and make a pre-mix do you think? I can mix up a tone to copy another paint but as I don't have any DS Titanium Buff to hand to copy, it's rather hard - wondered if you had any thoughts? I love Buff Titanium as a ground in my acrylic painting so having it in watercolour would be fantastic.
ReplyDeleteThanks once again
r
Why not buy the Daniel Smith Buff titanium? It is a special watercolour as it is not only a lovely colour, it also granulates beautifully, so even if you match the hue, you will struggle to match the characteristics. Send me an email so jane@janeblundellart.com and I'll email you a swatch of it. As for mixing the hue - I haven't bothered since it is a staple colour for me, but I'll give it a go. I'm guessing warm umber and yellow ochre would need to be added to white...
DeleteQoR also have a 'titanium buff', but the way, but it's not as nice as the DS version that I love, and I am not a fan of their synthetic binder.
I had a play with DS chinese white (PW4) and, as I expected, you can make a Buff titanium hue by adding yellow ochre and raw umber - I used Daniel Smith in both - but it won't have the granulation of the genuine DS watercolour. I also tried with Goethite + Raw Umber, to create a little more granulation, which it does, but I still prefer the real thing :-)
DeleteThanks Jane I'll give that a try. DS is hard to get in the UK at a reasonable price. £16/tube on Amazon and 2-3 weeks for delivery. Most expensive WN Pro is about £8 and I can buy it in a brick and mortar store. I will probably buy some eventually when I set up my en plein air set in the summer months but for now I can't justify it when I can make a knock-off version and add granulation medium if I really need it to granulate.
DeleteThanks for your help once again
R
I am *so* sorry to take up your time with another query but your lovely little swatches: do you draw out each one by hand or use a rubber stamp to do the squares perhaps? Are they cut by hand (paper cutter?) or by die? I love the idea of a set of swatch cards for all my colours across oil, acrylic, watercolour, gouache, ink, alcohol ink etc etc but the idea of cutting and drawing and punching what would be 300-500 colours in toto is just so off-putting...! How did you tackle it? Was it incremental over the years or did you have to do 100s of colours of backlog when you introduced the system? I have a Filofax with all my colours in it already but literally just blobs on a page and the name - I carry it everywhere to stop me buying the same colour twice - but a studio ref set done properly appeals to my OCD tendencies! Thank you so very much,
DeleteR
Rick - in Australia W&N is outrageously priced! Daniel Smith isn't so bad though it has recently gone up. A tube of series 1 DS is about AU$21, usually there is an artist discount so it ends up being about $18 - that's about £9 or so. If you really want to try a tube let me know as I can get one over to the UK for local postage. jane@janeblundellart.com
DeleteOtherwise if you are using W&N paints to mix a hue, try just adding the W&N raw umber to white first, then a little yellow ochre only if you need it.
As for swatches - assuming you mean the ones on my website - I rule them up the width of a large metal ruler on large sheets of watercolour paper and then use templates to draw up each swatch. I have made my own template out of plastic that I can trace up 4 at a time but it is still a very time-consuming business making all the 800 or so swatches. I did a lot at first, and add 30 - 50 at a time. Once they are scanned, I can them up individually, put a hole through the top and place them in order by manufacturer. Another good way to set them up is to make them the right size to fit into a loose-leaf negative holder binder of some sort, if you can get hold of those. If I were doing them again I would put a black strip down each swatch first to test opacity.
For the swatches above, I either trace around a pan or half pan or use a template of a square, circle or rectangle. Sometimes I draw them up with a ruler, but templates are much faster.
:-) I really enjoy exploring all sorts of different palette ideas, but I wanted to post just about the ones I actually use. My most used colours are rather odd - buff titanium, goethite, burnt sienna, ultramarine, quin gold, undersea green and Jane's grey along with cerulean are the colours I go through the fastest. Reds less so, unless I am doing botanicals!
ReplyDeleteJane - further to the email i dropped you re: Aurora Yellow, I now have a whole stack of W+N professional watercolours discontinued from 1974 to 1999 - some are clearly 1970s tubes but every single one has been just fine to paint with! If you would like to add them to your database of swatches for the sake of completeness as a resource, or are just curious, I can send you some samples.
ReplyDeleteR
http://www.the-spin-doctor.co.uk
I'd be delighted to Rich - I'd certainly like to try them, and would look at whether or how best to share them is they are no longer available.
DeleteThanks Jane - I've emailed you so you have my details. Aurora Yellow (a mix of 2 Cd yellow pigments), Bright Red, Winsor Emerald and Prussian Green are the most interesting ones - the latter is a very nice dark, dark granulating green. Email me if you want rough swatches to see the colours.
ReplyDeleter
www.the-spin-doctor.co.uk
I'm glad it is helpful Tonya. do make sure you visit my website too - there is a huge amount of information there too, including sections on watercolour paints, mixing charts, palette choices and so on. Perhaps make a pot of tea first ;-)
ReplyDeleteI've several palettes as well. If I were to fill them all up, I won't be able to remember the colours unless I use the same colours in all the boxes.
ReplyDeleteAs you can see, I use the same brand in all the watercolour boxes, and I think I added up that there are perhaps 40 pigments/colours in total that I use. I always make sure I label all the pans with the colour just in case.
DeleteI can well imagine that if you are mixing up brands as well as colours you'd lose track!
Jane, thank you soc much for your incredible generous sharing of your experience and knowledge about watercolors. I've only recently found your blog and have added it to my reader. I started with watercolors in the past year and feel like I'm just starting to see the light. My hubbie reminds me that it's practice and not to be discouraged. I found you today because I was searching for information about color and voila! Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThank you. I am glad you have found it useful. Enjoy your journey. Watercolour is a wonderful medium - portable, beautiful and easy to clean up :-)
DeleteHello!
ReplyDeleteYour website has helped me so much last year, learning about pigments and setting up a watercolour palette. Now i'm in the process of setting up a gouache palette too, and your insights have been invaluable.
I only have easy access to Schmincke but not M.Graham, so I am carefully picking out colours to be sent to be over the great pond. Since you tested two palettes of each, with the colours as close as possible or the same pigment even, I would love to know what made you include one over the other in your final gouache palette setup? Especially the ones that are essentially the same pigment, such as Carmine/Quin Rose, Phthalo/Helio Blue.
Thanks so much for your online education resources and incredible content!
Greetings from Austria :)
Very good questions. Where possible, I went with single pigment colours. The Schmincke burnt sienna is a mixture but the MG is not. In some cases I just chose the one that cracked less - looked happier in the palette. Sometimes it was just the subtle colour variation. I think if you can get Schmincke easily you should just do that and not worry - they are very nice to work with as they are really just more highly pigmented watercolour.
ReplyDeleteOne thought though - if part of what you want in the gouache is opacity, you might look at the (more expensive but more opaque) cadmiums - particularly for cadmium lemon and cadmium scarlet. If you have yellow ochre you may not need an opaque warm yellow.
I just noticed that it looks as though iIhave mis-labelled a couple of the colours - raw umber should be raw sienna and vice versa. Whoops! You can see both the schmincke palette and the M.G. palette painted out in other posts - search 'gouache' in the search button to find them easily.
Hello!
DeleteThanks for the answer, that helps a lot :) I already have some Schmincke gouaches, and like you say, most are mixed pigments. While I do enjoy them (and find their texture much nicer than the Schmincke HKS and the WN Gouache that I also tried), mixing with them is very tricky due to multiple pigments being involved. Especially Burnt Sienna is annoying...
The tip with the Cadmium rang loud in my ears, as I do tend to grab for my Cadmium Yellow more than any other yellow. Apart from the strong opacity, it is a colour that didn't work for me at all in watercolours, but really enhances my gouache.
Once nice thing I figured out: Azo Yellow PY 151 and Cadmium Orange Hue PO 62 seem to make up the components of MG New Gamboge, at least pigment-wise (of course I don't know how the pigment has been treated). Since I already have the Orange (I use a lot of it!) I will mix my own warm yellow from those two, and see if I like that.
This has gotten much longer than I intended, but your resources really helped kick off my palette building interest. So in the process of going over your swatches, it was lovely to find out that my often used orange is less of a convenience colour between warm yellow and red, but can actually stand as a single pigment to pull both red and yellow in the warm direction. It was a true light-bulb moment for me!
I can't emphasise enough how important those little pigment numbers are. You can always choose to buy a convenience mix if you like it - having a consistent go-to green/purple/orange or whatever can be useful, but it's worth knowing exactly what is in it so you know if you can do without it or mix it yourself in the palette or as your own convenience premixed colour. Your comments about the MG New Gamboge sum up that entirely.
DeleteAnd yes - while I don't tend to have an orange in the palette, even a single pigment one (many are mixtures) it can be really useful, especially when you explore all the stunning colours you can make mixing an orange with your blues. Or if you don't have an orange-red in your palette.