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Tip of the month – March 2008 |
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In watercolor, there is a palette designed for every need. I own at least a dozen watercolor palettes myself. |
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This is the first palette that I owned. More than twenty years later, it is still in good condition. It is made of a very sturdy plastic and has twenty wells for pigment. The mixing surface is large. When I first studied watercolor, the colors were place in a random fashion. I found that I had to memorize the names of each of the colors and where I had placed them on the palette. |
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After seeing a well-known artist do a demonstration with this palette, I decided that I should have the same kind of palette, too. Perhaps, it would help me to improve my technique. This palette had a large mixing area, sixteen wells for pigment, and a protective cover. But the plastic was flimsy and soon, pieces of the outside edge broke off in small pieces. |
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When I purchased this palette, I had started developing my current approach to color and color mixing. As can be seen, the inner edge of each well is level with the mixing area. This allowed me to drag my chosen color from its well onto the mixing surface. The colors on the mixing area would mingle and the resulting colors were not flat. When applied to the paper, all the colors in the mingled mix were seen. |
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With this palette, my color evolution continued. I looked at the color wheel and decided to place my colors in the order that I saw.
Yellow was placed on the far left and red violet on the right and the orange and reds in between. I saw that I had all the warm colors together in a logical order. Instead of continuing from right to left on the bottom, I placed the remaining half of the color wheel from left to right, again. I started with dark violet and proceed through the blues and greens. The cool side of the color wheel was in a logical order, too. But more importantly, complementary colors were opposite one another. This way of arranging colors can be applied to the more traditional palette shape by placing the colors opposite one another on either end of the palette. The side in the middle, I use for what I choose to call “color candy”. |
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Recently, I have acquired this palette that is constructed of sturdy plastic and comes with additional mixing surfaces. It has twelve wells for color on the circle. I work with the color wheel that contains twelve colors. In each of the corners of the palette, I put my extra colors that are closely related to the colors on that part of the wheel. Some of the “color candy” ends up in the brush compartment to the left side of the palette. |
The colors below are my basic choice of colors. They are arranged in complementary pairs in the same way that they are placed on one of the rectangular palettes. |
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My current palette is round. The colors are placed in the same order as the color wheel of twelve colors.
Whether I am painting or teaching, I can immediately see color relationships on this palette. |
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