Back when I used to paint in oils, what felt like decades ago (or pre-2020) I had far too many colours, and honestly very little idea of how to use them. I had Prussian Blue, Cerulean Blue, Naples Yellow, Cadmium Orange, Pthalo Green, Viridian Green and so on, but I didn’t understand the nature of how these colours worked with each other in terms of value, tone, contrast. What colours should you mix with what? And don’t get me started on straight-from-the-tube greens. They’re terrible.
Switching to acrylics after being pregnant and having my son (to avoid the chemicals of oils) I ended up with a much smaller “starter” selection of colours. I’d never really got on with acrylics before, finding them difficult to blend and too dry to be manageable.
How opinions change! I love the versatility of acrylics, from letting them run like watercolours to layering, glazing and adding impasto textures. But this new medium also gave me the opportunity to re-think my relationship with colour mixing. I started mixing my colours a lot more strategically, I researched colour theory and put these ideas into practice. I discovered the joy of a limited palette, which means painting with a limited range of colours and mixing anything you need from that range. Now, I only ever use a limited palette, and aside from occasional swaps, it’s a pretty consistent collection.
So if I were stranded on a desert island, and could only choose five acrylic colours (and white, you always need white), these were the colours I’d choose. And they just so happen to be the ones I use in my limited palette for almost every painting.
My Limited Palette - Acrylic Paints
The colours mentioned below are all from Winsor and Newton's Acrylic range, if you’re interested in any of these colours yourself.
Cadmium Yellow Light
Completely permanent with good tinting strength, cadmiums are lightfast and beautifully brilliant. Slightly less orange than Cadmium Yellow Medium, this yellow is a beauty for mixing stunning green tones without going to acidic, and when mixed with white and a touch of Quinacridone Magenta it makes the most beautiful tones from coral to salmon and the softest sunset pinks.
Quinacridone Magenta
For a colour so renowned for its’ intensity, there is a surprising fact about Magenta: it is not on the light spectrum. So, if it isn’t there, how can we see it? The answer lies in how we see light. When our brain sees waves of light from two ends of the spectrum, red and violet, scientists have learned that our brain invents a new colour for us, halfway between the two colours. Magenta has no wavelength attributed to it, unlike all the other spectrum colours, because it is really a bridge between colour; it was invented by our minds to address a perceived gap. The light spectrum doesn’t need to fill every gap, but obviously the human mind wants to make sense of colour, and a part of that process of making sense of colour created magenta.
Use sparingly, because a little goes a long way. But this brilliant, bright purplish tone isn’t what you’d expect to need so frequently. It’s added - very very delicately - to a great deal of my mixes. It’s perfect for deepening shadow tones and great for neutralising greens if they start to get too bright. It also makes the most exquisite neutral tones.
Ultramarine Blue
The classic, deep, dark blue. It’s a touch transparent for my liking but it’s qualities as a mixer are endless. It combines beautifully with Cadmium Yellow Light for stunning warm greens, and with magenta for some stunning bold indigos. And for shadow tones, Ultramarine and Raw Umber are a match made in acrylic heaven.
Cobalt Blue
A clean blue that is neither warm nor cold
Blues are a tricky thing to get right, and too much or too little and you’re stuck with a puddle of useless mess. Cobalt is perfect for bright skies mixed with a hint of white and is more opaque than ultramarine, so I often find the best blue combines these two tube blues with touches of magenta and white.
Buff Titanium
I brought a big tube of this colour on a bit of a whim: it reminded me a lot of yellow ochres and Naples yellow, an old favourite of mine in oils. I wasn’t disappointed. It’s perfect for enhancing or reducing the saturation of any and all of the colours above, and also works beautifully with Cad Yellow and Quin Magenta.
Notice there’s no black, red or even brown in my limited palette, because with the above, I can pretty much make any shade that I want to, even the really deep dark tones, it just takes a little more time and care. Sometimes, I may add a touch of Cadmium Red or Raw Umber, but if I found myself stranded without them, it’d be just fine.
What are your desert island colours and medium? Let me know in the comments!
Colour descriptions in italics sourced from: https://www.winsornewton.com/uk/articles/colours/
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