A nocturne palette: three dark pigments and one warm accent
Night paintings fail in one of two ways: they are too dark to read, or they are daytime paintings with a blue filter.
Violet · nocturne
· Pushing
65 min · 8′
Mixing
Mixing notes built around a real set of tubes: which combinations stay clean, which granulate, which grey down without turning to mud, and what each mixture costs you in transparency.
300 gsm Not applicable
65 min · 8′
High-key palette: keeping a tropical scene from turning into mud
Tropical subjects attract a specific failure: every element is high chroma, so the painter responds by loading more pigment, and the result is a dark, heavy picture of what should be glaring sunlight.
Sap green · high-key
· Working
50 min · 8′
Opaque over opaque, transparent over opaque: four glazing behaviours
Watercolour is usually described as a transparent medium, which is true of perhaps half the pigments in a normal box.
Cerulean · body-colour
· Working
50 min · 9′
Granulating pigments: making the separation the subject
Granulation is usually treated as a side effect to be tolerated or avoided.
Ultramarine · granulation-set
· Pushing
60 min · 8′
Four tubes of modern high-chroma pigment, and the discipline they require
Phthalo blue, quinacridone magenta and hansa yellow are among the most lightfast, most permanent pigments ever made.
Rose · high-chroma
· Pushing
55 min · 8′
A three-tube sepia palette for sketching on location
Sketching outdoors has two enemies: weight and hesitation.
Burnt sienna · monochrome
· First sheet
40 min · 8′
Cobalt violet and the shadow problem
Shadows in watercolour are not darker versions of the local colour and they are not grey.
Violet · shadow
· Pushing
60 min · 8′
Neutral greys mixed from complements, not from black
A grey mixed from black and white is a dead colour: it has no hue, so it cannot participate in the light of a picture.
Neutral · complement
· Working
60 min · 8′
A four-tube earth palette for watercolour portraits
Watercolour portraits fail for one reason more than any other: the painter tries to blend.
Ochre · earth-triad
· Pushing
65 min · 8′
Four sky mixes, judged dry
Sky is the passage where pigment load matters more than pigment choice.
Cobalt · graded
· First sheet
45 min · 8′
Greens that stay clean: a twenty-one square mixing study
Green is the colour people most often describe as 'hard' in watercolour, and the reason is almost always the same: the yellow or the blue they are using is a convenience mixture that already contains the third colour.
Sap green · mixing-study
· Working
70 min · 8′
Warm split-primary for interiors and still life
Interior painting lives or dies on whether shadows stay chromatic.
Vermilion · split-primary
· Working
55 min · 8′
Cool split-primary: a landscape palette built on three cool pigments
Most landscape palettes are warm-heavy because warm greens are easy to mix and easy to like.
Cerulean · split-primary
· First sheet
55 min · 8′
Yellow ochre, burnt sienna, Venetian red: three tubes that cover half of painting
These three earths were the entire palette of European oil painting for two centuries, and they still do more work than any other group in watercolour.
Burnt sienna · earth-trio
· First sheet
50 min · 8′
A three-pigment triad that actually mixes cleanly
Most palette advice lists twelve colours and calls it a limited palette.
Ultramarine · triad
· First sheet
60 min · 8′