I would really like to improve my watercolor mixing. To that end, i took Kateri Ewing's Craftsy class: Improve Your Paintings with Luminous Watercolor Mixing. I liked this class and learned a lot about my paints, pigments, and how to avoid muddy colors. Kateri focuses on a traditional split primary palette with single pigment paints and making watercolor charts.

The number of potential mixes you can make with a split primary palette is great (and mind boggling when you keep adding to your watercolor mixing charts with each new color) and adding convenience colors has helped me sketch quickly (one of my goals) but has led to some over reliance on these convenience greens, browns and earth colors.

So, I thought I would try an even more limited palette suggested by Jane Blundell, who has a fabulous blog that features tons of helpful information on watercolor paint brands, colors, comparisons, and palettes.

Jane suggests a lovely limited palette of just 6 Daniel Smith colors for people just starting in watercolor and she also provides 6 additional colors to add in with some other interesting options to make your palette your own. The six basic colors in her limited palette are: Hansa Yellow Medium, Quinacridone Gold, Carmine, Phthalo Green (BS), and Burnt Sienna. Here is my version of her excellent watercolor mixing illustration:

I painted this Sktchy portrait using just these 6 colors.

But, today, I decided to add in the additional 6 colors Jane recommends - adding in Buff Titanium (great for skin tones and buildings, etc.), Cerulean Blue Chrm. (essential for skies), Phthalo Blue (RS), Transparent Pyrrol Orange, Goethite - Brown Ochre, and Raw Umber. All by Daniel Smith.

But, since I plan to go out sketching this evening with some friends at the Lafayette Art & Wine Festival, I decided to resist going back to my 24 half pans in my usual metal tin and, instead, transferred my half pans to an Altoid tin in which I can fit 3 more colors - Quinacridone Rose, Monte Amiata Natural Sienna, and Jane's Gray (a premix of 50/50 Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna).

I will try this palette out tonight and let you know how it works out for me! In he meantime, here is my figure in action for today 17/50 that I painted with this 15 color palette.

I found the Phthalo Green is really helpful for mixing with Hansa Yellow Medium, Quinacridone Gold, Burnt Sienna, Monte Amiata, and Goethite to make a huge range of greens that I used in this piece.

What are your experiences with using a limited palette?