Limited Palette

[Paul Foxton]

Originally Posted by Allan Rahbek

stays bright in mixtures

I see what you mean, I don't know how good my monitor is (I suspect not very,) but the golden ochre looks like the only one to have kept it's warmth after mixing with white.

Originally Posted by Sharon Knettell

One of the reasons I like his paint is it doesn't suede as badly

Now that's interesting - I take it you mean that effect of different brush stroke directions catching the light and looking like a mowed lawn? That's been bothering me lately on a couple of dark backrounds. I'm hoping to get into London next Saturday and get some - I'll let you know how I get on.

That's very interesting about Monet's palette. Especially the vermilion, to me anyway. Yesterday I was trying to match the colour of a tomato with alizarin and cadmium yellow light, and it was a bit of a battle. I almost broke down and got a brighter red out but I stuck with it and it didn't come out too bad. I suspect any colour shortcomings are much more down to me than to my paint right now

Richard, I didn't quite get the headroom part, but this:

Originally Posted by Richard Bingham

A painter might work for months using only raw siena, ultramarine and white and never quite plumb all the possibilities . . .

makes a lot of sense to me. Even with just my five colours I get a bit bewildered by the range available, and I'm at least partly aware of how little of it I've mapped. Every time I use them I find something else I can do with them, but what surprises me the most is how close I can get to colours in nature with just those five. Like I said earlier I tend to think that if I'm having trouble getting a colour right, it's because I just haven't the necessary experience yet to get it.