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Art Technique

Colour Mixing: Colourist Painting with Three Colour Palettes

Published: 20th August 2021 by Lisa Takahashi  |  Last updated: 25th September 2024
Comments: 18

When you explore a new and unfamiliar limited palette through colour mixing and then use your mixes in a painting, the emotional impact of this interpretive approach to colour will become evident. You’ll also see that there is never just one way to paint a flower.

Below is a presentation of four different three colour palettes to try, along with some tips on how to tackle some of the more common challenges faced when moving away from literal colour. These palettes have the potential for colour harmonies that can create an immediate sense of mood in a painting, and allow you to enjoy those unique qualities that only fine art paints can offer.


 

Three Colour Palettes

The Cosmos flowers I chose to paint for these palette exercises. If you decide to try these exercises, you can choose any subject you wish, it doesn’t have to be plantlife.

 

Colourist Painting with Three Colour Palettes

Triadic or Three Colour Palettes

In painting, using a triadic three colour palette means working with three colours that you will find equidistant from one another on a colour wheel. Such a palette will allow you to mix a wide range of colours, both warm and cool. Below you’ll find three triadic palettes – two of them consist of variations of the primaries of red, yellow and blue, while the other is a secondary palette of green, violet and orange. One final blue monochromatic palette shows another approach to colour that will allow you to harness its more interpretive potential.

 

Three Colour Palettes

 

Palette No.1: The Primary Palette

The colours of this palette – Cadmium Yellow Genuine, Cadmium Red Hue and Cerulean Blue Hue – can be seen as they appear from the tube in the squares that descend diagonally from top left to bottom right in the chart at the top of the image. The rest of the table shows mixes possible when combining two colours from this palette, including Titanium White as an additional colour. This is a bright palette capable of a very wide range of mixes. A closer look at Primary palettes is taken in the article The Versatility of a Six Colour Primary Palette.

 

Tip: What to Do When It’s Not Possible to Match Vibrant Colours

When painting flowers as bright as these Cosmos using a limited palette, a challenge can lie in the fact you may not be able to accurately mix the colour of the flower. These limited palettes are not about colour matching or colour accuracy, but rather they’re to help achieve colourism and colour harmony. You may find it helpful to photograph your subject and put it through a black and white filter to begin with, so that you pay closest attention to tone, and try to match the value of your colour mixes to what you see in your photo. For my sketch I deliberately painted the flowers much less colour-saturated than the reality, and focussed on how to achieve the right colour contrasts between the foliage and the flowers. There are of course many approaches with any one palette, you might prefer to celebrate the brightness of the flowers by using the pure Cadmium Red to render them, as this would create more of a visual punch, with the leafy greens surrounding.

 

Three Colour Palettes

 

Palette No.2: The Earth Primary Palette

This Earth Primary Palette  consists of Yellow Ochre, Venetian Red and French Ultramarine. From their tubes these colours are more subdued than the colours of the first palette. You might feel that this palette on first look would not be capable of a colourful painting, but with plenty of mixing and plenty of white, this palette hold a lot of potential, and personally, I preferred working with these colours. The mixes are more naturalistic and have an appealing sense of warmth about them.

 

Tip: The Importance of Tonal Range

Although we are looking primarily at colour, I cannot stress enough that the one tube that I kept reaching for throughout these exercises was Titanium White. Using a lot of white in your colour mixing will allow you to see the full potential of a palette, and the beautiful light pastel colours that can be created. These will contrast strikingly with the transparent mid and dark tones possible when mixing the colours without white. This will help to keep a painting dynamic and contribute to pictorial depth. Colour temperature is another useful tool here – warm colours tend to come forward while cool colours tend to recede. Although subtle, this is used to bring the flowers in front of their foliage in the sketch.

 

 

Palette No. 3: The Complementary Palette

This Complementary Palette consists of Cadmium Orange, Oxide of Chromium, and Ultramarine Violet. The palette is well balanced but comprises strong opaque colours which can take some getting used to, which you can do most easily with more and more colour mixing! It can be daunting to paint a picture of bright magenta flowers without any pink. However with this palette, it is possible to mix colours that appear pinkish when placed alongside muted, receding greens. Here I used orange mixed with a lot of white and combined it with strokes of violet also mixed with a lot of white, and while the flower on the right feels the most pink, I have contrasted it with the flower on the left which, although is less pink, has more of the brightness of the original subject matter.

 

Tip: Use a Number of Different Size Brushes

Capturing rhythm and movement is a driving force in my work, and is reflected in the loose, quick brush marks I like to employ in my painting. Because these are quick sketches I only used a couple of brushes, but I would advise for more finished works to use a range of at least four brushes, a couple of very fine, some broader, and some much bigger, as this will allow you to make a wide variety of marks. This advice applies to all approaches to painting, including those which are made more slowly and with more precision. A number of brushes will also help you to keep your colour mixes clean and unmuddied – if you can allocate a brush to each colour group it can really help you to achieve a luminous finished painting.

 

Three Colour Palettes

 

Palette No.4: The Blue Monochrome Palette

Although not strictly a monochrome palette, this palette of Titanium White, Cobalt Blue and Paynes Grey will allow you to focus on tone, without removing colour entirely. Looking at colour alone can be a great way to step away from being a slave to literal colour. You could begin with working simply with black and white, in order to place lights, shades of grey and black where you see those tonal values in your subject. By adding one colour – in this instance blue – you will inevitably introduce a colourist element to your palette. Had I used Ivory Black, which is a warmer black, I would have been able to mix it with lots of white and have some presence of a warmer hue in this palette, but because Paynes Grey is a bluey-black, the resulting sketch is very cool in temperature.

 

Tip: Exaggerating Tonal Contrast When Colour Contrast is Not Possible

If you look to replicate the tonal values of your subject and end up with a sketch that is too grey, not dynamic enough, and a little flat, there’s nothing to stop you from turning up the volume a little. Try adding darker darks and lighter lights to exagerrate the tonal range. Without the contrasts in colour temperature you might need to do this to achieve the drama you seek in your work. Here I did this by adding a black outline in places on some of the Cosmos petals. Without these the petals got a little lost in the foliage.

 

These three colour palettes are a great experiment to try if you want to approach colour in a different way. If you try all the palettes suggested above and create charts and a little study (it doesn’t have to be flowers!) you can see the mood and possibilities of each. Subject matter is often the point of inspiration – a landscape, flower, object or face can inspire you to pick up a paintbrush. But without a clear idea of why it inspired you, or how you want to interpret the subject, motivation can often escape before the painting is finished. Playing with ways of interpreting a scene can allow you to take ownership of the subject, see it in a new light, and inject more creativity into your process. The result? The ability to create paintings with luminous colour harmonies and a process imbued with a clearer sense of intention.

For this article I used Jackson’s Artist Acrylic Paint on Bockingford NOT surface watercolour paper.

 


 

Further Reading

The Unexpected History of Payne’s Grey

In Conversation with Pete Cole of Gamblin

Tips for Watercolour Glazing

Colour Mixing: Warm Colour Palettes for Painting in Autumn

 

Shop Acrylic Paint on jacksonsart.com

 

TAGS colour mixingColour Mixing SeriesJackson's Acrylic
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Lisa Takahashi

Lisa Takahashi has been a contributor to the blog since 2013 and a Jackson's team member since 2006. Her love of art materials spans oils, watercolours, acrylics and relief print techniques. Alongside her writing she regularly exhibits her artwork, and teaches linocut and painting in Bristol and Somerset.

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Comments
  • Lee Belcher 24 August 2021 at 11:10 am

    What a great article! Thank you very much for this interesting excercise.

    • Lisa Takahashi 24 August 2021 at 1:15 pm

      Thank you so much Lee!

  • Mary Kreider 24 August 2021 at 7:18 pm

    I’ve been struggling with how to choose
    colors that don’t just portray the subject
    but also create harmony. This article is
    very helpful. Thank you!

    • Lisa Takahashi 24 August 2021 at 11:23 pm

      Thank you Mary, I’m glad you found this helpful.

  • Mary 24 August 2021 at 8:24 pm

    Please reword your placement of the
    colors you chose on the charts. They do
    not seem to be placed from top right
    diagonally down to bottom left. Thanks!

    • Lisa Takahashi 24 August 2021 at 11:23 pm

      Thank you Mary for your request, and I apologise for the error which has now been amended.

  • Marco Cresci 24 August 2021 at 8:45 pm

    It is a wonderful present to learn about
    such an important subject in a five
    minutes reading. Thank you!

    • Lisa Takahashi 24 August 2021 at 11:23 pm

      Thank you for your kind comment!

  • Lynn Hart 25 August 2021 at 7:31 pm

    I found this article very interesting. I
    would love to explore more about the
    use of colour to portray different moods
    and atmospheres in my art. I am using
    soft pastels at present. Can you
    recommend any reading or online
    tutorials to help?

    • Lisa Takahashi 31 August 2021 at 3:03 pm

      Hi Lynn,

      Thanks for your question! You can see our full Colour Mixing series here: https://www.jacksonsart.com/blog/?s=colour+mixing – The principles of which will partly apply to pastel painting. Otherwise this DVD may be of interest – https://www.jacksonsart.com/dvd-mood-and-atmosphere-in-pastel-barry-watkin

      These colour theory books may be of use as well: https://www.jacksonsart.com/search/?q=colour+theory+book

      Many thanks
      Lisa

  • Irene burns 28 August 2021 at 4:04 pm

    I love these palette exercises and find
    the combinations endlessness
    fascinating. Your explanations and
    comments are also very instructive and
    clear to understand. Thank you Lisa

    • Lisa Takahashi 31 August 2021 at 2:57 pm

      Thank you Irene!

  • Linda Shepard 28 August 2021 at 7:00 pm

    This article was eye-opening – and inspiring.
    Many thanks!

    • Lisa Takahashi 31 August 2021 at 2:56 pm

      Hi Linda, thank you so much, I’m glad you found it so!

      Best wishes
      Lisa

  • Suhail Mitoubsi 30 August 2021 at 6:03 pm

    This is a great article about colours. I’m fascinated by the emotional power of colours and their effect on our mood. The subject of colours, tones and shades is quite interesting and the more you understand colours the better you can make use of them for a more effective impact. Thank you for sharing the article.

    • Lisa Takahashi 31 August 2021 at 2:52 pm

      Thank you so much Suhail!

  • Ruth Coales 3 September 2021 at 8:11 am

    Hi I have only recently started to paint . I
    am using watercolour and love it. I found
    this article really interesting and can’t
    wait to try it. Thank you Lisa

    • Lisa Takahashi 6 September 2021 at 1:13 pm

      Hi Ruth,

      Thank you! I’m so pleased you found the article helpful.

      Best wishes
      Lisa

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