Eilean Donan Castle, watercolour, (25x33cm)

Peter Cronin advises using a limited palette for watercolour landscapes and ‘palette muck’ colours to achieve atmospheric grey tones.

Understanding colour

Some painters see paint as colour and they will paint predominantly with high chroma, pure colours. We see this a lot in abstract painting and in ‘colourist’ landscape painters.

I can vividly remember when, as a novice, taking my shiny new paints outdoors, looking at the landscape before me and thinking ‘how on earth do I get these to say that’. Truth be told, I couldn't; there was nothing in my palette that resembled the colours and hues around me.

As I gained more experience, I learned to knock a colour back by adding its opposite – orange for blue, green for red, and so on – and thus greying the colour ever so slightly. I will also use some of the residue left around the palette (palette muck) to do the same job.

Basic colours for painting landscapes

Floodwater Wentlog Levels, watercolour, (25x33cm)

A palette of cerulean blue, cadmium red and raw sienna produced this hazy, lazy scene. Note the use of all three colours, in a pure state, around the focal area. The darks for the trees, etc, was produced by mixing all three colours.

Although after many years I have ended up with a palette of approximately 12 colours, in any one painting I will probably use five maximum and often even less.

Every artist has two or three colours that are their standard, workhorse colours – mine are ultramarine blue, burnt sienna, raw sienna, lemon yellow and ultramarine violet.

The other seven colours in my palette are what I call ‘guest colours’, and they are used as required. For example, I use burnt umber in the winter and Hooker’s green in the summer. I use Naples yellow in the Cotswolds and a lot of cobalt violet, too.

These guest colours complement or occasionally replace colours in my main palette, but in this article I wish to discuss what happens if you restrict your palette to two or maybe three colours.

What is a limited palette?

Evening, Dinas Head, watercolour, (24x24cm)

Cobalt blue, cadmium red and lemon yellow were the three colours used in this evening scene. The three-colour mix for the mud and headlands was warmed or cooled by the addition of cadmium red or cobalt blue as required.

Although, when compared with some artists’ palettes, mine may already appear fairly limited, there are times when I make a conscious decision to limit it still further.

The individual colours used for a limited palette will vary with each artist but will almost invariably revolve around the three primaries of red, yellow and blue. My default choices, as previously mentioned, will be ultramarine blue, burnt sienna and raw sienna. It is, however, the mood to be portrayed that will ultimately dictate the choice and sometimes only two colours may be used.

 For a cold frosty morning I may only use cerulean blue and cadmium orange for virtually the whole painting. At other times I have even painted the bulk of the painting with palette muck (mixtures of the left-over paint on my palette).

It is worth bearing in mind that pencil drawing can be thought of as an extremely limited palette; so for those of us that sketch regularly the use of a limited palette should not be too difficult.

Wyndham Vale, watercolour, (24x24cm)

This is an example of what I would call a ‘palette muck’ painting, and all the big washes were painted with the lovely grey mess that I discovered under the removable colour tray in my palette. It does not produce a muddy result as long as you keep the layers down and apply the washes in a wet and deft manner.

Why use a limited palette?

Most novices use too many colours in too pure a state, and work produced in this manner may look rather gaudy in appearance. Reigning in the colour enables us to concentrate on two other very important facets of picture making: tone and edges.

A limited palette also dramatically increases the mood and atmospheres that you are able to portray in your work and, if you do use any strong colour, it will speak far louder than if it were surrounded by a riot of other colours.

How to create different moods for landscape paintings

Storm Sky over Oil Seed Rape, watercolour, (40x31cm)

Sitting on the step of the campervan with these dramatic skies rolling past, I just had to chance my luck with the paints. Ultramarine blue, burnt sienna and lemon yellow did the trick – and it did not rain!

To create different moods we simply need to observe and replicate what happens in certain weather conditions.

The effect of looking into the sun contre-jour, sunsets, rain, mist and snow can all be painted more convincingly with a limited palette.

A painting can be warm or cool depending on the dominant colour we choose – try a painting with orange as the dominant colour and then re-paint the same scene using blue with all your mixes.

A contre-jour sunlit scene and rain scene can both be painted using a predominantly blue palette (with red as a mixer), but the sunlit scene will have lots of high-contrast light to dark areas with harder edges, whilst the rain scene will be closer toned with predominantly soft edges.

How to paint with a limited palette

The act of painting with a limited palette is technically no different to painting with full colour. We still need to plan from light to dark, use as few layers as possible and apply the washes in a wet, clean manner.

I will use the same general thinking processes such as: what areas of the palette (colours) am I to use? Where is my darkest dark and lightest light? What order shall I lay the washes in, and so on?

In many ways I find limited palette scenes easier to paint as you can concentrate on tone and edges.

Demonstration: Eilean Donan Castle

Reference photo

The photograph already quite limited in colour, which is a good starting point. My intention in the painting was to achieve light on the sky and water, so I needed a simple tonal scene with clean, crisp washes.