The colour palette you choose for a painting is an issue that I have wrestled with for some time. I am not talking about the plastic sort that you mix your paint in but the personal choice of colours in a painting. I have just completed a flower painting where I don't think my choice of palette has worked. The problem with it, I think, is that the colours are a bit one dimensional, i.e. I don't think I have addressed the warm/cool balance correctly. I know there are no rules about this, but there is something about the colours in a painting that can look completely right or horribly wrong. When you look at what is lacking with a painting from a colour perspective it is so often that a painting is too cool or too warm and lacks that push and pull of colour interest and surprise. Sometimes artists set out to make a really hot painting or really cool one, or even stick to one colour, and this can work spectacularly well, but it does take real skill to pull it off - a skill I definitely haven't got as yet. Some artists (quite a few on the POL gallery actually) seem to have an inherent sense of colour and their paintings always appear balanced and have that excitement that comes from the play of one colour against another. I don't find I have that innate instinct at all and it is the one area that I constantly come unstuck in my paintings. I make more mistakes with my colour choices than with anything else. If I have to correct anything, it is that. If you paint very literally then the colour choices are made for you - you just paint exactly what is in front of your nose. However, if, like me, you favour the less literal interpretation of a subject, it does get a lot harder. I try and tweak and change the colours I see in front of me and that is where the trouble starts. They always say that you can't improve on nature, but you can as long as you make the right decisions. I haven't worked out yet how I progress on this one because it doesn't appear to be something that you can learn from a formula. It does seem to involve just having a feeling for it and I am still searching in myself for that feeling. People go on about composition, drawing skills, painting skills and trying to improve all of these. Very little ever seems to be said about choice of colour palette but in my opinion it is of paramount importance in producing a successful painting. I wish I was Shirley Trevena, as she is a genius at it!