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Suggestions for a limited palette

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Oliver

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Well hello there my fellow paint splattered paintbrush pushers! I'm after your suggestions for the colours I could use on a limited palette for a piece I'm putting together. I'm thinking of doing a portrait in a brown based palette, but I am not used to working with a palette of a few colours. I'm a motorsport artist and as such don't have much call to use one, what with all the garish colour schemes blasting around the tracks. Here's a sample of my work, would you guess I'm colour-blind!?

Keith Orange

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Burnt sienna Yellow ochre or raw sienna Ultramarine blue Cadmium red Mixing white Start by painting a thin undercoat with well diluted burnt sienna. It should be a pale biscuit colour. Paint the structure of the head with burnt sienna and then fill in the shadows with it. Add a bit of white to show the lightest areas of the face. At this stage the painting will resemble a traditional pastel portrait in muted red/browns and white. Then use the other colours for the subtle colour changes in the face, for example ultra and burnt sienna for the deep shadows, The ears, cheeks and nose tend to be redder because the blood vessels are nearer the surface. The forehead can sometimes have a hint of yellow especially in men. This is a useful book on portrait painting : http://www.amazon.co.uk/Painting-Portraits-Anthony-Connolly/dp/1847972640 I must admit that portrait painting is extremely difficult to do well. The painting of the car is very good, but where's Richard Hammond and Captain Slow?

Edited
by keora

Oliver

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Thank you very much for your help. I'm used to painting, well mainly drawing portraits so feel comfortable with their pitfalls. Cheers for the comment on my painting and as for May and Hammond, I'm glad you didn't mention the lumbering oaf that is Clarkson. I can't stand the man and unfortunately we are related. Although in Pencil, this is an example of a portrait I've done. Not exactly how I like to compose my work, but this was a request to be used in some marketing work.
With Sarah, Phil, Ellen, Rose the dentist, and the granddaughter whose name I forget.

Robert Jones, Napa

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The Willcox palette is generally good for teaching purposes and offers a good limited palette too - it consists of white (obviously), plus Burnt Sienna Cadmium Red Quinacridone Violet, aka Permanent Rose Raw Sienna Yellow Ochre Cadmium Yellow Lemon (Hansa) Yellow Pthalo Green Pthalo Blue Cerulean Blue Ultramarine You might use any, all, or a few of those colours in a portrait - if you use Burnt Sienna it's likely to tend to brown: mixing it with a green or deeper blue will give you a range of darks, the brighter colours - cadmiums, Lemon, with white - on top. There are many ways to skin a cat..........

Keith Orange

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You could simplify your portrait palette even more and just use four colours - black, red, yellow ochre and white. It's usually called a Zorn palette. http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/zorn-palette.html When starting portrait painting it's better to use just a few colours for skin and hair. It gets too complicated if you have a bigger range of colours.

AnonymousUser-9 AnonymousUser-9

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I only ever use a red, a blue and a yellow plus a black and a white. The closer these are to 'pure' colour, the better the mixes obtained but you can use any variant of red, blue and yellow.

Amanda Bates

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Very nice car, oh numbered one. And no, I wouldn't guess you were colour blind. The nice thing about portaiture is that it works in almost any colour, although there are some colours or colour combinations that are a bit queasy. I quite like all-the-earth-colours-I-can-find plus viridian (and white, if oil or acrylic, but that was a watercolour discovery). Basically, this is Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre and Viridian. I have made paintings with two blues, two browns and white, but they were seascapes. (Phthalo & Ultramarine, Burnt Umber and Burnt Sienna, with Titanium White).

Edited
by Amanda

Oliver

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Thank you everyone for your suggestions. I decided on a very limited palette of Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna, Raw Sienna, Titanium White and Black (Very sparingly). I don't ever do this normally but here is a progress shot of the painting. I started with a rough freehand sketch (I don't like the whole tracing thing) and just went at it with the painting.