Watercolour tips – choosing the right colours

For this tip we're going to look at colour. How do we decide what colours to use in a painting, out of the huge range of different paints available from any manufacturer?

Simple: As always, simplicity is the keynote. I'm a great fan of the so-called limited palette, in other words reducing the number of different colours used to a minimum. If we keep to just a few colours, and obtain variations by mixing, the painting will be bound to have a feeling of harmony within it. Also, by reducing the number of colours used we can move away from merely copying the colours we see and create something more atmospheric. We can give an impression of the scene and what we feel about it.

Lastly, using a limited palette makes life easier for us as artists. For example, if we are only using one blue in a painting, then any green will contain that blue plus a yellow. We may be using more than one yellow to give a wide range of greens, but there will be no confusion about our starting point because we're limiting ourselves to one blue.

Windmill: Here's a typical Norfolk landscape, the windmill at Burnham Overy, which I've painted using a limited palette of just four colours. The blue which is used throughout is Ultramarine Blue.The greens are obtained by mixing Ultramarine with Raw Sienna for the muted greens, and Cadmium Yellow Pale for the brighter greens. By varying the proportions of Ultramarine to the yellow used, a vast range of different shades of green can be easily obtained. On the windmill itself, the tiled roofs are Burnt Sienna with a touch of Raw Sienna, while the same Burnt Sienna mixed with Ultramarine gives the dark greys used for the tower of the mill and the shadows.

It's quite a colourful looking painting, but by carefully selecting the colours for my palette I was able to achieve a wide variety of hues by simple colour mixing. You could paint almost any landscape using just those four colours, but there are also many other combinations that you could try. You can learn more about colour mixing here. 

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