Limited palette art

Every Sunday I’ve been sharing some thoughts about color, and today I want to touch on limited palettes. When we were in grade school we all...

Mix it up with the color palette, try the 60/30/10 rule. Y0% one color, 30% another, 10% of the last. Or try 70/30, if you want to keep it more limited

When I first heard the term ‘limited palette’ I thought it meant that a painting had a limited number of colours in it. Actually that’s not strictly true (here comes an embarrassing confession) when I first heard the term ‘limited palette’ I thought it meant that you used a small palette—as in ‘physically’ small. I looked at my kiddie-sized plastic tray and thought “Limited palette? Yup! Nailed it!” But my joy was short lived. I soon discovered that ...

by TJ Cunningham“Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.”Claude Monet Eleven years ago, I was beginning my young career as a professional artist. Having just graduated from college, I had spent the last four years surrounded by my classmates and teachers. Suddenly, I felt like I had been launched into outer space. Until that point, I had focused solely on drawing correctly, but I slowly realized that all of my paintings had a greyish-brown tint to them. Despite having at least 12…

By Adriana Guidi in Art Tutorials > Painting Tutorials When you’re first taught to paint with a limited palette, you’re usually given three primary colors—red, yellow and blue. Limiting yourself to just a few colors teaches you how to mix colors correctly, see value and temperature, and encourages thought and planning in your color choices. Today we’ll discuss a different limited palette, one that was made famous by Swedish painter Anders Leonard Zorn, which is often known as the Zorn…

79K views · 6.4K likes | Nigel Sutcliffe on Instagram: "How to choose colors for a limited palette. Here is an additional reel to answer some of the questions from my last reel that went viral! I tried to keep this as simple as possible, I hope it helps other painters out there. It's hard to condense something like this into 45 seconds. Yes you can use 2 colors, or more than 3, and the shape doesn't have to be a triangle. Experiment and see what you can come up with! Have fun. For a more…

Guest writer and artist, Julie Petro, shares with us her tips to mastering a limited palette using color scales. Limited palettes are a great way to learn and practice many fundamental aspects of painting. Yellow ochre, cadmium red, ivory black and white are known as the Zorn Palette and were used by the Swedish artist Anders Zorn when he first began to paint in oils. I painted this portrait called Maria’s Heart using only these four colors. It shows the rich flesh tones possible with this…

Color Grouping

Using less colours means you are spending less money but you will paint more when you see the results. The goal of a limited palette is to gain more control and get rid of the frustration and confusion.