Go To Palette for animals

Some of you may have noticed that I’ve been playing with some new colors. I’ve found that I’ve been using the same Daniel Smith colors quite a bit when painting my daily postcards for the lunch bag.

But I wasn’t entirely happy with my choices. So I decided to try some other colors. A few I already had and just hadn’t used for a while. Some came from a new palette set I just bought (the Pacific Northwest set, curated by Molly Hashimoto and available at Art-Toolkit.com.

I don’t expect to keep all of these as my daily go-to colors, and I may add others.

Note the lack of reds. This isn’t the palette I’d use for flowers or birds. It’s pretty much meant to be the one I use for my animal paintings.

My chart looks a bit rough. That’s because I wanted it to show the colors as I would use them. I lifted color in areas, layered with glazes and did many of the things I’m not supposed to, lol.

In the past, I’ve mixed my browns, but having fallen in love with Piemontite Genuine, I decided to add Hematite Burnt Scarlet Genuine. It’s lighter and oh! It granulates so beautifully. What I’m finding is that it’s a lovely base color, especially allowed to blend into the Nickel Titanate Yellow, Naples Yellow or Monte Amiata. When I’m trying to get that ticked fur color, the granulation sort of does it naturally.

So here’s what I’m playing with at the moment.

•  Hansa Yellow Medium
• Nickel Titanate Yellow
•  Naples Yellow
• Monte Amiata Natural Sienna
• Aussie Red Gold
• Quinacridone Burnt Orange
• Sedona Genuine
• Hematite Burnt Scarlet Genuine
• Piemontite Genuine
• Moonglow
• Carbazole Violet
• Rose of Ultramarine
• Wisteria
• Lavender
• Cobalt Blue
• French Ultramarine
• Phthalo Blue Red Shade
• Sodalite Genuine
• Undersea Green
• Perylene Green 
• Serpentine Genuine
• Amazonite Genuine
• Fuchsite Genuine
• Permanent Alizarin Crimson