I swatched out all my gouache tubes this weekend (a great low stakes low light activity for riding out a migraine) and then used my newly organized info to put together a limited palette.

I keep thinking I’m going to do more urban sketching, more plein air, than i really make to get to, but whether this palette leaves my house much or not, I’m excited to challenge myself to stretch seven paints as far as i can.

The colours:

• permanent white, Winsor & Newton
• permanent yellow, Holbein
• permanent yellow orange, Holbein
• opera, Holbein
• perylene violet, Winsor & Newton
• ultramarine blue, M. Graham
• cascade green, Winsor & Newton

I poured them into full pans and dropped in a little bit of glycerine to help them rewet better after they dry out between painting sessions. That said, the perylene violet and the opera paints are absolutely nightmarishly un-rewettable sometimes, so they both got double the glycerine that the other colours got.

A traditional six colour palette has a warm and a cool red, yellow and blue paint; for this one, i pushed that framework a bit. Quite a bit maybe. For one, there’s no red, and I’m counting that orange as a yellow, and cascade green is my cool blue. But you can mix a pretty saturated red with magenta and orange, and cascade green mixes gorgeous purples despite the green in its name.

I suspect it’s going to feel like a warm palette overall with some very cold greens, and I’m excited to stretch it to its limits and see what i get 🤘