Color, Color, Color Everywhere! Color Confessions of a Traveling Artist, Part II
OK, this is the part I agonize over even more than the choice which palette to take on my travels (see part I). There are only an limited amount of watercolor wells on any given palette. So which lucky colors will get to go with me to France?
First I start with a warm and a cool of each of the primary colors. Here are my thoughts, starting with the yellows. Hansa yellow medium, of course, because it is a cool yellow and plays well with cobalt and cerulean blue for great greens. It replaced Aureolin on my palette years ago because it is not fugitive. My warm yellow of choice is always New Gamboge. My cool red is Permanent Rose and the cool blue is Cerulean. My warm red is Winsor Red and the cool blue is Winsor or Phthalo blue. Here I run into my first delimma – should I include French Ultramarine or not. It is suppose to be the warmest of all the blues which intrigues me but I think it looks a lot like cobalt blue. It does make great darks but then so does Phthalo blue. It has bounced back a forth from being on my palette and then getting ousted. Sad day for French Ultramarine Blue – it stays behind!
Which colors are always on your palette? If you were stranded on an island, which colors would you absolutely have to have? These are the six that I could not live without!