Why I love a limited palette
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 a limited palette means that you use a limited number of paint colours ON your palette (regardless of the size of it) to create a cohesive range of colours in your painting.
Oh well. Every day’s a school day!
There’s a well-known limited palette called the Zorn palette. (Who’d have thought a small collection of paint colours would find fame?) It’s named after the Swedish artist Anders Zorn (1860 - 1920). He squeezed just four colours onto his palette (yellow ochre, cadmium red dark, ivory black and titanium white) to create the remarkable range of colours he used in his extraordinary body of work. And although Anders Zorn is one of Sweden’s best loved artists his palette now seems to have surpassed him in terms of international celebrity status.
Nicholas Wilton’s Creative Visionary Programme introduced me to the Zorn palette—or the Ketchup and Mustard palette as Nick calls it—because that’s exactly what the red and ochre look like squeezed onto the tray!
When first asked to paint with just four colours (or two if you don’t include black and white) I thought I’d feel restricted by being limited to such a small range (the clue’s in the name after all) but in fact the opposite was true. For one thing it felt weirdly liberating NOT to have to decide what colours to choose.
And I loved the challenge it threw up.
‘You want me to paint with just red and ochre?’ (Two colours I’m not even drawn to.)
‘Okay. Let’s just see how many different colours I can make.’
A bit like the reverse psychology my mum used on me as a child to get me to eat pretty much anything.
Mum - ‘You won’t like it. It’s an adult taste.’
3 year old me - ‘Oh really?’ As 3 year old me jams fistfuls of smoked salmon into her mouth with as much of a ‘Just watch me!’ attitude as a 3 year old can muster. Which believe me—is quite a lot.
Or maybe that wasn’t reverse psychology. Maybe in that instance my mum just didn’t want to waste the expensive smoked salmon on a toddler. And who could blame her?
After my initial ‘What no blue?’ reaction to the Ketchup and Mustard (I do love blue) I made a conscious decision to trust Nick’s creative wisdom and embrace the limitations. That was 6 months ago and I’ve been using a limited palette ever since. Admittedly for the last 5 months it's been one of my own choosing, which does include my beloved blue, but all that I learned from first using the Zorn palette still stands.
So here’s why I love it.
One less decision to make
Art-making involves a whole series of decisions. You decide to make a painting? That's the first decision. What do you want to paint? What do you want to convey? What meaning do you want it to have? Oops! There’s three more.
What size will it be? What paint to use? Acrylic, oils, watercolours … ? What substrate? Paper, board, canvas …? Which brushes to use? Which paint colours to choose?
That’s a whole raft of decisions before you’ve even made a mark.
If you’re a natural over-thinker like me (and even if you're not) that’s a lot of opportunities to get stuck in a rabbit hole of decision-making—possibly at times even become almost paralysed with indecision. Now when I last checked, over-thinking, mental paralysis and indecision are a time and energy suck when it comes to creativity—so what can you do to avoid them?
One solution is to make some of those decisions just once—and then use that as a template for a whole series of work. Decide in advance to use the same materials throughout and you can use your creative energy to focus on other decisions instead— such as what you want your work to be about, the composition, or what marks to make.
And that’s where the limited palette comes into its own.
Decide to limit the number of paint colours you start with. And immediately there are less decisions to make.
But there are not just less decisions to make at the outset. As you paint, every blob of colour that ends up on your brush is the result of a whole series of small decisions. What colour do I want? What value do I need? Am I going to go opaque or translucent? Saturated or muted? How much should I mix?
D’you see how it goes?
Decisions. Decisions. Decisions.
So you’ll use a lot less time and creative energy deciding exactly what colour to mix and load onto your brush if you only have 4 colours on your palette to begin with—and not 14.
Natural coherence
The human eye is attracted to contrasts so we’re naturally drawn to the points in a painting where the dark and light areas meet. A flash of vibrant orange will pop when placed next to a pale muted blue. The difference is exciting! But too many contrasts can be exhausting so we also love a bit of harmony. And there’s a simple trick to getting colours to harmonise. If every colour in the painting has within it even a tiny amount of every other colour in the painting—all the colours (even the popping blue and orange) will be in tune.
This is easy to do when you’re working with 4 colours. Bit more of a challenge with 14. (Not that 4 and 14 are the only options—I’ve just used those numbers for illustration purposes.)
Taken a step further—if you do a series of work using the same limited palette—ALL your paintings will have a common bond—each one (no matter how different in other ways) will be part of a coherent whole.
You develop a skill
When you work with just 4 colours consistently over a long period of time you come to know them intimately. I now know exactly how much Cadmium Orange Hue to add to Coeruleum Blue just to take the edge off it. I know how to get back to that specific shade of chromatic grey I used a week ago. Or how to make a deep deep grey blue that sits beautifully beside a pale grey orange. I can look at a white and know how much black, orange and blue it has in it—simply because I have spent months using the same 4 colours. It’s the digging-deep of paint-mixing which in many ways reflects my personality. I have appalling general knowledge but if something really interests me I want to know about it in intimate detail. I’ve done lots of colour theory—at school, various college courses, as part of my design degree—but theory is just that—it’s theory. Having a long immersive intimate relationship with 4 tubes of paint (How weird does that sound?) has taught me far more about how those colours work together than learning colour-mixing terminology, or painting colour wheels, ever would.
It’s saves space and (possibly) money
When you only work with 4 tubes of paint you only need to buy 4 tubes of paint. So rather than investing in a load of paint you may never use—you can invest in a few tubes of the best quality you can afford. (Jeezo. Who am I kidding? I’ve wasted a small fortune building up an impressive collection of Sennelier oil pastels and only ever use two of them! But you get the idea.) If you don’t have acres of studio space this can help make the space you do have work better. I am moving to a lovely little studio in a couple of weeks (Yaaaay exciting stuff!) but with only 4 paints and my kiddie palette I’ve been able to work happily in a small corner of the living room all through lockdown. More paint would have required a bigger palette which would have required a bigger table which would not have fitted between the wall and the fireplace and so if I hadn’t realised that I could make a series of paintings (which I’m darned delighted with) using just 4 colours— I may have given up as soon as lockdown began!
Limitations enhance creativity
We often think of creativity as being about freedom, possibilities, opportunities … that the creative process is enhanced by choice. Yes it’s true that if you let yourself do whatever you want without any limitations you just might create something marvelous—but on the other hand you just might not! You just might flap around not knowing what to do because all that freedom has created too much choice. And too much choice is frankly - too much! (Once again the clue’s in the name)
On the surface freedom, possibilities and opportunities are not problems. But limitations and restrictions are. However, throw a few limitations and restrictions into the creative process and just watch what happens. Whilst your thinking-conscious-mind is wondering what to do your creative-unconscious-mind is coming up with a solution—the well-known proverb ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ sums it up nicely. There’s no doubt that some of us are better at this than others. But the unconscious creative process is like a muscle (apart from the fact that it’s not a muscle) so the more you exercise it the stronger it gets. So your creativity is naturally enhanced by every problem it has to solve.
This means that if the creative process is triggered by limitations you can enhance your creativity by introducing some limitations into your art. There’ll be some limitations there already: time, budget, size - will it fit in the car? But others you can create yourself. Such as limiting yourself to a limited palette. (Limitations, limiting, limited ..? Google is going to think I’ve done some serious keyword stuffing in this article!)
Anyway on to my last point.
Knowing your palette intimately helps to keep you in a state of flow
Ideally we want to be in a state of flow when we paint. It’s that relaxed state of mind which allows the creative-unconscious to take centre stage—and keeps the judgey critical ego at bay. You might think of it as being ‘in the zone’. When we’re in the zone or state of flow we become more intuitive, more imaginative, more joyful, more confident in ourselves and our art. It’s easy to get lost in a world of our own and only realise how much time has passed when we come up for air! When it comes to the creative process— this is a good place to be. But there are times when it’s helpful to shift to a more conscious discerning state. Each time I stand back to look at what I’m working on I want a rational constructive part of me to be there to assess what’s going on. But as I move towards the painting I want that part to exit stage left and allow my creative self to step forward. I want her to be the one with the paint-brush in her hand.
So what has that got to do with a limited palette?
Well ... it’s easy to pop out of the flow state—and any distraction can be the trigger. But if you are fully familiar with the paint on your palette—to the point that you know it like the back of your hand—mixing it is not a distraction—it’s part of the intuitive process. You don’t have to bring your attention away from your painting to wonder about a paint colour or struggle to mix a particular shade of yellow—that part of the process has been taken out of the equation. So even when you're squeezing tubes, wiping brushes and mixing paint you can remain happily and creatively in the zone.
There is however one potential problem with the limited palette. Or rather one problem with having a love affair with just ONE limited palette. It’s all good until the manufacturer (Daler Rowney you know who you are) changes the colour of their Cadmium Orange Hue—even by just a little bit. Cos when they do. Like they just did. Every colour you have come to know and love to blend will disappear and be replaced by a weird pistachio and you’ll reach levels of frustration you didn’t know were possible. So always be prepared to abandon ship and go off and find another love. Much as I love my limited palette I’ve no intention of being gas-lighted by a tube of paint!
If you have a favourite limited palette I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.
Caroline x
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