How to create subtle color palette in watercolor? In this short video lesson you’ll learn more about my thinking process in regard to the color palette I selected for this painting.
The first consideration when working with color in any painting is determining the dominant color temperature. Is my painting going to be predominantly cool, warm or neutral?
Once decided, I start establishing the more intense shapes, in this case my roof shapes. These are warm red and they are light middle value. Once that’s done I neutralize the rest of the warm washes somewhat so that the roofs are the brightest in the painting. I paint the rest of my middle values with this neutralized mixture – the shadow shapes, ground shape, even sky shape. This established a very distinct, warm feel to the painting, while most certainly achieving a warm dominant painting.
But dominance doesn’t work without a contrasting counterpart. In this case I use subtle greens in order to introduce contrast. Red and green are complementary colors. I don’t use intense greens though because that would result in a very garish look and it would break up the subtlety of my warm colors. Instead, I use fairly neutral greens that fit well into this painting. Among the “sea” of reds they will read clearly as greens, there’s no doubt about that.
Use subtle changes when establishing a dominant hue/temperature. Variety is the spice of life and it is true in painting as well. First, decide on your dominant temperature, vary it slightly and then introduce some contrasting (cool) colors.
