My Personal Palette

I am taking Carmen Torbus' online workshop, Spill It! One of the first things she asked us to do was to determine our personal palette. She tends to paint with the same few colors over and over -- colors she absolutely loves, her personal palette. She asks us to find the colors that we love and to paint with them, instead of the colors she uses. She recommends two or three transparent colors and then another two or three other colors that we just love.

I'm funny when it comes to color. In my closet are mostly the cool colors that I look best in -- pinks, blues, purples. And, in fact, purple is my favorite single color and pink, orange and yellow is my current favorite color combination. When it comes to flowers, I tend to lean toward the warm, vibrant colors of autumn. I love the mums that brighten our gardens this time of year. I love fall leaves, with their reds and goldens. Really, I just love color, and at any given time, just about any color can speak to me. There are very few ugly colors!

So, how to narrow down a universe of color into four to six bottles of paint? And, how to do this without spending a fortune buying new paint?

I finally decided to limit myself to paints on hand -- after all, I'm bound to like the colors I already own, right? I looked at my bottles; I took them out of their clear plastic shoe box and started lining them up and arranging them. I wasn't completely satisfied with the process, so I decided to make my own paint chips! I cut a few sheets of 110 lb. acrylic paper into squares and proceeded to cover each square with a single color.

After they dried thoroughly, I labeled them with brand and color information. When I was all done, I put my paints away and laid out my paint squares so that I could see all my colors. Some of them got eliminated immediately -- all the whites, blacks, iridescents, and interference colors. Next went the browns and an odd flat light pink that didn't seem to go with anything else.

I started moving the remaining several squares around, noticing how certain colors looked next to each other. I consulted the Golden's Transparency Chart. I finally ended up with the six colors that will make up my personal palette during the workshop.

They are all Golden products (although I do own a few Liquitex paints). The colors of my personal palette are: Nickel Azo Yellow, Transparent Red Iron Oxide, Alizarin Crimsom Hue, Permanent Violet Dark, Turquois (Phthalo) and Cobalt Turquois.

I can't wait to start painting!