A Fresh New Limited Palette (From the 1800s)

I love a limited palette. I love drawing something in water soluble ink and then coaxing a mid tone and deep tone out of it with a water brush. I love painting with just shadows. I love painting the sea and the sky with just the white of the paper, a warm blue, and a green blue. I love mixing the green of a potted plant and the terra cotta of its pot from yellow, cyan, and magenta. This basically is because I can't work all the colors at one time.

When I try and match each bit of a scene to the right thing in my paint box, the result looks artificial at best, jarring at worst. (A great tip when you've completed a painting and this happens, is to grab a little bit of one of the main colors and find somewhere to dab or smear it into the other main color. This makes it more cohesive immediately.)

 My plan to get to where I can use all the stunning colors that look so beautiful in a swatch (they make watercolors out of gemstones now!), is to learn a new to me limited palette. This has been on the to do list since summer, so 6 months, including 4 months that I took off to work on my art. Thanks to the COVID-19 quarantine, I am not only off work, but also off the gym(s), off traffic, off visiting friends and family, off shopping. I am using some of that time to learn the Zorn Palette.

I plan to work in all genres. The palette is most suited to portraits but I prefer to work from life and have no model aside from myself.