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There are so many colors. How do you decide what palette (the colors used in a painting) to choose? Many of us tend to use the same colors over and over, and may get tired of using the same palette. A good exercise is to try some limited palettes. What does that mean? It means that you decide ahead of time that you're only going to use certain colors in your painting. This is a very good exercise for learning how to mix paints and to see the variety of colors that can be made from a few different hues.
Using a limited palette also helps to unify and bring balance to your painting. Try painting the same subject in a few different palettes. This will help you see the different emotional impact of the different combinations of colors and will help you decide on a color palette when beginning a painting in the future. You may find that you become more selective about the paints you use based on what you're trying to convey in your painting.
Here are 10 different palettes to try:
1) A landscape palette. This one's obvious. Use the colors that you see in nature. They tend to go together quite harmoniously, since other than flowers and birds, underwater life, and some peak autumn foliage, the colors are a bit neutralized, not bright and saturated. A natural landscape scene often has somewhat neutralized colors punctuated with brighter and more saturated color, depending on the light, the season, and the viewpoint.
2) Warm colors. Use only yellows, oranges, and reds in your composition. Warm colors are perceived as energetic and dramatic.
3) Cool colors. Use only blues, greens, and purples in your composition. Cool colors are perceived as calm and restful.
4) Use a warm and cool of each primary color. Primary colors mix together differently depending on whether the warm or cool color of each hue is used in the mixing. For example, while blue might be normally thought of as a cool color, there are blues that are warmer, and blues that are color. See The Temperature of Blue for more about this. In Color Wheel and Color Mixing I describe how to create a color wheel that mixes the warms and cools of each primary color. This is a very good exercise and is one I've done many times.
See the following combinations in diagrammatic form in the article, Basic techniques for combining colors.
5) Analagous colors. These are colors that are next to each other on the color wheel. For example orange, red-orange, and yellow-orange; or blue, blue-green and blue-purple. This may be similar to using only warm and cool colors depending on the analogous colors you choose.
6) Complementary colors. Complementary colors are those that are opposite each other on the color wheel. Try just using reds and greens, or blues and oranges. See how you can mix the two primary colors to create a variety of neutral hues in addition to using them at full saturation.
7) Split complementary colors. In this color scheme you're using the tertiary colors on either side of a color plus the complement of that color. For example, use blue along with orange-red and yellow-orange. This is a good color scheme for beginners since these colors tend to go well together.
8) Triad. A triadic color scheme uses three colors that create an equilateral triangle, such as the three primary colors, or the three secondary colors, or three tertiary colors. Any of these combinations of colors work together well, as long as one of the colors is dominant within the composition.
9) Rectangle. A rectangular color scheme uses colors in the color wheel that form a rectangle, consisting of two pairs of complementary colors.
10) Square. A square color theme uses colors in the color wheel that form a square when connected.
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