A Teeny Tiny Watercolor Palette
With Which I Can Create Infinite Colors
One of the most valuable art classes I’ve ever attended was Roseann Hanson’s Watercolor Made Simple class at the 2021 Wild Wonder Nature Journaling conference (more about Roseann and Wild Wonder below*). In this class Roseann described her “minimalist paint kit” which contains only 5 colors: 3 primary colors + 2 more to make black. The colors in her paint kit are based on CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, & Black—the 4 colors used in color printing).
Roseann’s premise for the class was that these 5 colors are the only colors you need to be able to paint any color you want! I love color mixing with watercolors so I tried this out after attending her class and I loved the minimalist approach!
Fast forward a few years…I noticed one of my Art Peeps had a tiny watercolor palette clipped to her sketchbook while painting en plein air…and I had a rare case of art toy tool envy…so I decided to buy a teeny tiny watercolor palette with empty watercolor pans, specifically to fill with my own 5 CMYK watercolors and use out in the field.
Here’s a photo of my new teeny tiny palette! By “teeny tiny” I mean 2 3/16" x 1 3/4" in size!
You’ll notice I have 6 colors, not 5, in my teeny tiny palette. Since 6 standard size pans fit in this palette, I filled the 6th pan with an “extra credit” color.
My CMYK+ Colors
I filled my pans with my C (Winsor Blue), M (Permanent Rose), Y (Cadmium Lemon) & K (Indigo + Burnt Sienna) watercolors, plus another favorite color of mine: Buff Titanium, and painted a small swatch card to keep with my teeny tiny palette for reference.
My Initial Test Drive…
I met up with my Art Peeps recently for sketching at Tucson Botanical Gardens—the perfect opportunity for me to give my new teeny tiny palette a test drive! Here’s the setup I used at TBG, showing my sketchbook (with art in progress), waterbrush, and teeny tiny palette clipped to my clipboard.
This setup worked quite well—though when I got home I used a 1/2” flat brush (not a waterbrush) to continue painting the colors, and that worked much better. My waterbrush was delivering too much water with each stroke and this made it more difficult to get an even wash for each color.
My only “issue” with my palette, and this is strictly a personal preference, is that I’d like more area for mixing more colors than my teeny tiny palette lid affords. So perhaps I “need” 😁 to buy a slightly larger palette (3-5/8" x 2-1/4"), while sticking with the same 6 colors in standard size pans, to give myself more area to mix my millions of colors. 🤗
…and My Results
🎺 Doot, do-do-DOOOOO! That’s the trumpet fanfare announcing my final results—the art I created using my teeny tiny palette! See if you can identify in my art below the colors of fresh new leaves, Poppies, Penstemon, a Queen butterfly, and a Cardinal who flew into a nearby tree while I was painting this.
* More About Roseann Hanson and the Wild Wonder Nature Journaling Conference
Roseann Hanson is a Tucson-based artist who’s a naturalist, explorer, educator, and author of several books including Nature Journaling for a Wild Life. Roseann recently posted a very clear explanation of using a CMYK palette (along with photos and a video) in her blog post Meet the Minimalist Paint Set.
The Wild Wonder Nature Journaling Conference is an annual online event that “gathers people who are passionate about nature, art, science, curiosity, and wonder to share ideas, learn from each other, support each other, inspire each other, and have fun together in nature’s beauty.” I highly recommend this conference! The 2024 conference features over 25 classes with 30+ teachers and will be held on Sept 18-22, 2024. In case you can’t watch all the classes on those dates and/or want to enjoy them again later 😊 you can watch videos of all the classes for at least 6 months after the conference.
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What a really cool idea … you have definitely given me some food for thought when I need to start refilling my watercolors
Great ideas in small formats! Thanks, Paula.