limited palette, late 19th C.

* I replaced the first photo of this page after using a wet brush to tease out a wash

from each color. It is easier to see how these would work in a painting now.

My version, that is . . .

I've been going through a huge stack of past issues of Watercolor Artist magazine, trying to weed out those I probably won't read again. I will either save a few copies intact that have multiple articles I want to keep, or perhaps create a subject file of clipped articles.

Meanwhile, I found one article that featured a brand of watercolors marketed as pigments used by artists of the late 19th century. Those in the brand are ground of natural pigments; instead of looking for that brand on-line, I compared colors I currently have and came up with this basic matching set, placing the full pans and one half pan in my bijou box. Then I added 3 extra "convenience" colors to fill the empty spaces. I'm going to have some fun playing with this set -- I used them for everything but the bright red in the previous post.

I do wonder, though, if old masters' works just appear dark because of aging?

UPDATE:

The greens in the previous post looked a bit dull. I found that Cathy 'Kate" Johnson had the same red and yellow in her muted palette, but chose indigo as her blue. I have no indigo, but I had Indanthrone blue, so I tried that. Much better greens now, which is seen better in person than on my computer screen,

I have put together similar primary triads before, but only played around a bit with them. This time, I'd like to try actually painting with them.