My Fresh Palette

Mixes from My Fresh Palette

We set off tomorrow for a five-week trip with the above gouache palette, a small set of transparent watercolors and drawing supplies. After much indecision and an incredible number of paint swatches, I finally committed to 12 gouache colors for my traveling palette. The colors are Yellow Ochre, Lemon Yellow, Permanent Yellow Orange, Flame Red, Primary Magenta, Cobalt Blue, Ultramarine Deep, Prussian Blue, Cypress Green, Terre Verte, Sepia and Burnt Sienna.

When I paint with transparent watercolor on white paper, the white of the paper shows through so there is no reason to use much white paint. The opposite is true for painting with gouache on black paper, the black of the paper shows through and there is not much use for black paint. However, with gouache I use a lot of white because it brightens up the color. One problem I had with my last palette was keeping the other colors out of the white well. On this new palette I no longer have the white well at all, just a dab of white on each paint well. I hope this keeps the colors bright and clean.