Unlock Colour Harmony: The Power of a Limited Palette for Landscape Painting

As a plein air oil painter, the freedom of capturing landscapes directly from life is my greatest inspiration. However, lugging a full studio setup into the field can quickly become a burden. This is where the beauty and practicality of a limited palette truly shine.

While I previously called the scenic town of Hermanus, South Africa, home and sourced my paints locally, my passion for painting landscapes en plein air continues wherever my life takes me. The principles of a limited palette remain constant, offering significant advantages for any landscape artist, whether you’re painting along the coast or amidst rolling hills.

Why Embrace a Limited Palette for Landscape Painting?

There are compelling reasons why many landscape painters, myself included, choose to work with a curated selection of colors:

Lightweight and Portable: For those who love to paint outdoors, like me, minimizing your gear is essential. A smaller selection of tubes translates to a lighter set-up, making it much easier to get to those perfect, inspiring locations. Unless you have the luxury of driving right up to your painting spot, a lighter kit makes all the difference.

Effortless Color Harmony: This is perhaps the most significant benefit. By mixing most of your colors from a limited set, you naturally create a sense of visual unity in your painting. The colors will inherently relate to one another, resulting in a harmonious and cohesive artwork. Everything just works from a color perspective.

Fuelling Creativity Through Constraints: Limitations can actually spark greater creativity. When you have fewer colours at your disposal, you’re forced to think more inventively about mixing and colour relationships. This can lead to unexpected discoveries and push you beyond your comfort zone, encouraging bolder colour choices that often yield exciting results. It helps overcome the tendency to play it safe and encourages you to truly push the colour, confident that it will likely harmonize within your limited range.

My Go-To Limited Palette for Landscapes:

Over the past few years, I’ve honed a core palette that serves me well for capturing the diverse colours of the South African landscape. While specific brands might vary depending on my location, the essential pigments are the same:

Titanium White: Absolutely essential for lightening values and creating tints. A large tube is always a good idea!

Arylamide Lemon Yellow: A vibrant, cooler yellow that’s a fantastic alternative to more expensive and rather poisonous Cadmium yellows.

Arylamide Yellow: For those rich, high-chroma yellows that really pop in sunny landscapes.

Yellow Ochre: A beautiful, desaturated earthy yellow that’s invaluable for grounding colors and creating natural tones.

Alizarin Crimson: A cool, deep red that’s a workhorse for mixing purples, shadows, and adding depth.

Burnt Sienna: A warm, earthy pigment that’s excellent for underpainting and mixing rich browns and surprisingly effective dark grays/blacks when combined with Ultramarine Blue.

Ultramarine Blue: Another essential workhorse, perfect for skies, water, distant mountains, and those crucial dark mixtures.

Phthalo Blue: While I use this sparingly, a small tube of this intense, cool blue can be incredibly useful for vibrant skies or water, especially in coastal scenes.

Occasionally, depending on the specific subject, I might include an extra colour like a warm red or a pre-mixed purple. However, the core eight above provide a versatile foundation for mixing a wide range of landscape hues.

Adapting to Your Environment:

The beauty of this limited palette is its adaptability. Whether I was painting the unique light of the Overberg landscape with my Zellen oils or now exploring new vistas in the Karoo, these core pigments allow me to capture the essence of any scene. The principles of colour mixing and harmony are universal.

Experimenting with different limited palettes can be a rewarding journey for any artist. This selection has proven its versatility for capturing the vast and varied beauty of the natural world. Give it a try and discover the surprising range and harmony you can achieve with just a few well-chosen colours!