Outdoor color Palettes for winter

Since many people love painting with lots of colors, but often get caught up in too many tubes to choose from, I thought I'd share three different color palettes that I've found to be quite successful in capturing different effects in the winter.

But first: What is a color Palette? A color palette is a term that refers to all the colors you have available to you to work with. By limiting the colors you are "allowed" to use on a painting, you help bring everything together in the composition. It's really helpful for working as well, because you can find value very reliably.

1. The Ultra-limited winter palette:

Believe it or not, this study was painted only using three different colors.

1. Cadmium Red

2. Cobalt Blue

3. Titanium White

This palette is great for really intense effects. You are basically starving yourself to a warm, a cool and white for creating neutral values. This is very similar to painting in black and white, but still gives you the ability to show light and warmth. The red and blue mixed together get you your darkest areas. 

** if you want, you may use this color palette but also add to it a purple of your choice, and a lighter blue, such as Cerulean Blue to give it a bit more complexity. Personally, I like it just like this.

2. The High Chroma-Dark Palette:

1. Titanium White

2. Naples Yellow Cool

2. Yellow Ochre

4. Inatherene Blue

5. Diox Purple (not needed)

6. Burnt Umber

7. Lamp Black (not needed)

8. Purple Madder

This color palette makes great use of value differences. The highest chroma, or density of pigment intensity/saturation exists within the yellow ochre for the light, but for the dark colors, 3 of the four are very high chroma. This means that your dark colors will have incredible depth to them, especially when reflecting light. This is a critical detail in winter, as much reflection will always be happening due to the lighting on snow.

This study was painted with the above palette. Although the sky looks complex at first, a closer glance reveals that it is in fact quite simple, but the dark tree masses are in fact very complex with color and chroma (an effect created by using high chroma darks). 

3. The High Chroma-Light Palette:

1. Quin Red

2. Naples Yellow Warm

3. Naples Yellow Cool

4. Titanium White

5. Inatherene Blue

6. Burnt Umber

7. Cerulean Blue

8. Cadmium Yellow Deep (not needed)

This third color palette is used when you want your darks to be lower in chroma (less saturated with color), and for your lights to be more dense with chroma. The high chroma dark available is the Inatherene Blue, but other than that the other darker colors are low chroma. However, the light colors have Naples Yellow Warm, a higher chroma version of Naples Yellow, as well as Quin Red, a very high chroma red. In the corner, I also have included Cadmium Yellow Deep, which is an option to add. This is a battleaxe of a color to add, so do so sparingly. The painting below was done with the colors above, but without Cad Yellow Deep.

As you can see, the sky holds much of the depth to this one.