Artist Palette Profiles: Max Romey

Max Romey (@trailboundsketches on Instagram) is an Alaska-based field sketcher and videographer known for working outdoors in freezing temperatures, documenting climate change, and creating highly-produced and experimental videos, such as those that interpose him in his own sketches. He also releases inspiring pep talks to creators, and embarks on interesting projects, such as finding the exact spots his grandmother sketched, or leaving tiny paintings around town to inspire moments of delight.

So what’s in his palette?

On a blog post about art supplies, Romey recommends 8 colors:

burnt sienna, burnt umber, cerulean blue, indigo, red, yellow, sap green, a nice medium purple.

This feels a little vague to me; “red”, “yellow”, and “medium purple” could mean so many things. Already there are some intriguing things about this palette such as the cerulean/indigo combination of blues, which is unusual.

We got more detail when Romey created a limited edition Trailbound Palette through Art Toolkit which gives more insight. It contains the following (Color Slot assignment is my own):

Color Slot	Trailbound Palette has… (all DS)
Yellow	Hansa Yellow Medium (PY97)
Scarlet (Red)	Pyrrol Scarlet (PR255)
Violet (“Middle Purple”)	Ultramarine Violet (PV15)
Violet-Blue	Ultramarine Blue (PB29)
Dark Blue	Indigo (PB60, PBk6)
Cyan	Cerulean Blue (PB35)
Green	Sap Green (PO48, PY150, PG7)
Earth Orange	Burnt Sienna (PBr7)

Note that the Trailbound Palette doesn’t exactly follow the list from the blog; Burnt Umber is dropped for Ultramarine Blue.

I’m glad to have seen the actual colors in the palette as I never would have guessed “a nice middle purple” means Ultramarine Violet, which I find both strikingly cool and strikingly weak. (I’d be thinking something like Imperial Purple or Dioxazine Violet.) Nor would I have guessed that “red” means Pyrrol Scarlet; when I hear “red” I think something less orangey and more middle red, like Pyrrol Red or Perylene Red.

That said, maybe Romey was initially vague about his palette on purpose: he doesn’t want followers or students to feel obligated to use what he uses, but to explore and find their own favorites. After all, when I recommend a palette to people, I tend to gravitate toward slots rather than specific colors. Romey takes a bit of a hybrid approach, but it’s understandably a lot easier to use a slot-based system for reds and yellows, which are abundant and generally interchangeable, than for blues and earths, which are relatively few and behave quite differently.

My completely subjective thoughts

As a person who typically carries 16-18 colors, a palette of eight feels small to me, but I like that! I enjoy the challenge of using a smaller number of paints than I think I need, and there is a good variety here. Let’s see if I can customize this a bit to my needs without going over eight.

• I would miss a magenta, pink, or rose. Personally, with only one “red” slot, I would use something like Quin Rose/Red, which can mix just about as good oranges as Pyrrol Scarlet can with the yellow, but also mix vibrant violets with the Ultramarine Blue.
• I would also deeply miss an earth yellow, such as MANS or Raw Sienna, which I often use to make soft, granulating mixes. Since I’m mixing violets with the Quin Rose and Ultramarine, I no longer need Ultramarine Violet, so let’s swaparoo for a granulating mixer with a different hue.
• Another thing I’m feeling a lack of here is a juicy cyan or turquoise for mixing greens. Sure there is Sap Green, but what if you want a different shade of green? Cerulean doesn’t do it for me; it lacks value range and doesn’t mix vibrant greens. A fairly similar swap-in for Cerulean would be Cobalt Turquoise which can mix a Cerulean hue with Ultramarine Blue and which mixes very bright greens with yellow (though, like Cerulean, it also lacks value range). But in a limited palette, I would probably get more mileage from a wide-ranging Phthalo like Phthalo Turquoise, Phthalo Blue GS, or Phthalo Blue RS.
• I like to mix my greens, so once I added a Phthalo Blue, I’d probably kick Sap Green for either a Phthalo Green or a gold to mix greens with the blues. Let’s go for Rich Green Gold (PY129) as the gold most spiritually similar to Sap Green.

Okay, enough changes. Here are some things I especially like about this palette:

• Hansa Yellow Medium is a great yellow if you will only have one. I think a middle yellow is more useful than a split cool/warm yellow.
• I think it was a really good idea to add Ultramarine Blue. I hate to say it (since I often skip it in my palettes), but Ultramarine Blue is really helpful for a small palette because it does a lot of jobs. It was canny to drop Burnt Umber for this; it is possible to mix a Burnt Umber hue from Ultramarine + Burnt Sienna.
• Indigo is handy in a small palette for quickly setting darks. Unlike most brands which are Phthalo Blue based and very cyan-leaning, Daniel Smith’s Indigo is built on a mix of Indanthrone Blue and black, and is much more violety and moody. I would ordinarily have DS Indanthrone Blue in this slot but I can see the utility of replacing it with the DS Indigo for even more dark-setting convenience.
• The only earth color being Burnt Sienna makes sense to me. I think if you have only one earth color, make it an earth orange; and Burnt Sienna is classic. I often use Transparent Red Oxide instead, but this is a lateral move.

It’s funny how I find it agonizing to make an eight-color palette from scratch or by reducing my 18-color palette; but if you give me someone else’s eight-color palette, I can essentially swap and edit until I have one.