Brooke Morales (lifenoticed.com) is a nature journaler who painted “windowscapes” of the sky from a window each day for 1,001 days: from 2023 to mid-2025. I’m currently taking a four-part windowscape workshop with Brooke this month, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to do an Artist Palette Profile!
I first noted Brooke’s 2023 sky palette in my post The Sky Palette, referencing an Instagram post where she reported using 8 colors for the past years’ skies. According to her class materials and website, Brooke has since expanded to a 14-color sky palette.
Brooke’s Palette
I have assigned each color a slot according to my own color slot system. Links are to my Color Spotlight or slot page.
I’ve started with roughly this palette for class and homework, and am slowly noticing and adapting.
My Commentary
- This is specifically a sky palette, so you won’t find greens, browns, etc.
- Brooke uses DS Yellow Ochre for yellow-to-blue gradients in skies, because Yellow Ochre does not readily go green, and its low tint makes it easy to keep pale. I find the DS version of Yellow Ochre quite orangey, similar to other brands’ Raw Sienna. Mine shown above is the yellower Holbein. At any rate, I think any earth yellow would work well here. I often use Naples Yellow Deep.
- Quin Burnt Orange is a glowing transparent deep orange that gives nice atmsophere to sunrise/sunset and golden hour. Brooke uses it in a mix with magenta/pink/rose for orange-pink clouds. This is a slot for which I am more likely to use Quin Coral. Meanwhile I find that for my typical earth orange use case – making gray with blues – QBO is not right because it does readily go green.
- Perylene Maroon seems to be mostly doing the work of neutralizing blues in this palette, a maroon where I would normally use an earth orange (TRO, Terra Cotta, etc.) or earth red (e.g. Venetian Red). Perylene Maroon is great for neutralizing greener phthalo blues, while earth reds/oranges complement Cobalt Blue and Ultramarine Blue and Indanthrone Blue. What Perylene Maroon does with the warmer blues is to make very desaturated gray-violets, which is, honestly, also very useful, though my preferred mixer of these is Perylene Red.
- I’ve enjoyed playing with Lavender in my palette during these first few class sessions; it mixes nicely with Phthalo Blue for a blue-sky color. It’s also convenient in cloud mixes.
- Cobalt Blue is one of my favorite sky colors. It’s just a great basis for sky blues. It’s also lovely in cloud mixes. It mixes violet very gorgeously. More so, even, than Ultramarine Blue, I think.
- Cobalt Turquoise is also great in a sky palette because of its bright cyan horizon color and because it can add complexity and blue tone to cloud mixes without darkening them.
- The combination of Ultramarine Blue or Cobalt Blue with Cobalt Turquoise are so good for bright pastel blues.
- I often omit grays from my palette but a neutral gray (like Neutral Tint or my Holbein Payne’s Gray) is very convenient for gray clouds or for making a mix just a little less saturated. That said I think I would need it less if I had a good earth orange to oppose my warmer blues.
Conclusion
I like this palette and it certainly is useful to have these colors available while doing the class. Although some of them can easily be substituted (any middle yellow is any middle yellow), all the blues act differently from each other. The Perylene Maroon, while not my favorite color, mixes differently from other reds so substitutions and alternate mixes take more thought to work out during class.
With that said, you know me, I will be continuing to monitor which colors and combinations I like best, and come out with my own sky palette by the end of class!
Comments
One response to “Artist Palette Profiles: Brooke Morales’ Sky Palette”
I like the looks of this palette very much. While you don’t have browns or greens as you mentioned, you certainly have what you need to mix a wide variety of them. I could even see this working as an urban sketching palette. Thanks for sharing!