I’ve previously reviewed the palette of Joyce Hicks, as described in her book How to Paint Beautiful Watercolor Landscapes. Hicks has a brand agreement with Da Vinci Paints, who sell a couple of different Joyce Hicks themed palettes, with slight differences. The one that intrigued me most is the “Mother Violet” palette, which proposes using a violet as a mother color (a single color with which all other colors are mixed for color harmony.) I like that idea because one of the concepts I liked most from painting in the Joyce Hicks style was using violet in shadows.
Note: * represents affiliate product links. You can support the blog by using them to shop. Da Vinci did not ask me to post about their product, nor did they provide it to me; this is just something I bought that I felt compelled to review as a coherent unit before I take it apart and use the paints in other palettes.
Here is the color lineup from the Joyce’s Mother Violet Palette*:
I would like it if the external box were violet, but it’s not, it’s gray.
The lineup (links go to Color Spotlights):
- Joyce’s Mother Violet (PB15, PB33, PV19)
- Permanent Rose (PV19)
- Benzimida Orange (PO62)
- Raw Sienna (PBr7)
- Cobalt Blue (PB28)
- Viridian (PG18)
- Alizarin Crimson Quinacridone (PV19)
- Vermilion Hue (PR188, PO62)
- Hansa Yellow Deep (PY65)
- Ultramarine Blue (PB29)
- Manganese Blue Mix (PB15, PB33)
The unique color in this palette is Joyce’s Mother Violet, which is a mix of Manganese Blue Mixture and Permanent Rose (both of which are also in the palette). Here’s a Color Spotlight sheet of it; my typical format allowed me to easily see how it mixed with the other colors from the palette.
All the mixes have a bit of that granulating, color-separating blue from the Manganese Blue mix. Some notes:
- I added two colors not in the palette set at the bottom: DS MANS and DV Hansa Yellow Light (PY3). I was trying to find a neutral gray. MANS makes a nice grnaulating gray-brown that looks good for various types of stone. HYL is closer to gray but it has a weird yellow undertone. I couldn’t find a straightforward complement.
- I was pleasantly surprised by how nice Raw Sienna (#3 in the first column) mixed to a slightly cooler beige. A very useful color.
- The mix with Benzimida Orange (PO62) (#2 in the first column, above Raw Sienna) is similar but much uglier, and the closer you inspect it, the uglier it looks.
- Also similar but worse is the mix with Arylide Yellow Deep (PY65) (#4 in the second column).
- The mix with Vermilion Hue (PR188, PO62) is a pretty nice red-brown, though I think an Indian Red or Venetian Red would be nicer as the mix has a weird tomato undertone.
Vermilion Hue is a color I have swatched before but never really used. I enjoyed it very much, but it is quite similar to single pigment Naphthol Scarlet.
I used the palette to paint a copy of one of Joyce’s paintings from her book.
Mother Violet in practice
I didn’t put the violet in every mix, but it’s in most of the browns, shadows (especially on the house), the upper part of the sky (along with more Manganese Blue), and the upper part of the water (along with Ultramarine Blue and more Manganese Blue).
I do think the use of lots of violet in the shadows gives it a very Joyce Hicks-esque look, and it’s fun and pastel. The rosiness of the purple makes the day look sunnier than a flat gray or blue would. Although I did not underpaint with yellow, the contrast with violet makes the plain white look ever so slightly golden. I like the purple tones in the ocean water too, and the granulation has a wave-ish look.
The palette in practice
I like a lot of the individual colors in the palette, but I found it slightly odd to actually use. Some colors are quite similar (Alizarin Crimson hue and Permanent Rose, Cobalt Blue and Ultramarine Blue), while other common categories are missing. A lot of the very ordinary landscape mixes I wanted to make required more steps than was ideal. Specifically, I struggled to make browns and dark smooth greens (like for the big tree). I did end up making that Venetian Red-ish roof color I wanted, but it involved a lot of colors in the mix, including the Mother Violet, Vermilion Hue, Raw Sienna, Alizarin Crimson Hue, and Ultramarine.
The palette is lacking in some staples like:
- a lemon yellow: I would not ordinarily choose a very orangey yellow like PY65 as my only yellow, especially in a palette with so much orange.
- a cyan: Manganese Blue Mixture is I guess but it’s so light-valued and granulating that it feels more like a special effects paint. A cyan that can get dark would have been helpful for dark greens.
- an earth orange: Raw Sienna is the only earth – I’d typically chose something closer to Burnt Sienna
I flipped back over to the book to remind myself of Joyce’s actual palette, and all of the colors in the palette are there (other than the Mother Violet mix, which is a convenience mix of two other colors on the palette), plus Hansa Yellow Light, Prussian Blue, Burnt Sienna, Quinacridone Gold, and Sap Green. So, all of the colors I identified as missing, plus additional convenience gold and green.
My notes for the palette, then, would be to include those colors. For funsies, here’s how they’d mix with Mother Violet:
These are good! I got an okay gray again with HYL, and the New Gold is marginally better than Benzimida Orange, but what I’m really impressed by is the Burnt Sienna. The purple makes it into a nice chocolatey brown. It’s great! It’s such a shame that Burnt Sienna isn’t on the Mother Violet palette!
Da Vinci does sell an extended 18-color Joyce Hicks palette* which includes those colors, along with a custom ‘Mother Green’ and a convenience Permanent Magenta mix (PB29 + PV19 rose, like DS Rose of Ultramarine). There is also an 11-color Mother Green palette* that is similar to the Mother Violet palette, but it replaces Mother Violet with Mother Green, and drops Benzimida Orange, Vermilion, Raw Sienna, and Ultramarine Blue in favor of all the colors above, except Sap Green (being similar to Mother Green I supposed). Honestly, I think this makes the Mother Green palette more usable overall, since it has a better spread of core mixing colors, though I much prefer the Mother Violet color itself to the Mother Green, which is basically just Sap Green. The loss of Ultramarine Blue hurts too.
If I’m designing my dream 11-color Mother Violet palette, I would drop the color that I think mixes worst with Mother Violet (Benzimida Orange) as well as the redundant-feeling paints (Alizarin Crimson Hue, Cobalt Blue). In their place, I’d add the very useful and nicely-mixing Hansa Yellow Light, Burnt Sienna, and Prussian Blue.
Here’s my version, also shuffled to be in an order that makes more sense to me.
Of course, I could always drop Mother Violet itself, since it is mixable from the Permanent Rose and Manganese Mix, but that feels counter to the point of the exercise.