Another season, another palette! I’ve been doing very little studio painting but a fair amount of plein air sketching this month, so I’ve been able to adapt my colors to what works for me in the field. I thought I would take you on a little journey showing what I started with, what changes I made, and why.
Seasonal Palettes
Winter Palette 2025
Quite often I will prepare a palette for the coming season, but I suddenly realized that we’re running out of winter and I haven’t done a winter palette yet! But today it’s still cold as balls, the outdoors coated in snow and ice, so it still feels relevant.
Autumn Palette 2024 Revisited
I’ve been using my autumn palette outside and in timely paintings for about a month, and I feel I have gathered enough experience to quickly review the colors and see if my expectations matched reality. Top Tier Colors I’m using these a lot: Also Good Borderline Not used as much as I expected What am … Read more
Autumn Palette 2024
It’s become a fall tradition: each year as the leaves begin to change, I revise my autumn foliage palette. I made a 2022 Autumn Palette and a 2023 Fall Foliage Palette, and here’s my latest, inspired by my recent leaf studies!
Winter Palette 2.5
As we close winter and begin to enter spring, I wanted to note some slight changes I made to Winter Palette 2 throughout the season.
The Winter Palette, Mark II
Last year, I proposed a Winter Palette, and then I changed my mind about many of the colors after doing Lisa Spangler’s Nature Spot challenge. After a second round of Nature Spot challenge the following year, I have built a second iteration of the Winter Palette!
Fall in Vancouver Palette
I’ve just spent a week in Vancouver in early November, what my aunt described as “the worst time to visit Vancouver” due to the rain and fog, but I had fun! I like rain and fog. Plus, it was much cheaper than visiting in the summer. I didn’t know what colors I’d need, so I … Read more
Autumn Palette Problem-Solving
As I’ve used my Fall Foliage Palette outside, I’ve run into some challenges that made me want to swap a color. I thought I’d go through my problem-solving thought process and then show you the revised palette.
The New England Fall Foliage Palette, or, Autumn Palette Mark II
Welcome to fall! Here in Massachusetts, the leaves are just turning, and I just came back from a long weekend a few hours north in New Hampshire, where the foliage is popping off. So I decided this autumn I would build a foliage-specific palette. Inspiration I combined lessons learned from my Autumn Palette mark I, … Read more
The Summer Palette, Mark II
Here’s my end-of-summer reveal: I’ve been working on a new Summer Palette this whole time!
I took my time to build this palette (which is why this post is appearing at the end of summer instead of the beginning). I went through several iterations, taking out different sets of colors to see how they performed in the real world when I tried to paint my surroundings.
This is the first time I’ve come around to make a second version of seasonal palette. The first seasonal palette I designed, last fall, was the Autumn Palette, but I added the Summer Palette quickly after. Let’s see how my new one compares!