My all time favorite palette is the Quiller palette, available in porcelain or plastic. Plastic does stain, especially with phthalo colors it seems, so after a few years – 3 or 4? – it was time to buy a new one, and to fill it with colors. I like the plastic – or acrylic – palettes over porcelain because, if they are dropped, they don’t break into a bazillion pieces. It’s always a job to fill up a palette unless you are replenishing old favorites and standbys, but I decided to change a lot of my colors as I’ve bought colors over the past several months and want to put them to use. So, here we go – my new palette and the watercolors therein.
The outer corners of the Quiller palette are put to good use – 8 large wells. Beginning in the upper left corner and moving clockwise, I labeled them, for my purposes, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H. Color name and manufacturer are listed. Abbreviations: S = Schmincke Horadam, DS = Daniel Smith, H = Holbein, WN = Winsor Newton, MG = M. Graham, S = Sennelier.
- A. Cadmium Yellow Lemon – SH
- B. Lemon Yellow – DS
- C. Permanent Yellow Deep – DS
- D. Pyrrol Orange – DS
- E. Italian Burnt Sienna – DS
- F. Burnt Sienna – DS
- G. Cobalt Teal – mixture of MG and DS to use up MG
- H. French Ultramarine – DS
Next, if you look up into the upper left corner, you will see a spot marked on the palette with a rather long, pointy thingy. It is a yellow next to a rather periwinkle color on its left. That yellow is #1 in the following list, and clockwise around, ending in #24.
- 1. Hansa Yellow – MG
- 2. Hansa Yellow Deep – DS
- 3. Gamboge – MG
- 4. Naples Yellow – MG
- 5. Quinacridone Gold – MG
- 6. Translucent Orange – SH
- 7. Cadmium Red Light – H
- 8. Cadmium Red – WN
- 9. Permanent Alizarin Crimson – DS
- 10. Pyrrol Red – DS
- 11. Quinacridone Coral – DS
- 12. Raw Sienna – DS
- 13. Raw Umber – DS
- 14. Burnt Umber – DS
- 15. Cerulean Blue – MG
- 16. Cobalt Blue – DS
- 17. Prussian Blue – S
- 18. Manganese Blue Hue – DS
- 19. Phthalo Green, Yellow Shade – DS
- 20. May Green – SH
- 21. Hooker’s Green – WN – the only one for me!
- 22. Cobalt Violet – MG
- 23. Carbazole Violet – DS
- 24. Lavender – H
Sometime over the next few days I am going to paint out a sample of the palette and colors, copy it, and paste it to the lid of the palette. This way I have a copy on hand, and if the one on the palette gets messed up, I can print out another. I also like to read up and do a bit of research about the colors, and often refer to the Dick Blick site to get pigment information and Jane Blundell’s site to read up on her comments.
It’s nice to know a bit about colors, and with so many new formulations on the market this becomes a good thing to do. What I think a color is may be very different than what a color is – such as granulating or not, fugitive or not (I try not to buy those, but I do have some normal alizarin crimson and rose madder genuine), warm or cool. Besides this, it is good to know in which direction a color “leans” – that is, does the red I am looking at lean to the blue or yellow side of the palette. Such things affect color mixing. As there are lot of new-to-me colors, it is good to become acquainted with my new friends.
And there we are.
Journey by Paper 