Art #78: Painting Landscapes with a Limited Palette

The magic of a secondary palette

We’re going to look at some paintings, and then I have a little art challenge for you at the very end! Read on, and because this is a long post, your email program might cut the last bit off. In that case, try clicking the title above to read the whole post in your web browser.

For months now I’ve been collecting images of landscape paintings for you (and okay, one still life, but it’s a plant) that are painted using mostly three colors: Purple, green, and orange.

Ellsworth Woodward (1861-1939), Winter in Southern Louisiana, 1911

On the traditional color wheel (you can read a whole post about color wheels here), those are the “secondary colors”—meaning the colors you get when you mix three primary colors together. Blue and red make purple, blue and yellow make green, red and yellow make orange.