When I sit down to paint, I set up my colour palette with my favourite colours & whilst I own a wide range of different colours, I have my favourites, that I like to work with often:
Titanium White
French Ultramarine Blue
Alizarin Crimson Red
Cadmium Yellow & occasionally Lemon Yellow
Burnt Siena
My limited colour palette allows me to mix my secondary and tertiary colours and I find that my canvas flows better, as all the secondary and tertiary colours compliment and enhance the primary colours.
A limited palette has many advantages for artists whether you are starting out or, like me, a seasoned artist
Cost - Instead of using every shade of blue, you can mix the exact tone you want using just 2 colours
Unity of the painting - your painting will flow better and look more cohesive when you have used the same tones and shades as your colour bases
And the best reason, I have found is that I know these colours so well and can tweak the shades and use them in ways that I wouldn't if I was using a huge range of colours
Below are a few examples of my paintings that are done with these colours and a limited palette.
