The Colours in my Paintbox

[by Róisín Curé in Galway] It’s always nice to see what colours other sketchers use when they are out on the road. When you have a self-imposed limit of twelve colours, as many of us do, it can be a source of angst – yes, angst – to wonder which colours to keep and which to leave at home.

(Disclaimer: I am not really a watercolour artist. I am more of a colouring-in artist. So I neither know nor care a huge amount about all the finer points of pigments – I just want to get the colour to match what I see.)

As to why I use the colours you see in the picture, here they are, moving down from the top left and working anti-clockwise: indigo, ultramarine, cobalt turquoise, phthalo green, permanent green olive, lemon yellow, chrome orange, yellow ochre, sepia, Venetian red, permanent carmine and opera pink. All but the last are by Schmincke; the last is Daniel Smith.

Of course we all have our favourites, but there are some colours that just keep telling you that you need them. 

Try as I might, I can’t lose indigo, and I do try. Its deep, calm blue hits the spot every time. Payne’s grey is super and it was my first alternative-to-black crush but…sorry Payne’s, it’s not you, it’s me. Me and indigo – well, we’re a thing now.

Here’s a sketch which made full use of indigo for a muted, understated background that gave context to the girls in the foreground. It’s a café called McCambridge’s in Galway City.

What about ultramarine? It’s there on trial at the moment. Not too green, not too purple – but not very rich and creamy. Hmmm. I’m watching you.

Cobalt turquoise is there because I saw a colour that looked just like it in Felix Scheinberger’s Urban Watercolour Sketching. Now, he says it’s helio turquoise, but my helio turquoise never looked like that, whereas cobalt turquoise does. Besides, it’s super-pretty, so I’ve invited it to come out with me, and things are going rather well. 

Phthalo green? What a sharp, unnatural colour! No leaves ever looked like that. But mix it with yellow ochre or lemon yellow and it becomes miraculously foliage-like, and mix it with cobalt turquoise (or helio turquoise) and suddenly it’s a copper dome, or a tropical lagoon (I just wanted to get it in that I have to paint tropical lagoons sometimes. Oh yes.) 

Here’s a tropical lagoon painted with a mixture of Phthalo Green and turquoise:

I had to paint very fast – not only were the young Mauritians in the foreground starting to move, but the sun falls out of the sky so fast in the tropics that you have to be very speedy indeed. This was done at Trou-aux-Biches in Mauritius, and I invite you to imagine the whales and dolphins that gambol just beyond the reef, where the sea drops to 400m within a short distance.

Permanent green olive? A quiet, gentlemanly colour, a shortcut to foliage or grass, at least in Ireland, where intense acid green foliage is in short supply, as are tropical lagoons, for that matter. 

Lemon yellow is so useful. Quiet and unprepossessing, it lifts so many colours into sunshine, and makes greens behave. Without lemon yellow there would be no pendant lighting hanging from pub ceilings…

Chrome orange is a must-have if you live in Ireland. Why? Because we are a patriotic bunch, of course! We like to hang our glorious tricolour all over the place (note to self: buy a large flag for the front garden, like all the neighbours) and without chrome orange I would spend much time mixing red and yellow, only to end up with a muddy imitation of the acid orange that all our flags have to be. When it comes to colours, we don’t really do subtle in Ireland. Maybe we have enough subtlety in our beautiful countryside. 

Yellow ochre is one of those ones that keeps creeping back into the paintbox. It’s just too useful for skin tones and a million other things. 

Sepia is a bit sombre, it’s true…but mix it with Venetian red and you have a sort of burnt umber, or as near as makes no difference. Not to me, anyway, and as I said, I’m not too bothered as to the exact outcome, nor am I any sort of expert.

Venetian red is useful in Ireland because we are not a great people for maintaining our stuff. That is why there are lots of rusty things around. I happen to love painting rusty stuff so it’s win-win. Therefore, even though I don’t personally like Venetian red very much (it’s too red, too brown, too…rusty) it’s great for the sort of stuff I do. Mix it with yellow ochre on the page – let them flow into each other – and you have a soft result.

Permanent carmine is not a colour I love either. I would never wear this colour. If I’m going to wear red, it has to be RED. So on those dubious grounds I swapped permanent carmine for some kind of scarlet, but it refused to work well for me as a colour. Too garish. So I mix permanent carmine with cadmium red light if it’s around, chrome orange if it’s not, and then it looks nice.

Opera pink is just one of those pretties that I had to include. I would liken it to a diamond necklace if I had one (note to self, get one) – it just lifts everything and gives it a sparkle. Folk have been quick to point out that it is fugitive. Well, I know that…or I would have if I had read the tube. So now all those millions of commissions I have done feature people whose pink cheeks are going to lose their youthful bloom in time (like everyone else’s). Ah, it’s not really a problem because (a) there aren’t millions of commissions out there and (b) the vast majority of my output ends up on a screen or in a print so permanence isn’t an issue.

Just look at this use of Opera Pink:

Clean, intense, and delicate all at once.

There you go! My colours. If you want to see examples of where each colour is put into practice, check out my longer article on my website here.

If you have a colour that is absolutely your must-have, please don’t keep it to yourself! Share it with me here…please!! Think of yourself as doing Good Work.