Choices for My Palette

I have been painting about 4 to 5 years and one of my biggest struggles is:   what paint colors to use.  What is MY palette?  Every time I go to a workshop, a supply list is included and recommended by the teacher.  It seems their list always has paint colors that I have never used. So I order them and add them to my growing collection.  I have so many paints now that I will never use them all up!  I have 4-5 brands of ultramarine blue and lemon yellow and so many reds that it looks like I robbed a paint store! And the expense of having all these different brands is unbelievable!
But I feel like I should have what the teacher recommends.
Can I get an AMEN??

I love learning and going to workshops. What is the answer?

I have decided to do the Color Charts in Richard Schmid's Alla Prima book.  My teacher JoAnn Walker Williams recommended this to me and her other students about 4 years ago!  But I never got around to doing them.  It probably would have saved my lots of money!!
I looked at Richard Schmid's color choices and again he had some colors that I have never used.  I did not want to buy any new paints!  I need to learn to love and live with what I have. So I got out all my brands of the primaries and tinted them and decided which ones I liked the best.  I tested them for their ability to spread, their tinting strength, and their chroma.  I tried to select a warm and cool of each primary, three secondary colors, and a few convenience colors and one gray.  I tried my best to limit my palette to eleven colors like Richard Schmid did, but was unable to do so at this stage in my art growth. Maybe later. I am not going to stress over this now. I am just going to 'do the charts' with my selection, which just so happens to be 22 colors. I know, many of you will find this ridiculous, but to me it is better than the 40 or 50 colors that I have bought to accommodate the workshop requirements.  My goal is to see how these colors interact with each other and what I can create from these mixes and then later try to eliminate  a few at a time. Color mixing does not come easy to me, but I am willing to work at it and hopefully with time I will have selected my very own 'limited palette'! But for now I will have a full color spectrum palette like Ovanes Berberian and Serge Bongart.  I do not plan on using all these colors on every painting, but I do want to see how each of these colors mix with each other for a full array of color options for each painting.

I have included some photos to show you my progress so far.

I will have to do 46 charts, two for the tinting of the 22 colors and two charts for mixing each of the 22 colors.  This is a huge project!  It is going to take a lot of time, so I have decided to do this for my 30 paintings in 30 day challenge that starts in January. I have started some of the preliminary work so I will be ready.  Wish me luck. I should learn a lot!  Maybe you will learn from this exercise as well.

If any of you want to share 'YOUR'  palette, please do so, I would love to see them!!




I added the compliments to these colors on the third piles.
















I added green to these grays on the fourth piles.



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Day One 01/01/17 Thirty Paintings in 30 Days 2017

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12/18/16. I'm Back!!