Since my work is already saturated in computer graphics and programming, I’ve decided to expand my off-time with watercolor. There’s a lot to like about this medium, such as the fluid dynamics, pigment information, and the fun of trying to get a painting to look good. I’m a solid beginner. This post is a start at documenting what colors I chose to go with.

I think it’s possible to choose probably eight colors and use mixing to get the rest. A few months ago, this is what I did more or less. The idea is to have a cool and warm red, yellow and blue, and some earth colors. This minimalist idea is fun, but it didn’t work out so well for me, because I really like the paints I ended up with, so I bought a few extras.

At first, I bought some watercolor tubes from Hobby Lobby. Those were pretty nice — and much better than my memory of Crayola paints. Then, I decided to see what Hayao Miyazaki used, and discovered that the Studio Ghibli company sold a set of paints and palette. I kinda liked his main idea: keep it simple with a palette, a few good paints, and a brush. The Holbein paints I decided to try were so fun to use, that I think I probably just lost my mind and bought all kinds. The texture was very creamy on the palette and fun to put on paper.

For the most part, I went with mainly single pigment paints. I think this is the best way, but paint doesn’t necessarily want to be bought that way. For instance, you might have a desire to want to paint with “Sap Green” or “Hunter’s Green” or something. Perhaps, it’s the memories of hearing Bob Ross mention color names — and I definitely have a nostalgia for that. Ultimately, you should buy the paints you want to paint with. The trick is to not buy too much. I’m not sure how good my paintings have been when I exceeded six or so colors.

OK, so maybe for a series of posts, I’ll get into what a possible palette could be. For example, here’s what a possible eight color palette (from the paints that I have):

• Quinacridone Magenta (PR122, a cool red)
• Vermillion (PR108, a warm red)
• Permanent Yellow Light (PY74, PY83, a warm yellow)
• Permanent Yellow Lemon (PY74, PY83, a cool yellow)
• Cobalt Blue Hue (PB29, PB15, a warm blue)
• Ultramarine Deep (PB29, a cool, dark blue)
• Yellow Ochre (PY43, an earth tone)
• Umber (Pbr7, an earth tone)

I did order a 26 color palette from Holbein that’s made from Aluminum. I’m excited by that. That’s able to contain a lot of color, so I think it’ll have a good range of reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues, violets, and earth colors. The reason to have so many is for “convenience” colors — so I don’t have to mix quite so many colors. It should be fun.