Setting up a Palette

Setting up your palette in a way that makes sense to you is an important first step before painting because you don’t want to have to think too much about what color you’re reaching for in the moment. Understanding the properties of each pigment and how they mix with each other pigment is something that will be learned with experience, but having the pigments in the same space on your palette every time will aid in that lesson.

Katie sets her colors up from light to dark, white being at one end going through to her yellows, oranges, reds, greens, blues, and then into her dark browns and blacks. However, some artists prefer to have their extremes- white and black- right next to each other as a reminder of the extent of their possible value scale within the painting. Other artists prefer to have white directly in the center of their palette since it is the most commonly used pigment. Having the white easily accessed is appealing to some artists.

Try a few different set ups to see what works best for you and you’ll naturally develop a method for how you set up your own palette.