Lesson 22: Painting a still life using only three colors

For this exercise we set up several small still life arrangements and each of us created a painting using only 3 tubes of paint. Some chose to use three primary colors which give the widest range of color possibilities. Others chose to work with colors they were not comfortable with or wanted to experiment with. In both approaches the paintings were cohesive color-wise because of the limited palette. It was interesting to compare paintings of the same still life set up from people using different three color choices.


Kay and Jan used the same set-up. Kay's colors resulted in more muted tones; Jan used primaries which gave brighter reds and yellows.


Emily and Dan used the same set up. Here Emily's choices gave more muted tones while Dan's use of the primaries yielded brighter colors.