Unlocking my signature palette - the surprising journey from canvas to sketchbook

Ever wondered how artists develop their signature style? Join me on an epic journey as I unlock the secrets of my own colour palette! I'll show you how I translated my acrylic painting colours into my sketchbook media, creating a shorthand that's revolutionised my art process. Discover the surprising revelations, agonising choices, and pure joy of colour exploration. It’s a blend of intuition, science, and a dash of magic.

• Read the transcript here:

  Hello. In today's video, we're gonna do something that turned out to be way more of an epic undertaking than I expected it to be. Nobody told you about today. So in a nutshell, what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to translate the colour palette that I use in my acrylic final work into the dry media and the watercolours and things I use in my sketchbook, so that I have that sort of shorthand accessible to me. Moving forward, I'll take you through what I did and how I did it, and then I'll debrief you at the end with the results of what happened. And there were a few surprises. There really were.

  I know that colour is a really integral part of my style, like the way I use colour is, it's very specific. It's something that people comment on a lot. I have a very intuitive sense of how colours go together, what they'll do together, how they'll interact, and how that, you know, the effect that that has on a mood or an emotion. And that is like second nature to me at this point. Which is, which is, which is fantastic. It makes it really easy, and I don't have that sort of fluidity when it comes to working in mixed media. So rather than just sit in this sort of frustration place, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to take something that is very easy for me, to do something that I'm really fluent in, which is my colour palette, and translate that into the mixed media that I'm using in my sketchbook.

  At the moment, I feel like, if I have the colours that I'm familiar with, then even if I'm working with unfamiliar materials, or I'm working with unfamiliar subjects, or I'm working to constraints, like time constraints, for example, then I have this easy shorthand that I can reach for the just it makes sense to me. It's something I'm already well practised in.

  I know style is something that a lot of beginner artists are very concerned with, and my theory is that you already have a style, just like you have your own individual handwriting, the way you draw and the way you paint, it's already there, and what your job is is to just kind of hone it and and develop it, rather than discover it. And the colours that you use is a big part of that.

  Now, there are proven benefits to using a limited palette. It makes your work more cohesive, for a start, like each individual drawing, especially if you're then mixing colours together. I wasn't so interested in mixing. I really wanted to have those particular hues that I can grab and go. Although colour mixing is an absolute joy, when you're working on a 10 minute sketch or something it’s maybe not the easiest thing to do, or if you're out on location, for example.

  So the other element, I thought, is I want to get better at planning paintings out before I commit to Canvas. As I'm doing sort of larger works and more detailed works, I'm finding that I'm coming up against a few problems that I wish I could solve in a smaller format. It'd be nice to kind of solve those problems in studies before I get to the finished work. So again, that's where having that colour palette to hand is going to come in really, really handy.

  My first job was to identify the colours that I use most frequently in my finished paintings. I took the photographs of my finished work and I uploaded them into an app called coolers, which basically generates colour palettes from photographs. Now, the ones it generates are a little bit odd sometimes, but what you can do is you can choose how many colours you want to pick out, and then you can choose which colours that you actually want by moving your sliders around. What I tried to do was to get some of the hero colours, you know, the colours that I am naturally drawn to the colours that I can say, Yes, I use this. I use this. I use this. But I also wanted to make sure that I was getting in the neutral colours that I use a lot, and also a good value range, so a good range from lights to darks, and make sure I wasn't just picking like the mid tone colourful colours that I love.

  And that threw up some really interesting discoveries. There's a few colours in there that I would never have said, Oh, I use this colour a lot, but they came up in almost every single painting. And I've been doing this for decades, and I'm still finding it like, Oh, interesting. I think because I use colour so intuitively, I've never really stopped to sort of analyse what my colour palette is. So to have that information, it was, yeah, it's been eye opening.

  So I took about 25 paintings into this coolers app and pulled out the colours from them. I tried to not go above eight colours per painting. Sometimes that was 10, sometimes that was six, but I tried to keep around eight. And then I got out my, my, my big girl paints, my, you know, my acrylics that I use for the final work, and I started swatching those colours in paint. And whilst I was doing this, I had sort of half an eye on the palettes that I had generated digitally, and half of it was just pure muscle memory. So the mixes that I go to a lot, the colours that I use straight from the tube, the way I pull my palette together and mix as I'm actually painting a real painting.

  Once I'd done all the swatches, I cut them all out into these little swatch cards, and that left me with this absolutely beautiful spread of colours that I use a lot now, there are an awful lot of colours here, so obviously that's not going to be wildly helpful. I wanted to narrow it down, so I just had a few in each sort of Hue. So a couple of reds, a couple of oranges, a couple of yellows, a couple of greens, a couple of blues, blah, blah, blah, just so I'm not kind of faced with this paralysis of choice.

  Now, narrowing the colours down was really, really tricky, and I'll talk you through some of my process for how I narrowed those down. Here, what we're going to do is I'm going to go through each sort of colour family, and I'm going to try and narrow it down. This is going to be really tricky when we come to the greens and the blues, because there are lots of them, and I love them. And it's going to be really hard with the warm colours. I don't tend to use them so frequently. Ironically, although my paintings generally are very warm, I actually do that with a very few colours. So that's nice. This is going to be really tough, but we're gonna start with these reds.

  Now. It's fairly obvious that these two are quite similar. This one is one of my favourites, that sort of orangey vermilion, sort of tomato red. So that's absolutely gonna stay. These two are very, very similar. They actually look quite orange on camera, but this one has more blue in it, and it's more of a sort of Carmine colour. So that makes that really easy. This one can go back in the pot. So we've got warm red and we've got cool red, brilliant. Maybe this will be easier than I thought.

  Now we're gonna go for the oranges. We have a lovely sort of pale Clementine colour here, which is sort of a paler cousin to this one. Then we have this really dirty orange here, and we have these two kinds of burnt oranges, quite nice and deep. I think having the pale Clementine is going to be a good option, which means that we can discard this darker one. I love this colour, like this orange. You'll see it so many, so many times in my paintings. I love to pair it with, like a teal, like that, or a really rich sort of dark green, like a Viridian. I love it with this red purple and like a periwinkle blue. Oh, it's one of my favourite colour combinations. So this one has to stay, which means that this one, I think we can, I think we can let go of that. And then this one is a dirtier orange. I think that's a really nice selection. There is a nice, light, bright Clementine, a darker, sort of deep orange, and then a dirtier version.

  Okay, now I've got the yellows, hmm. I think this one is just a lighter version of this one. So I think we can get rid of the light one, and then we have this sort of lovely warm yellows. Is my favourite, favourite yellow, and we also have this kind of dirtier greenish yellow ochre. So I feel like that's a really good choice.

  Now it's when we get into trouble. This is when I don't want to say goodbye to my babies. Look at all these beautiful, beautiful greens I have here. I'm actually going to pull you back a little bit to get everybody in now I absolutely have to have this deep kind of forest green colour. That's a no brainer. And I think that and that kind of do the same job. This other dark green. So I'm going to say goodbye to that one. This aqua colour comes up in so many of my paintings. I use this a lot, and this sort of paler version of that as well. And I think I need to make sure I'm getting a good tonal variation so that, and that feels like a really nice kind of dark mid light tone.

  I really love these dirty greens. I really love this one, but I feel like any job that this one is going to do, I can do that with this one and this one. Oh, are you enjoying this? Are you enjoying watching me suffer? This is excruciating. Oh, I don't know what to do. Okay, you know what? None of this is set in stone. I'm gonna. Go with a nice dirty olive and then a brighter sort of sack green, and I'm just gonna let the rest of them go. It's not like I'm doing a lot of landscapes and things in my sketchbook. And I think this is a perfectly good selection of greens. I've got a duck, I've got some mid tones, I've got light tones, I've got a range of warms and cools, cleans and dirties.

  This is really hard, everyone. This is really, really hard. I don't know if I can handle doing the blues just yet, because that was so excruciating. So we're gonna go to the pinks, which I think is gonna be easier. We have got this neon pink and a sort of dark version and a light version. We've got this kind of sulking room, putty coloured pink, which I love. This was actually a real revelation. I had no idea that I used this colour so often, or how frequently it showed up in my paintings, but it's one that I use over and over and over again, and I'm really glad, like, I wouldn't have known that without doing this exercise. So that's fantastic.

  And then we have my favourite warm, purpley pink, raspberry pink, and it's sort of a dirty version. This is the colour that I actually use. I mean, the pale pink does come up, but I feel like there are other colours that can do that, that sort of pale pink job. So we're gonna get rid of the pale pink, and we're gonna hang on to this neon pink. Then this is the lighter version. This is a darker version. I'm gonna go with the lighter version, I think, just so we've got, keeping in mind that sort of range of tones that I want to have in this limited palette, I don't want everything to be kind of exactly the same.

  Oh, and that leaves these two, and I don't know which one to choose. Like this brighter, cleaner colour is what my heart wants. But unless I'm doing flowers and I'm using this for sort of accents, I tend to actually dirty my colours up. This is the same colour, but with some burnt umber added, and this is sort of how I would use it in sort of a real, real world scenario. And I don't know which one I want to keep, you know what, because there are only four, I'm going to keep all four, and we'll see how it goes. As I start swatching out the drawing materials, and sketchbook materials. I might change my mind, and I might get rid of one of these, but for now, let's keep both of them, because they're both lovely, and I will use them.

  I'm still not ready to tackle the blues, so we're gonna go into purples now. This should be fairly easy. The lilac kind of has to come with me. That comes up a lot. And I think out of these two. I think the dirtier version is probably going to be more useful. This is a very, very dark, almost sort of aubergine colour. I really like that. I don't have very many dark darks in this selection, so that might be worth having. And I think I'm going to choose the dirtier version over the bright version. In this case, it feels like it's going to be more useful. So let's get rid of that. So we've got a dark, another dark and a light. So we want one of these mid tones.

  This, unless you're doing flowers, this is not really a very useful colour. It's quite sickly. It's nice when it's nestled in amongst other pinks or for highlights or that kind of stuff. But I think out of those two, this one is better. And then do I need both of these? I don't think I need both of these. Oh yeah. I'm gonna stick with that, stick with that, and I'm gonna let this one go for the time being. Again, nothing is set in stone.

  Okay, I think I'm ready for the blues. I gave myself five greens, so maybe, maybe, maybe I can be a bit more generous. Now, there are actually some greys in here. So I think both of these greys sort of a Payne's grey and then more of a mid tone, warm grey, I feel like they're both super useful. So I'm going to say yes to both of those, the sort of tealy, tealy blues I use a lot, but I think I use the darker one more than the lighter one. So let's let that go. We'll keep that one. The periwinkle blue is an absolute Yes. I use that all the time.

  So we've got like an ultramarine, like a Prussian blue sort of thing, and then a sort of grey blue. I do like my blues with a bit of grey in them, but this is the best dark blue ever. If I'm going to have a dark blue, it's got to be that one. And if I'm going to have a grey blue, I think I'd rather have this one. So those two can both go, Okay, I'm getting good at this. Then we have this sort of greyish sea green, this very light and this bright, bright blue. I don't feel like this bright blue is super useful. I feel like I can use the Periwinkle or the grey blue to do the same kind of job. And if something wants a pop. Then maybe I go with, like, a pink or one of those greens.

  And then I think this one, and this one, this is, again, is a lighter version of this. And I think I can probably do without. I have a green that I've already chosen which is quite similar. Look at me, am I? I am so brave. I'm so brave. This one is for the sake of tonal variation, if we're looking at Sky colours or, yeah, I feel like that's useful. So that's seven, but technically two of some greys. So I'm gonna let myself have it. That's five blues and two greys.

  There are still a lot of colours. I mean, I have, let's have a look here. I have got rid of quite a pile. They look so pretty. Oh, I shouldn't look at them. Okay, now we're gonna do browns. Now you'd think, I don't actually use Browns a lot, but you know, these are the sorts of colours that, even though I don't do landscape, these sort of dark hues pop up quite a lot. I don't tend to use them when I'm sort of trying to colour something Brown. I tend to use them more when I want a dark, like a neutral dark, and I'll go in with a burnt umber or something like that.

  So I think really the most important thing is the tonal variation here. I think this is a good kind of Caucasian flesh tint, good for neutral highlights and that kind of thing. I think I can say goodbye to the other one. I want a warm brown. But I think this one can kind of be the job of this can be done by this Carmine colour. I think they're similar enough for that to work. So we're gonna say goodbye to that one, Burnt Umber I cannot live without. That absolutely has to be on my palette. I think a warm brown, and then a paler, a raw sienna. I want it to be greeny or do I want it to be yellowy? Greeny or yellowy? Greeny or yellowy? I'm gonna give you the yellow one because I think there are a few other colours in the same sort of family, so they're a bit sort of dirty, and you see what I mean, they just kind of look really, really good together. So I think that's the one that is going to come with me on this next journey.

  Okay, so what have we got then we have got, let's zoom you out. We have got our Browns down here. We have got our purples, we have got our pinks. We've got some greys, we've got some blues, we've got some greens. We've got those yellows, we've got some oranges and we've got some reds. It doesn't look very limited, but I think this is a really good kind of, like, base set to have, and then I can make, like, smaller, limited palettes out of this. So like, That one I just showed you with this selection, for example. Like, that's that's all got, I mean, it's all the same tonal range, but still.

  So what we're gonna do now is the fun part. This is where we get out all of the other materials. So we're looking at markers, we're looking at pastels, we're looking at pastel pencils, we're looking at coloured pencils, we're looking at ink. We're looking at my Gansai paints, because I use those a lot in my sketchbook, and I want to kind of pull out what those colours are. We're looking at, maybe some gouache, maybe some acrylic gouache, stuff that I can just pull straight out of the tube. I'm not really interested in mixing at this point. So if I have to mix a colour to get one of these, then it's not working. I want to be able to be very much just kind of grab and go. So that might mean that I need to do some shopping when it comes to paints, which, oh my goodness, what a terrible shame. But I think from colour pencils and pastels and that kind of thing, I think I've probably got, I can get pretty close to all of this. So that's what we're gonna do next.

  So once I had gone through all the colours and narrowed it down, I ended up with this nicely concise colour palette. There are probably still too many blues and greens, but, you know, I was feeling indulgent, so let's just go with it. Then I pulled out all the swatches into this beautiful little notebook, which is, in itself, a little piece of art. I mean, look, look at that. I will go through and glue these at some point, they're just paper clipped. At the moment, I went through all of my sketchbook media, and I just swatched out what I had, all of the things that I have on my desk and using my sketchbook all the time. So I just swatched out the variations for each separate queue.

  I've separated them out from the rest of my sketchbook supplies. It ended up being maybe a quarter of what I have available to me, and separating them out means that I've got a really lovely selection of media, but they're all in the colours that are part of my visual vocabulary and that I feel really, really comfortable using. I know how they work together. I know how they layer. And so if I'm in a situation where I'm tackling a new subject, or I've only got like 10 minutes to complete a drawing, or the most important thing for me, really, is to do studies for final paintings. I have all of that media to one side, and I can just grab it and not have to think about it. I think it's going to be an amazingly useful thing to have done.

  I'm not saying that these are going to be the only colours that I use in my sketchbook moving forward, I think that would be very dull, and that kind of makes me want to cry a little bit. Always going to be instances where I'm pushing myself and stretching myself and bringing in new colours to try or new media, but this just gives me a sort of baseline structure that I can build around, and I'm really interested to see how it develops. I have just finished this project, so I haven't done a lot of sketches to experiment with this palette, but if you keep an eye on my monthly review videos, I will be updating you as I go along with that.

  I really, really recommend you doing this like I really recommend this as an exercise if you're someone who is very intuitive in the way that they use colour, or if there are a certain set of colours that you'd reach for over and over again, having some kind of formal structure around that and really analysing what those colours are. It's really, really useful for sort of giving you a top down impression. If you're curious about understanding more about your particular style, your particular way of making art, then this is a fantastic exercise. If you are wanting to have a baseline that you can experiment from. This is also a really good exercise. And if you're wanting to work with a limited palette, but a limited palette that makes sense to you, then choosing colours that you're already reaching for is a brilliant place to start, and you can add in from there.

  If you're not an artist yourself, I hope you find it interesting to kind of peek behind the curtain of what goes on and the constant experimentation process that happens. It's not all amazing visits from the muse. There is some science and some analysis and some nerdy stuff that goes along with all the magic. I love it. I love the juxtaposition between art and science and colour is one of those places where that really happens anyway. If you like this video, I'm sure you'll like some of my other videos. Please do go check them out. Subscribe if you liked it, and I'll see you next week.

• See more of my creative process in The Laboratory