Fall in the Southwest: Favorite Colors

Exploring my favorite colors for painting the desert southwest of Utah.

The cottonwoods were a stunningly brilliant color of yellow and they seemed to glow beneath a sandstone cliff. With each gust of wind the leaves rustled, and I could track the wind’s progress down the alley of trees by watching the dancing movement. Some of the leaves would catch the wind and dance along the ground as motes of distilled sunshine. I had been waiting a month to paint here, with this light and these colors. 

Last October I had the immense privilege of being the Artist in Residence at Capitol Reef National Park. Less crowded than the other parks in Utah, Capitol Reef has always been a favorite and it was an amazing opportunity to stay there for a month. Every day was gloriously similar- wake up, eat, pack lunch and supplies, and head out on a hike to paint, sketch, or film. 

With that much time in a landscape that is so different in nearly every way from my home mountains of the Pacific Northwest, I relished the chance to try new ideas, colors, and techniques. It was not easy, especially for the first few weeks. I felt like I kept missing the magic of the place - that my paintings looked good visually, but were missing that sense of expansiveness and arid intimacy that is carried in the dry breeze and lives in the swirls of sandstone and the delicate petals of a desert flower. 

So, I kept experimenting, especially with colors and different brushes. The white gouache began going on every hike, and some of the odd-duck colors I ignored at home became those that I reached for the most. 

Here is a list of the colors that I used the most in the desert, based on how many paintings they appear in. It is obviously not an exhaustive list, and also not listed in order of use, because each painting, time of day, and scene shifted the colors I used. I share them, and a few notes about the colors below, in the hopes of inspiring some new color combinations in your palette or fresh ideas about mixing. It is not meant to be an exclusive list of required colors! 

• Quinacridone Burnt Orange

• Phthalo Blue Red Shade

• Indian Red

• Viridian

• Perylene Red

• Quinacridone Gold

• Quinacridone Rose

• Yellows (mainly New Gamboge and Hansa yellow light)

• White gouache

• Buff Titanium (not used as frequently, but it is fun)

Notes on some of the colors, and when I found myself using them: 

Quinacridone Burnt Orange is a color I got a few years ago, and then very rarely touched when painting in the mountains of Washington. It is a beautiful color, but at home it muddied my mixtures for snowy mountains. In the desert, however, it was spectacular as an amazingly organic looking orange that also has a lovely luminosity and depth. It also mixes wonderfully with white gouache, and with reds or pinks creates awesome mauve and maroon tones. Of all the colors listed here, this is probably the one I used in the most paintings. 

Phthalo Blue Red Shade: This color is unusual. It dries much duller than expected both when used alone and when mixed with other colors, especially pinks and reds. Because of this, it is harder to use than my other blues, as I often forget to compensate for this more dull effect. And, to make it even harder, the dullness appears at all saturation levels. But, I still found myself reaching for it, especially to mix with white gouache. When combined with white the dullness isn’t as much of an issue, and it became a really nice color to use in shadows and as a wash over base colors to create my new favorite canyon wall effects. 

Indian Red: quite possibly the most opaque color besides white in my palette right now, this color looks like house paint at the highest concentrations. It likes to take over mixtures so I have to be mindful not to use too much. It also granulates a lot, especially in washes, which is sometimes amazing and sometimes very hard to get consistent results. My favorite way to use this color is in collaboration with one or two other colors that granulate less, such as a yellow or pink, and even in shadows with blues! That granulation also makes it amazing for creating the impression of sandstone textures. 

Viridian: A very odd color. It is very pale (low concentration/ saturation of color) and once dry in my palette pans it definitely takes more agitation of the brush to re-wet. It also granulates and tends to get dominated easily in mixtures because of its low saturation. I could get a similar color with a very diluted Phthalo Green Blue Shade, but this would miss out on the unpredictable granulation and settling that happens when it is mixed or dropped into an area wet-in-wet. It also happens to be a dead-on match for the unusual green color of a certain layer of the mud-stone Bentonite I encountered on numerous hikes. 

Perylene Red: I fell in love with this color a little while painting in Washington, too, because of the gorgeous earthy purples it made. In the desert, it can mix amazing pinks and red stone mixtures that sometimes felt more realistic than what I was able to mix with the rose or Pyrrol Scarlet. It is also easier to control in mixes compared to the scarlet, too. It is a lovely primary red with excellent lightfastness, which was the reason I picked it up to begin with. Another go-to in sandstone mixtures.

Quinacridone Gold: One of the first ten tubes I ever bought, this color is beautiful. Ideal for the first layers of color in glowing sandstone illuminated by sunrise or sunset. Forgiving and luminous when mixed with reds and pinks while retaining some earthiness, too. Unbeatable for glazing. But, when it interacts with blue it will get green-ish really fast, even in glazes. I used this color the most for early layers in sandstone, and in some white gouache mixtures.

Quinacridone Rose: Another old reliable and early color I found. A staple in the Northwest, and super fun to use in the desert because I get to use it in higher concentrations than back home. Super fun to mix with the burnt orange. Also fun to mix it with granulating colors because it will move differently across a wet page and separate a little from the heavier granulating pigment, which can be a really fun way to see interesting results (for this separation to occur I had to be out of direct sunlight). 

New Gamboge was a fun one to have for painting the cottonwoods at their peak, when the leaves varied from a lighter yellow (often painted with Hansa Yellow Medium)  to a deep golden color that New Gamboge was perfect for. Interestingly, New Gamboge is a mix that also includes Hansa Yellow Medium, which might be why they work so well together. I also found myself adding New Gamboge to stone mixtures much more often than the Hansa yellows, because I wanted that rich and deep yellow tone. 

Buff Titanium: of the colors on this list I used this one the least, but I wanted to include it because it is quite fun to experiment with. More opaque than most watercolors but not as opaque as white gouache, it occupies a neat middle ground that allows it to change the appearance of other colors in high concentrations, while in low concentrations or when used wet-in-wet it behaves more like normal watercolors. It is a nice base color for sandstone, too, albeit a tiny bit bland. 

White gouache: I was so happy I had this paint with me. When I started to add it to my watercolor paintings it was the “aha” breakthrough moment that allowed me to convey a sense of solidity and depth in sandstone that I had been missing before. It radically changes the appearance of many colors, and makes them more opaque so you can layer even light colors OVER previous layers of paint. This layering ability came in especially handy for foliage, because I could paint the stone more quickly by not worrying about preserving white spaces for the delicate watercolors greens. I could just paint everywhere with the sandstone colors and then do the foliage with a mix of my greens and white. 

Do you have any favorite colors for painting desert landscapes??