Triads of Colour

Watercolour experiments in three tubes of paint

Colour swatches for turquoise phthtalo, quinacridone red, nickel azo yellow watercolours

I put on my black linen pants, a black jumper and a black polished cotton smock. I tie a string of black pearls around my neck.

I walk through the white rooms (milk white, that is, with a soft calcium carbonate pigment rather than the usual highly reflective titanium dioxide pigment) and out to my studio.

And I start painting out the strongest, brightest range of colours from three tubes of watercolour paint that I can.

The spectrum is a puzzle to solve for me, not just in terms of hue, but also in terms of pigments. In watercolour all of the different pigments have their own distinct material properties to be understood.

The earth pigments sink heavily in the watery puddles. Ultramarine breaks up into mottled clumps. Quinacridone dissolves completely, evenly, transparently. Phthalo stains¹

That puzzle (maximum possible range of hues) is really best solved by phthalo blue, quinacridone magenta and azo yellow², and so I had created a limitation for myself to use only those three pigments for several years now.

But now I know these pigments so well that when I paint, there are few surprises anymore.

And I love surprises, I love the adventure and the experiment.

So this year I had to find a new triad.

Cerulean Chromium + Anthroquinoid Red + Indian Yellow

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cerulean chromium + anthroquinoid red + indian yellow

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The first triad that seemed to have promise was cerulean blue, anthroquinoid red and Indian yellow. I made a unit of lines testing out this new triad.

For me, every body of work is an experiment. I set up an hypothesis and the paintings are the tests. The resulting paintings might answer that question, or maybe just raise a completely new question.

Thats the reason all my titles are numbers; each painting is an instance in the experiment.

Results? Cerulean chromium blue has a charming hue but does not play well with others. It is very heavy, and just sinks precipitously in a wash - so subtle gradations are impossible to build up. Indian yellow is lovely and warm, but an unusually dominating yellow.

Prussian Blue + Quinacridone Magenta + Nickel Azo Yellos

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prussian blue + quinacridone magenta + nickel azo yellow

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The next triad to test out was Prussian blue, quinacridone magenta and nickel azo yellow.

Prussian blue was also reluctant to give variations in tone, but for different reasons. It has two states - either very light, or very very dark, when it completely dominated the paintings. I quite liked the results, but my aim was to make a whole group of paintings vibrating through the spectrum, and this triad wasn’t going to make it happen.

Turquoise Phthalo + Quinacridone Red + Nickel Azo Yellow

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turquoise phthalo + quinacridone red + nickel azo yellow

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So more research - and I choose turquiose phthalo, quinacridone red and nickel azo yellow to work with in 2023.

I loved the glow of the nickel azo yellow in particular. Every painting seemed like it had a drop of sun in it.

So I settled on the limitation of this triad and painted it out through twenty variations of colour.

Fifteen of these experiments will be making up a solo exhibition at Madsen Härdig Akvarallgalleri opening October 13th.

Madsen Härdig is a gallery specialising completely in watercolour, so it was wonderful to have an invitation to ship my experiments from New Zealand all the way to Madsen Härdig in Lund, Sweden and be part of their mission to show lovely watercolours to the world.

Those who are really interested in watercolour triads need to take a look at Jane Blundell’s work, she is the Queen of triads.

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1. Thats because of the very mild, inconspicuous nature of the binders in watercolour. In acrylic or oil paint, the binders are thick and strong and the physical properties of the pigments are subsumed into the massiness of the binders. In watercolour so many of the physical properties of each pigment are visible, part of the painting

2. All from the Daniel Smith range