The Triad Palette
Explore watercolor through the seasons with this limited-edition palette curated by artist Lisa Spangler with handmade, professional-grade paints by expert paintmaker Kelly Hollstrom of Letter Sparrow.
By The Art Toolkit Team
The Triad Palette and Triad Template invite watercolor practice and play with warm and cool colors and paints of varied mixing strengths, opacity, and granulation.
The Story Behind This Collaboration
Artist Lisa Spangler loves to play with color mixing as the seasons change, particularly the varying hues of green. Working with our mutual friend and expert paintmaker Kelly Hollstrom, founder of Letter Sparrow, Lisa curated this set of four triads to align with each season of the year. Accompanied by the Triad Template—a black 3-inch circular aluminum protractor with six sections for plotting watercolor triads, co-designed by Lisa Spangler and the Art Toolkit team—this palette invites color exploration all year long.
This limited-edition Triad Palette has the perfect colors for mixing those bright, fresh greens of spring, the lush greens of summer, the more muted greens of fall, and a dark evergreen for winter.
A Custom Engraving for the Triad Palette Lid
For this project, we designed a special Pocket Palette in a beautiful teal blue with a custom pan arrangement of Mini Pans and Small Mixing Pans. The custom lid design features the clean, geometric linework of an overlapping triad.
Collaborators
Letter Sparrow
Letter Sparrow began in 2016 to help artists enjoy their creative experience even more by offering high-quality handmade watercolor paints and gouache. Their paints are non-toxic, highly pigmented, vegan, and professional grade. Kelly Hollstrom, the founder of Letter Sparrow, lives in Texas with her husband, son, and two dogs.
Lisa Spangler
A former software engineer, CTO, and current website designer, Lisa carves out time between working to get out and paint the natural world around her in her home state of Texas, from leaves to cacti to mushrooms. Through her art and travels, she aims to capture that feeling of awe and wonder on paper and spread that joy to others.
Over the past few years, Lisa has shared her enthusiasm for watercolor and design with the Art Toolkit community through demos, a workshop, and as an Art Toolkit Ambassador. Learn more here!
Paints
Each limited-edition Triad Palette includes four triads of paint by Letter Sparrow and curated by Lisa Spangler to align with each season of the year. Letter Sparrow paints are non-toxic, highly pigmented, vegan, and professional grade. We have included pigment numbers for your reference—stay tuned for paint refill updates!
Spring
Row 1: Primrose Yellow (PY3), Quinacridone Rose (PV19), Cerulean Blue (PB36)
Summer
Row 2: Hansa Yellow (PY97), Quinacridone Magenta (PR122), Phthalo Blue (PB15)
Fall
Row 3: Sunflower Yellow (PY65), Coral (PR255), Ultramarine Blue (PB29)
Winter
Row 4: Gamboge Yellow (PY150), Black Currant (PR101), Indanthrone Blue (PB60)
Mixing Tips from Lisa
Mixing Greens: Start out with two puddles of paint, one yellow and one blue. Then, add little bits of blue to the yellow until you get what you want! If it’s too vibrant, you can de-saturate it with your red.
Mixing Neutrals: Some triads only actually need two colors to mix a neutral, and Lisa typically prefers just two-color mixes in the field, for example, this palette’s Indanthrone and Black Current. Otherwise, she likes to mix orange first, and then add in little bits of blue until she gets what she wants.
Triad Template
Each Triad Palette is accompanied by the Triad Template, a black 3-inch circular aluminum protractor with six sections for plotting watercolor triads. We designed the Triad Template with Lisa Spangler to create an easy tool for exploring color mixes. Triads can push your mixing skills and create unity in your paintings as colors relate throughout a composition. The palette and template are not sold separately (yet!).
Studying triads also helps you to recognize subtle differences in color and develop a framework for exploring fundamental color mixing. Being thoughtful and deliberate in your studio can lead to more free and intuitive mixing in the field! Build your color intuition by playing with triads!
This project has been many years in the making, and we are so grateful to work with knowledgeable and passionate artists and paintmakers like Lisa and Kelly. On behalf of everyone who contributed to making the Triad Palette come together, thank you so much for sharing in the joy of its launch!
