June 12, 2024

Warm and Cool Colors

Have you ever wondered what a “warm blue” or a “cool red” is?

By The Art Toolkit Team

An open watercolor sketchbook with various paint tubes strewn about.

Today, we’re demystifying warm and cool colors. You’re probably already familiar with thinking about reds, oranges, and yellows as warm, and greens, blues, and purples as cool. Today, we’d like to share how hues within each color can lean cooler or warmer through swatching paints, painting a color wheel, and sharing another example palette.

For this demonstration, we built a special Demi Palette with Standard Pans (paints listed below) filled with six colors: a triad of warm primaries and a triad of cool primaries. Having a warm and cool of each primary color can create a well-rounded, versatile palette. Follow along below!

We hope this demonstration gives you a map for building your own palette. Once you’ve picked your paints, check out our video, Getting to Know Your Palette, where we share tips for filling your pans, labeling them, and making a little swatch card.

This Demi Palette

A Demi Palette with a cool triad on the left and a warm triad on the right.

To build the palette from this video, all you need is an Empty Black Demi Palette, one pack of Standard Pans, and the following Daniel Smith watercolor paints.

Row 1: Hansa Yellow Light, New Gamboge

Row 2: Quinacridone Rose, Pyrrol Scarlet

Row 3: Cobalt Teal Blue, Ultramarine Blue

We love seeing what you create. Keep in touch, and happy painting!

An artist sites on a rock, dipping a paintbrush in a Pocket Palette.

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