A New Encaustic Color Palette

Welcome to the area well outside of my comfort zone!

Changing color palettes in watercolor, gouache, pastel, or ink does not phase me or give me pause. It's not a big deal.

Encaustic, however, is a whole new story.

Changing the color palette is a timely process.
Melting the wax takes time, mixing it takes more time, and dedicating new brushes and paint tins to new colors takes time to label and track. It's its own process.

So many gorgeous options to choose from

Please know it is not my intent to complain. I am attempting to explain why changing my encaustic palette falls outside my comfort zone.

And here is the hardest part. I have to limit myself. Encaustic gets muddy and messy if you try to work with too many colors at once, it is unforgiving in this way. I don't like limits, but I've learned my lesson, so I comply.

I found a beautiful sunset photo and wanted to recreate it in encaustic, so I set to work finding the two or three key colors that I could use to create the orange, yellow, pinky, and purple coastal sunsets. But! I can only use three base colors to make all of the above. So this is what I've needed up with.

Indigo, Mars Yellow, Alizarin Crimson, and lots of white!

I really love how much cornflower purple I was able to add in.