1mo
My favorite limited palette: magenta, yellow, black and white
I love working with limited palettes and have been so stoked to see the “Jorn” palette making the rounds the last few weeks. It’s a limited palette of phthalo blue, red iron oxide and white popularized by Jordan Richardson a.k.a. @lead_white. It’s great to see excitement for limited palettes in the mini painting hobby as I feel like it’s a tried and true approach in other art mediums but often overlooked in miniature painting. If you’re looking for other limited palettes to try, I’d suggest checking out the combination of magenta and yellow plus black and white. I specifically like quinacridone magenta (PR122) and cadmium yellow light (PY35). Just know that cadmiums should not be used through an airbrush as breathing the particles into your lungs is considered toxic. What really stretches the gamut of this palette may be surprising. It’s black. Black when mixed with yellow (especially a cooler non-orange-leaning yellow like cadmium yellow light) produces some surprisingly nice green tones. And magenta mixed with black yields lovely purple tones. In addition, magenta and white make some very vibrant pinks. And depending on the ratio, magenta and yellow make some nice reds and oranges. Add some black to the orange and you’ve got brown. You can do just about any kind of NMM metal too (but maybe not a convincing copper patina). This palette basically covers every hue in the entire color wheel which the exception of blue. But if you mix up a gray using the white and black and place it next to warm colors like red or orange and the gray starts to look a bit blue. Or make a gradient from purple to gray to green and the gray kinda looks blue within the gradient. I created a Baselair collection with my projects using this palette: thebaselair.com/collections/234478-limit… Give it a try and let me know what you create! EDITS: (Sep. 7 2026) If you want your grays as cool as possible, avoid Mars Black (PBk11) as it leans warm. A Carbon Black (PBK7) or Bone/Ivory Black (PBK9) should do the trick for keeping things on the cool side.