During a recent visit to Nebraska, I set myself for a watercolor landscape sprint to use a whole sheet of Arches ripped into 18 long (~4x9) and 6 squares (~4x4) using a new set of colors. Not new, but colors I hadn't used in this combination before. In the past, I had kept the paintings "realistic" by having skies painted in French Ultramarine Blue or in Cobalt Blue. But, a visit to the Birger Sandzen Memorial Gallery in Lindsborg, KS on my way to Nebraska inspire me to swap in Cobalt Violet.
I like to inform my color choices with the upcoming fashion trends, and since I use FashionSnoops in my product development courses in my role as a fashion professor, I have access to forecasted colors for Spring and Summer of 2025. Out of the huge range, I chose these 9 as having good versions in pigments I owned, or in the case of the Daniel Smith Wisteria (light pink in middle top) colors I had purchased but never yet used.
Another concern is which brand paint to use in a particular color. I purchased both Holbien and M. Graham Cobalt Violet since they got good lightfastness reviews on handprint.com, but the version above, using the Holbein, didn't meet my needs and I went with the M. Graham version, even though I find the honey keeping it soft is an issue with plein air painting.
A visit to the Spring Prairie, a preserved prairie in Saline County Nebraska, confirmed my color choices for autumn.
There is the yellow and brown.
The three greens are also spot on.
The Quinacridone Burnt Scarlet does a good job portraying the sumac.
All in all, this set of colors works nicely for giving a different mood and feel for a different time of year.
As a fun alternative, I pulled the yellows and golds up to the sky for a sunset feel and worked the cobalt violet into the trees.
