This painting is a 1 hour sketch of my little suede teddy bear using the Zorn palette.

Anders Zorn was a Swedish landscape and portrait painter – a contemporary and competitor of John Singer Sargent and Joaquin Sarolla y Bastida.  Zorn often (but not always) limited his palette to just four colors: ivory black, flake white, yellow ochre, and vermillion red (I swapped in Cad Red Med.)

Limiting a palette is always an interesting challenge because you are forced to work less on perceived colors and more from value, form, and color temperature.  The Zorn palette actually gives you a great range of tones, both warm and cool.

I painted teddy after doing the color chart.  My palette was full of all of the mixtures and I think I probably should have limited them even further.  Also – canvas paper sucks.  Literally.  I would put down a brushstroke and it would get sucked into the tooth of the canvas almost immediately. For the next experiments I have added extra gesso to the paper to help seal it up.

Zorn Palette Teddy : Oil on unmounted canvas. 2013

Zorn Palette. Colors are mixed 3/1 approx.