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If you haven’t already read the previous blog post in this urban sketching palette series, you can read it here.

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In my Urban Sketching Palette

Here’s the 20 colours in my urban sketching palette, the majority of them are Daniel Smith, but there are a couple of Winsor & Newton Professional colours in there too.

Pinks and Reds

• Opera Rose (W&N)/Opera Pink (DS) (I have both of these versions, and I can’t remember which one is currently in the palette, I use them interchangeably).
• Quin Rose (DS)
• Pyrrol Scarlet (DS)

These three have been in my palette for years.

I love the bright opera rose/pink. It’s great for warming up skin tones, and it’s a good mixing colour with yellows to create a variety of oranges. I used to have Transparent Orange in my palette, but with all the reds, pinks, and yellows in the palette, there’s basically all orange bases covered, so I took it out.

Having a warm and cool versions of reds in the palette is essential to help me mix a broad range of oranges and purples, and to warm up other mixes. But understand which combinations will enhance a colour mix and which will desaturate a mix, is the cornerstone of watercolour mixing.

Yellows

• New Gamboge (DS)
• Hansa Yellow Medium (DS)
• Hansa Yellow Light (DS)

I used to only have New Gamboge and Hansa Yellow Light in my palette, but Hansa Yellow Medium is a new addition, and I’m actually using it a lot to mix oranges and greens. I think that when I run out of Hansa Yellow Light I’m going to switch over to Lemon Yellow. I’d much rather have a translucent version of a colour in my palette than a semi-transparent.

Greens

• Phthalo Green – blue shade (DS)

I did have Sap Green and Undersea Green in my palette, but I used them both so infrequently because I don’t sketch a lot of foliage except the occasional palm tree and a few potted plants. So I took out those two pre-mixed greens and replaced them with this Phthalo Green which is a good mixing green, and definitely one you’d never use neat.

Blues

• Manganese Blue Hue (DS)
• Cobalt Turquoise Light (W&N)
• French Ultra Marine (DS)
• Phthalo Blue – green shade (DS)
• Indigo Blue (DS)

For the longest time I had Cerulean Blue in my palette, but when it ran out I substituted Manganese Blue Hue, and I much prefer its brighter tone.

Colbalt Turquoise Light is one of my faves. It’s been in every palette I’ve had, for years. I just love it, even though it’s more opaque than most of my palette.

French Ultra Marine granulates beautifully, and I use it as my warm blue. I use it a lot.

Pthalo Blue – green shade, has been living with me for a while, but I haven’t used it a lot because I’ve always thought it was too bright. But it’s a handy cool blue to have in your palette, and I mainly use it diluted for cool skies. It helps skies to fade into the background when the focal point of a sketch is in the mid or foreground. I’ve also been exploring it for making greens.

I really like having a dark blue in my palette for clothing, but it doesn’t get a lot of use, so I’m planning on working out how to create a realistic mixed indigo, so I can free up this pan in my palette.

Neutrals

• Neutral Tint (DS)
• Buff Titanium (DS)

I use the natural tint as my premixed grey, but it’s also useful for toning down bright colours. I do like mixing a granulating grey out of Burnt Sienna Light and French Ultra Marine, but if I need a quick fix of grey, the natural tint is handy to have. It’s also good for tonal studies.

Buff Titanium is useful for creating pastel versions of brighter colours. It desaturates a colour, so that the area doesn’t detract from the focal point. For example, if your focal point in is the foreground, you could use the desaturated colour for the background. It’s great for toning down skin tone mixes, and is a versatile base to mix with other earth tones for sand, rocks. It can also give neutral or white walls some texture and movement.

Earth Tones

• Potters Pink (DS)
• Indian Red (DS)
• MA Natural Sienna (DS)
• Quin Gold (DS)
• Burnt Sienna Light (DS)
• Raw Umber (DS)

Potters Pink granulates beautifully. It can be added to other colours to create softer tones, and to add some granulation to non-granulating colours. It’s useful in skin tones, and other subjects, like sunset or sunrise skies, where you need some subtle transitions.

I don’t know how Indian Red got in my palette, but now I wouldn’t be without it, especially for tiled roofs. It never ceases to amaze me what a beautiful soft grey it creates when mixed with Cobalt Turquoise Light.

MA Natural Sienna is a fabulous alternative to Raw Sienna and Yellow Ochre. I chose it because it’s transparent and granulating.

I had Quin Deep Gold in my palette and just used it as a pure shade. But I switched to Quin Gold, as it’s a lot more versatile as a mixing colour. I didn’t think I’d use it a lot, but I find that I’m using it as an alternative to yellow in many pure and mixed scenarios.

Burnt Sienna Light is a lighter more transparent version of the more traditional Burnt Sienna. It’s great for mixing with French Ultra Marine for a mid-tone grey. I’ve also discovered that it is good to create some variations with Natural Sienna.

I had a spare pan space in my palette and Jane Blundell recommended the addition of Raw Umber. I don’t usually use a lot of earth tones, but she’d mentioned that this colour was difficult to mix, and really handy for foliage shadows, and brick or terracotta surfaces.

So that’s my palette as of October 2025, so that gives me two months before the end of the year to finesse my colour selection and get to know its mixing capabilities.

Click here to find out what colours are in Jane Blundell’s ultimate urban sketching mixing palette. It’s always good to have a starting point in your palette selection, and work your way around from there. That’s the approach I took when building my urban sketching palette.

How I built my Urban Sketching Palette

Having a warm and cool versions of the in the palette is essential to help you mix saturated and desaturated versions of secondary and tertiary colours.

These 6 tubes of colour are in Daniel Smith’s Essential Set, and this was the starting point for my previous urban sketching palette.

I have this set in my six-pan palette which I used when I’m going away on a short break. I’ve spent a lot of time getting to know these six colours, which is why I incorporated them into my larger urban sketching palette.

Colour mixing can get really confusing, really quickly. I made the mistake of buying way too many shades of all the primary colours when I first started. If I was going to start my creative journey again, I’d just start with 6 colours and see how far I could get mixing the colours I need, and then plugging the gaps. I knew I wanted these 6 in my urban sketching palette, and I had also a few long-term favourites I wanted to keep (Opera Rose, Cobalt Turquoise Light to name my core faves). The rest of the colour were chosen for their mixing capabilities, based on the subject I usually sketch.