“A beautiful painting depicts the harmony between nature and imagination.”  Lian Quan Zhen

Lian Quan Zhen is one of my favorite contemporary artists. He creates amazing watercolors using only the three primary colors.  From this simple palette he miraculously creates paintings that glow with all of Mother Nature’s hues.  I really admire his work and  have found myself using increasingly fewer tubes of secondary and “designer” colors in my own painting.

Creating a beautiful spectrum of colors by letting just three of nature’s brilliant colors mingle, suspended in a pool of water is an exciting alternative to choosing from a palette of many colors.

My first palette had 17 wells for holding paint and two large areas for mixing.  I filled it with Windsor Newton Professional Artist’s watercolor paints,  two of each primary color, several “earthy” shades like Sepia, Burnt Sienna and Raw Umber, Sap Green and Veridian and a…