One Tube of Paint

I remember the first time I used Prussian blue.

I had been painting for about four months. My palette was a confused collection of every color that had looked interesting in the shop. My paintings were technically reasonable and completely without identity. Then I picked up a tube of Prussian blue because something about it felt right in a way I could not explain. I laid down a wash. I watched it dry. I have used it in every single painting I have made since.

A signature color does something specific and powerful to a body of work. It creates continuity. A viewer who sees five of your paintings together should be able to feel the thread connecting them even before they see your name. Color is the strongest thread available — stronger than subject, stronger than style, stronger than technique. It is the thing people recognise first and remember longest.

Finding yours is simpler than you think. Stop buying colors that look interesting and start noticing which colors you actually reach for. Open your palette right now. Which colors have almost run out. Which have barely been touched. Your signature color has been there all along. You just have not named it yet.

The painters whose work I find most compelling are almost never the ones with the most colors. They are the ones who know their five colors with extraordinary intimacy. Who know exactly what happens when this blue meets that green at this particular water ratio on this paper. That knowledge only comes from constraint. Choose less. Go deeper. The limitation is not a restriction. It is the entire point.

What Prussian blue taught me is that a signature is not something you design. It is something you discover by paying attention to what you keep returning to.

Your color is already showing you who you are.

Pay attention.

Download my free guide — Finding your color story — to gain more insights