by Andrew James

More colours means more fun. Go wild in the art supplies shop and get as many pigments as possible. Itll make painting messier, more complicated, more expensive, and more stressful - thats the whole point of the exercise! Here are my top five reasons you should get as many colours as you can carry.

1. Make mud fast: give all your colours that poo-brown shade.
Forget clarity - Im all about that preschool brown. You know, the one you get when you mix all the colours of playdough together? With more colours, your mixes will be as dull as possible. Perfect!

2. Decisions are easy: Give yourself as many as possible.
Painting is easy. All you need to do is decide where to paint, what to paint, how to paint, and when to paint. Why not chuck in another decision and give yourself too many colour options to choose from? That way, youre sure to blow your mind up with frustration.

3. Spend more money: Youve got too much anyway.
Nothing has ever been as cheap as it is today. With all that spare change leftover from our cheap veges, cheap eggs, cheap petrol and cheap rates, you've got to spend it on something. Throw a few more paint tubes in that shopping basket and do your bit to balance the budget. True artists have an empty wallet and a box full of seldom-used paints.

4. Dilly-dally for longer: Time management is overrated.

Life is easy, theres not much to do, and none of us are particularly busy. Why make it easier for yourself when you can spend 10 minutes debating whether that sky is cerulean, Prussian, pthalo or ultramarine? With more colours in your paintbox, youll spend more time choosing and less time painting. Great!

5. Make each painting a surprise: everyone loves a chaotic body of work.
Why stick with something consistent and create a cohesive body of work when you can just randomly jump around your colours? That way, when all your paintings are together, theyll appear to be curated by some chaotic demon rather than one painters collected work.

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Andrew James is a sketchbook artist and watercolourist from Wellington. Hes a big advocate of simplicity. His palette usually consists of four colours:

• French ultramarine,
• transparent yellow,
• magenta
• and raw sienna.

Such a limited palette lets you get on with painting quickly and doesnt break the bank. It makes your colours cleaner, makes the process more straightforward, and creates unity between your paintings.