The little painting to the right was done entirely with just three pigments: permanent blue, Winsor yellow and alizarin crimson (all by Winsor & Newton).

All three of these pigments are "cool" leaning–that is, the red has a bluish cast rather than a yellowish cast; the yellow, although a clean clear hue, still leans slightly toward green rather than orange; the blue is a violet blue rather than a greenish blue.

The three pigments are also very intense–that is, highly saturated so that it takes very little actual pigment to affect another color when mixed together. They are also all staining pigments, which means they cannot be re-wetted and lifted off the paper very well once they are dry. Because of this, you have to plan ahead for the pure white areas and remember to paint around them or protect them with liquid masking fluid as you work.

Finally, in terms of pigment characteristics, this palette of colors as a whole is semi-transparent, with alizarin crimson being the most transparent, and the permanent yellow lemon being the least transparent.

When you look at the color wheel I painted using these three pigments, you can see that mixtures of the yellow and blue result in fairly clear greens, but that they are somewhat opaque (because of the yellow). Likewise the mixtures of alizarin and yellow give clean oranges, that become more opaque as they move toward the yellow. The mixtures of the alizarin and the permanent blue result in clear, transparent violets. When it comes to neutrals, this palette is capable of mixing a wide range of them, from saturated darks (using all three pigments), to warm or cool grays (using different proportions of the three hues in a less saturated mix).

Give this set of colors a workout with your own ideas for paintings. I think you'll discover that it can handle a wide range of subjects very well!