Color Notes: My Basic Palette

Recently I began mentoring a few people via email. I thought it might be a good idea to share some of their studies with you. This is the first of many entries on color. None of this is new. It was all shared with me at one point and I was charged to share with others.

First of all, and most painters don't like to hear this part, but I use a limited palette of only 3 colors and white. When I first began using these on the recommendation of my mentor, it was to learn to mix color consistently each time. After mixing the same pile hundreds of times using only those few options, you can learn how to get very accurate color matching. You never wonder which yellow you mixed with which violet to get that particular shade of olive. So, I set out to use this color palette for one year. I have never switched from it since, and it is the palette I use both in the studio and en plein air. (Incidentally, it is also the palette my mentor uses every day and has for 20 years). What I have found during this adventure of learning to mix accurately and consistently, is that I can mix ALMOST any color with these few choices. I can mix umber or ochre or whatever, and you cannot tell it from the tubed version. So for me, it is simplicity now. It's not that I couldn't add those tubes of color in order to not have to mix them. Instead, it is that when I go out to paint or need to pick up a color from the supply store, there's not a lot of question what to throw in the bag. This also makes my plein air gear very lightweight!

When I began teaching using this palette, I wanted proof to support my words so I made several color charts. (More on that in the next entry). Even I was amazed! I knew I mixed those hundreds of great colors, but when you see them all laying out nicely in order, it's pretty incredible. When I lay the colors out on my palette, I always lay them out in order of the spectrum, and mix secondaries (USING THE SAME THREE TUBES) to lay between the primaries.

So my palette looks like this:
WHITE--Gamblin CAD YELL MED--ORANGE--Winton CAD RED DEEP HUE--VIOLET--Winton FRENCH ULT MARINE--GREEN--Mud from previous day's palette.

Students often ask why I use two "student grade" paints. These particular colors are stretched with transparent stretchers. Many student grade paints are stretched with white or other opaque filler. Because of the transparency of the red and the blue, I get wonderful, thin, darks and my secondaries mix very cleanly. The violet serves well as a replacement to alizarin crimson and the red plus just a touch of orange, makes a nice cad red light. Even though they are student grade, their lightfastness is the same as the more expensive, professional grade of cad red deep and ult marine blue. I save all my money to put into the yellow. Student yellows are usually stretched with white or some other nasty mess that muds them very quickly. Pay more for the yellow. Either use the Gamblin listed above (which, despite its name is not as orange as some other brands' cad yellow medium), or try Utretcht Cad Yellow Light. As for the brand for white, I like the consistency of Gamblin or M. Graham the best. Basically with white, the more you pay, the less you need to use when tinting.