I adore your pieces of art information which help todays artist either justify or alter their own thinking on add things art. You are a wealth of knowledge which you generously share. Thank you
I like to use an oil painters palette 16" x 12", gesso on masonite, laid flat on a taboret. I am a watercolorist, but I haven't found a water color palette that I like. I don't use it as a mixing palette; about 15 years ago I quite mixing colors. on the palette and now rely on glazes on the actual painting.
I arrange my colors currently, as I use them. I lay out about 60 colors with more or less space between them depending on how much I use them. Browns go in one corner nearest me, while blues go in the other corner and grays go in between. Reds go up the side from the browns while greens go up the side from the blues. Yellow go across the top while purples and turquoises go in the middle (oranges count as either reds, browns, or yellows, depending).
Every other year or so, I clean the palette off entirely, and put fresh colors on it, not necessarily in the same order. I think this helps me explore new relationships in color.
I use a Pike watercolor palette but just a handful of colors ( mainly for economy) but I arrange them like you do.I love your idea of changing the specific order when you put out fresh colors!..and your reason for doing so.It gives me some ideas ...for some reason I'm obsessed with yellows and earth colors and this gives me more of a rationale to try new ones without overcomplicating my palette ..if that makes any sense.
I use an EdgeProGear easel, so it comes with 2 grey toned palettes, 1 in glass, the other, lighter, made of acrylic. The grey background they come in is a bit too dark in value, but I adjusted to it.
I place my colors from left to right, light to dark beginning with white, and warm to cool. Then I mix vertical strings that don't always include white. The colors I select depend on the subject. For portraits it's very limited with a pre-mixed overall fleshtone (my own, not store bought) + something like lemon yellow, red vermilion and/or quin rose, English red or similar, black. For landscapes, again it depends on the scene, but it's a standard layout of white, cad or hansa y, ochre, burnt sienna, cad red light, aliz crim or nowadays quinacridone red, ultra blue, burnt umber, and emerald green or something similar ( permanent green, thalo, etc) this is for greys mixed with aliz crim or q red/rose, chromatic black as it makes fantastic greens when mixed with hansa y or even cad y. As I go I might add more chromatic colours as needed for punch in FP, or smooth transitions. If it's an ocean scene, then just white, 2 or 3 blues, b sienna. That's it.
I find that with experience the colors themselves don't matter so much because I've learned to mix to get the value and hue I want. Don't have cad y ? No problem, hansa y will do just fine. Learn what you can do with what you got. Don't be a color snob.
I like to use a clear glass palette (on a taboret) because it cleans up well from a wide variety of paints, from oils to all water mediums to printmaking ink. I can also put a piece of paper under the glass that’s the color and value of whatever substrate I’m working on, so my mixtures stand a better chance of looking the same on the painting as they do on the palette. Pastel manufacturers like to tell you that you need a stick of every color because you can’t mix them; of course that’s nonsense, you can mix them like any other pigment—you just have to do it directly on the paper. Thanks for this discussion, it’s fun!
My palette(s) are normally arranged in a similar way, but the colors I put on it depend on what I’m painting. My portrait palettes don’t normally carry Prussian Blue; but all my landscape palettes do. As far as how things are arranged. I don’t use a handheld as it hurts my thumb (arthritis). My white goes in the upper left hand corner. From there across the top a warm yellow, cool yellow, warm blue, cool blue, warm red, cool red (like madder). Back to the white and down the left hand side are my earth tones/neutrals Ochre, burnt sienna, burnt umber and sometimes ivory black. I arrange my palettes the same way both for plein air and for studio work. Portraits will find me adding a red like Q. Rose and removing lemon yellow in most cases. I mix all my greens and purples as needed.
I mix as I go because I feel stuck if I premix. And more importantly, it would be all I did with painting that day and maybe for that week depending on my health issues.
I can't find a link to it online, but some years ago there was an article in, I think, Smithsonian Magazine, about Stanley Meltzoff's "collection" of artist's palettes. Picasso's was a bicycle seat, Dali's a stuffed goose. Of course, he'd made all of them as humorous commentary on the artists.
As for me, I just love a minimal palette. I mostly use the "Stobart" palette of five colors and white, and only extend it if I absolutely have to. I'd use the Zorn palette if I didn't paint so many landscapes with greens. The reason I love a minimal palette is that it relies on my knowlege to make the other colors, rather than trying to be perfect, I use implied colors, local contrasts, etc. to get the point across. After all, ninety percent of the effect is just values.
I have two smallish palettes -- one handheld, and one on the table. The table holds from-the-tube pigments, and I keep it alive between sessions. Mixtures are on the handheld palette, but with only a couple value steps mixed and pooled for any hue; anything in-between gets mixed on-demand.
I'd love to be more regimented about it, but when I've premixed many pools in value rows, some get obliterated and others go unused; I haven't retrained my brain to navigate by moving to an adjacent mixture instead of adjusting the one I just used.
I haven't used oil in a while but I like mixing strings with a warm and a cool of each string. For amounts, you develop a sense of how much you really need for a given passage.
I enjoyed seeing JMW Turner's palette when I visited Tate Britain in London a few months ago. Very cool!
I adore your pieces of art information which help todays artist either justify or alter their own thinking on add things art. You are a wealth of knowledge which you generously share. Thank you
Thanks, Joyce. I'm learning, too.
I like to use an oil painters palette 16" x 12", gesso on masonite, laid flat on a taboret. I am a watercolorist, but I haven't found a water color palette that I like. I don't use it as a mixing palette; about 15 years ago I quite mixing colors. on the palette and now rely on glazes on the actual painting.
I arrange my colors currently, as I use them. I lay out about 60 colors with more or less space between them depending on how much I use them. Browns go in one corner nearest me, while blues go in the other corner and grays go in between. Reds go up the side from the browns while greens go up the side from the blues. Yellow go across the top while purples and turquoises go in the middle (oranges count as either reds, browns, or yellows, depending).
Every other year or so, I clean the palette off entirely, and put fresh colors on it, not necessarily in the same order. I think this helps me explore new relationships in color.
Sounds like a good system. When you have that many colors, you've got to have a set way of laying them out or it becomes chaos.
I use a Pike watercolor palette but just a handful of colors ( mainly for economy) but I arrange them like you do.I love your idea of changing the specific order when you put out fresh colors!..and your reason for doing so.It gives me some ideas ...for some reason I'm obsessed with yellows and earth colors and this gives me more of a rationale to try new ones without overcomplicating my palette ..if that makes any sense.
I think I would give the old masters a headache. I am a watercolor painter, and I use plates, colors have no order or design. Just wherever they fit.
Yeah, watercolor is a whole different thing. Like in England, where a lot of people have wells of a premised cool wash and warm wash.
Me too.
I’m surprised that Whistler premixed colors - and spent a while to do it, apparently.
Yeah, that is a big surprising.
I’ll bet Sargent DID get paint on his jacket.
I use an EdgeProGear easel, so it comes with 2 grey toned palettes, 1 in glass, the other, lighter, made of acrylic. The grey background they come in is a bit too dark in value, but I adjusted to it.
I place my colors from left to right, light to dark beginning with white, and warm to cool. Then I mix vertical strings that don't always include white. The colors I select depend on the subject. For portraits it's very limited with a pre-mixed overall fleshtone (my own, not store bought) + something like lemon yellow, red vermilion and/or quin rose, English red or similar, black. For landscapes, again it depends on the scene, but it's a standard layout of white, cad or hansa y, ochre, burnt sienna, cad red light, aliz crim or nowadays quinacridone red, ultra blue, burnt umber, and emerald green or something similar ( permanent green, thalo, etc) this is for greys mixed with aliz crim or q red/rose, chromatic black as it makes fantastic greens when mixed with hansa y or even cad y. As I go I might add more chromatic colours as needed for punch in FP, or smooth transitions. If it's an ocean scene, then just white, 2 or 3 blues, b sienna. That's it.
I find that with experience the colors themselves don't matter so much because I've learned to mix to get the value and hue I want. Don't have cad y ? No problem, hansa y will do just fine. Learn what you can do with what you got. Don't be a color snob.
I like to use a clear glass palette (on a taboret) because it cleans up well from a wide variety of paints, from oils to all water mediums to printmaking ink. I can also put a piece of paper under the glass that’s the color and value of whatever substrate I’m working on, so my mixtures stand a better chance of looking the same on the painting as they do on the palette. Pastel manufacturers like to tell you that you need a stick of every color because you can’t mix them; of course that’s nonsense, you can mix them like any other pigment—you just have to do it directly on the paper. Thanks for this discussion, it’s fun!
You might check out the book The Artist's Palette, by Alexandra Loske.
My palette(s) are normally arranged in a similar way, but the colors I put on it depend on what I’m painting. My portrait palettes don’t normally carry Prussian Blue; but all my landscape palettes do. As far as how things are arranged. I don’t use a handheld as it hurts my thumb (arthritis). My white goes in the upper left hand corner. From there across the top a warm yellow, cool yellow, warm blue, cool blue, warm red, cool red (like madder). Back to the white and down the left hand side are my earth tones/neutrals Ochre, burnt sienna, burnt umber and sometimes ivory black. I arrange my palettes the same way both for plein air and for studio work. Portraits will find me adding a red like Q. Rose and removing lemon yellow in most cases. I mix all my greens and purples as needed.
I mix as I go because I feel stuck if I premix. And more importantly, it would be all I did with painting that day and maybe for that week depending on my health issues.
Premixing doesn't have to take very long, and you can always free-mix in addition to, or off to the side of, premixing.
I can't find a link to it online, but some years ago there was an article in, I think, Smithsonian Magazine, about Stanley Meltzoff's "collection" of artist's palettes. Picasso's was a bicycle seat, Dali's a stuffed goose. Of course, he'd made all of them as humorous commentary on the artists.
As for me, I just love a minimal palette. I mostly use the "Stobart" palette of five colors and white, and only extend it if I absolutely have to. I'd use the Zorn palette if I didn't paint so many landscapes with greens. The reason I love a minimal palette is that it relies on my knowlege to make the other colors, rather than trying to be perfect, I use implied colors, local contrasts, etc. to get the point across. After all, ninety percent of the effect is just values.
Thanks for reminding me of the Stobart palette. That is, "palette" in the sense of a choice of colors more than the sense of the mixing surface.
Check out the prismatic palette of Frank DuMond at the art students league with “strings” different values of each color. Best Richard
That's the one passed on through Frank Mason, right?
"Delacroix’s assistant reported that it sometimes took days to set up his master’s palette." I would love to know what took the assistant so long?
Not sure; working big maybe?
I have two smallish palettes -- one handheld, and one on the table. The table holds from-the-tube pigments, and I keep it alive between sessions. Mixtures are on the handheld palette, but with only a couple value steps mixed and pooled for any hue; anything in-between gets mixed on-demand.
I'd love to be more regimented about it, but when I've premixed many pools in value rows, some get obliterated and others go unused; I haven't retrained my brain to navigate by moving to an adjacent mixture instead of adjusting the one I just used.
I haven't used oil in a while but I like mixing strings with a warm and a cool of each string. For amounts, you develop a sense of how much you really need for a given passage.
The coolest thing about this post is how everyone comes up with their own methods!
That's where so much of the fun is in all this,figuring things out for yourself!