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| the color challenge |
In a long stretch teaching in the community trenches, color proved to be the most difficult element of painting for students to handle effectively in oil. For the simple reason that it is so exciting.
Color is intense, direct, emotional: it carries all before it. Including, often enough, the painter in a passionate if unintentional auto da fe.
At this point we are blessed and cursed with a tremendous variety of brilliant permanent colors compared to older painters. It's not easy to know which of those 127 tubes at the store are the right ones. In one sense, there are no bad colors, just bad palettes or unfortunate associations.
But because there are so many choices there are many, many unfortunate associations possible, and the thoroughly impassioned modern painter is only too apt to substitute a variety of scintillating pigments for the -- supposedly -- glum and tedious art of color mixing.
This can easily lead to chromatic anxiety disorder. Learning to manipulate color within the logic of light is similar to learning legible handwriting: a prerequisite to clear communication.
Painters interested realistic light, in harmony, and/or in the development of the feeling of a specific place and time, learn to limit the palette and pay close attention to the pigments which are chosen for a given subject.
Luckily, great painters have been doing this for centuries and there are specific working patterns to follow.
Pigments, like people, have complex personalities, and complex interactions. These take time to learn intimately. This intimacy is the foundation of realistic form and light.
In spite of the need most painters feel to have a tube of almost every color imaginable, in the great and ongoing Thermopylae of painting, some pigments have proven more useful than others. The ones that are most useful to the daylight process are typically well-known, and may be considered prosaic or boring. However, when color is used correctly in realism, no pigment is in fact discernible because the illusion of light is complete. In other words, real painting is not about color, it uses color to create feeling. This is the great challenge for painters working now.
Many more recent pigments or special boutique colors have strong personalities, and are difficult to integrate into the ensemble. A palette can become so boutiqued that it quickly makes mud. Older painters, often used -- or chose to use -- lower chroma earth colors, and developed a system of augmenting color temperature by the careful differentiation of transparent, translucent, and opaque color going from dark to midtone to highlights. The strength of titanium white in the modern palette works against this: modern painting could be told as the story of the many ways painting adapted to a blizzard in a tube.
Ultimately, the way color is utilized is a matter of personal choice: a list of pigments I've found useful for daylight occurs further down the page.
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| the modular palette: an introduction |
How to cut through the giant knot of color complication, the chaos of color enthusiasm, and simply make paintings?
Conceptually, only three colors are needed to give an effective sense of light and shadow in a flat plane: the primaries, red, yellow, and blue. While red and yellow are relatively warm, and blue is relatively cool, each primary also comes in two varieties: warm and cool.
A controlled shift across the color wheel between warm and cool, coupled with shifts in value, establishes the illusion of dimension. Uncut color makes mid to dark values that are relatively warm. Color cut with medium makes lighter values that are relatively warm. Color cut with white makes lighter values that are relatively cool. White operates as the lightest shade of blue.
A palette containing two triads of primaries -- one warm, one cool -- and white, will allow the painter to create countless colors without straying too far from harmony, or atmosphere, the envelope of the day. Various combinations of pigments can be shuttled in and out of this system to suit the painter and the subject, but a limited number of pigments helps -- forces -- the painter learn to mix more closely, which is always the key to accurate, deeper, or simply more pleasing color.
The concepts here are discussed in more detail below.
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| value |
A painting is fundamentally a dynamic composition of monochrome values executed in color. If the composition doesn't work in monochrome, the addition of color, however sublime or inspired, will not solve it.
For two decades I saw students struggle heroically to prove that oil paintings can be made spontaneously without any form of planning or organization.
While the element of spontaneity is very important to art, it is only relevant after the craft of turning color into light and form in all its logical complexity has been mastered. It is crucial to be able to translate color into value first, because all systems of making paintings begin by stressing the larger shapes and light-to-dark relationships.
For centuries, in myriad different systems, color has been added to form, not used to make form. This is not to say it can't be done: Matisse certainly did it. But he did it after mastering traditional painting, and as his use of color for it's own sake increased, his rendition of form became increasingly two dimensional. It had to.
When we talk about the value scale, we mean the various increments between the darkest dark and the brightest bright in a painting. Learning to see value means learning to see the relative lightness or darkness of an area rather than it's actual color.
This is important because it allows you to interpret an idea in monochrome first rather than trying to juggle composition, value, and color all at once. Value scales can be long or short, attenuated or compressed. Old paintings often contain value scales which expand as they go from dark to light: fewer dark values, more light ones. This quality is called relative contrast.
If a value scale is long but also compressed, you have a painting with high contrast. If a value scale is both short and stretched, you have a painting with low contrast.
Value is a kind of visual accordion that you learn to play, pushing and pulling the brights and darks around until you have what you want. Older painters often exploited the dramatic potential of value to make a limited palette feel more colorful, a more recent painter to do this was Hammershoi.
Impressionists, on the other hand, often compressed the value scale in order to use more chroma -- brighter color -- effectively. Typically, a painting will stress value or color but not both. Examples of great painters who have combined these approaches in various ways would be Bonnard, Sargent, Vermeer, or Titian.
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| temperature |
The color wheel is divided down the middle vertically at neutral yellow and neutral purple, the orange and red half being called warm, and the blue and green half being called cool. These terms, however, are relative: scarlet being a warmer red (closer to orange) than crimson (closer to blue). The warmest color is reddish-orange, the coolest is blue-green. In painting, light and dimension are created by a warm-cool opposition operating across a value scale determined by the intensity of the light and therefore the shadow.
A typical older formula of thinking about color says that the lights are cool and the shadows are warm. As the layers develop, the darks get darker and warmer, the lights get cooler and lighter. But in practice this quickly becomes too simplistic, and results in a frustrating lack of internal dimension. Why? Because the warm-cool shift is more than linear, in fact each value is capable of dimension, so each value can contain a warm-cool shift. While shadows may be relatively warm, and higher values relatively cool, there must be some relevant attention paid to the subsidiary shifts: cooler reflections in warm shadows, warmer demi-shadows in the cool higher values. This is the area of exploration in which a more genuine illusion of depth can be achieved.
A more natural model for envisioning the behavior of warm/cool movement within value involves realizing that the illusion of dimension is the result of both a shift in value and a shift in temperature. The number of values so treated is up to the painter: many older paintings give only a fleeting impression of temperature shifts in the darks if that, concentrating instead on a high degree of accuracy in the subject. But it is logical that within dark shadows there would be cooler reflections, any landscape painter knows that shadows are full of quietly sparkling detail. Similarly, the values on either side of the famous cool midtone must be relatively warm or a false flatness results. The painter controls the number of values depicted, the number of shifts from warm to cool and back as the values change, and their relative emphasis. Some painters put it all in, others have created more artistic or personalized versions of the logic. This system of controlling the actual dimensionality of a painting can be seen in action in many Rembrandt paintings, especially something consciously dramatic like "Belshazzar's Feast". Using this serpentine approach to the warm/cool shifts across value allows more latitude and freedom in the way of color development, and ultimately leads to a clear abstract understanding of the way color makes light. The simplest way to conceive of this is in terms of a triangle of red-yellow-blue being needed to create a sense of dimension within a given value as well as within the painting as a whole.
In practice this quickly becomes more complex because of the way both shadows and highlights are influenced by surrounding color, and the way each value in the painting has the potential for dimension, and therefore a temperature shift. In both shadows and highlights there are elements of absorption and reflection.
Warm and cool are relative terms: ultramarine and phthalo are both blues, but ultramarine is warmer and phthalo is cooler. Thinking this way is important for constructing a balanced palette as well as for interpreting what's going on at a given time with the light.
In daylight, for example, there are often times when its really a toss-up whether the light is pale yellow or pale blue. It doesn't matter which you pick just as long as your shadows and midtones are painted consistently with that choice. Blue light requires warm shadows, yellow light requires an element of purple in the shadows. This purple can be, but does not have to be, exaggerated, it can be made -- for example -- with burnt sienna or Mars violet and the blue of the sky.
Also, remember that white operates as a shade of blue, so the use of white in the highlights needs to be balanced by orange in the shadows. This was often seen in older painting in a transparent dark warm color which formed the basis of the shadow structure, allowing the light to be pure white. The use of pure white to make light with blue shadows is a common student error, resulting at best in "pastel unity" but without a convincing sense of light, dimension, or place.
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| the envelope, please |
A painting executed in daylight has one color bleaching all the highlights and one corresponding opposite color enriching and integrating all the shadows. The brightest or most unbroken colors are in the midtones, but these too have subtle shifts: the absolute middle of an upright cylinder in daylight contains a cool midtone: the lighter tone on one side is warm, the darker tone on the other side is also warm, and warmer. Each value in the painting has the potential for this type of shift, usually they are more developed in the midtones and highlights.
The painting can also be influenced by the atmospheric envelope of the day. This has been especially exploited in landscape by painters such as Turner, Corot, or Monet, who learned to exaggerate the effect of atmospheric recession on the local colors. By painting with a specific cool-warm axis in mind from the beginning you will be able to add local color to the warm-cool harmony of the day, rather than trying to find each color individually and mix it correctly. It is much simpler to paint from the envelope first: identity or local color goes on top of atmosphere, inevitably resulting in a certain charismatic essentialization. Of all the things one might explain about landscape especially, this is among the most important: to learn to see color through the atmospheric lens of a specific day rather than trying to find each color separately.
A way to help yourself find the envelope is to work with a limited palette. How few colors can make the scene? What is really crucial? Once you learn the less-is-more approach to the palette, you can vary the participants and even expand them. But you'll never return to the beauty contest approach of a dozen vivid, uncut colors, each vying for center stage.
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| the logic of light |
Light never does anything illogical. If it did our lives would be impossible. Light has rules and they are invariable if often subtle in operation because of the intense relativity of color, the way colors interact.
The primary colors of light in painting are red yellow and blue. In this equation both black and white operate as shades of blue.
The illusion of dimension in any painted scene is created by the interaction of value -- light to dark -- and temperature: the shift from warm to cool.
The temperature of the light and shadows are opposites. Cool light means warm shadows; warm light means cool shadows. The more warm or cool the source of light, the more cool or warm the shadows. If the light comes from everywhere, such as at dawn or at twilight after sundown, an overall tone -- cool, in these cases -- is moderated by warmth in the shadows. (If you look at paintings from this point of view you can see the many ways that painters have played with the possibilities here over the centuries. The many various Isms of Twentieth Century painting all use purposeful distortions of this principle).
In practice this means that if you are using white (a shade of blue) to make highlights, your shadows need to contain some form of orange. If your white also contains yellow, your shadows also need to contain purple. If your white contains orange, your shadows need to also contain blue. This explains the complexity of color in shadows but becomes more simple if you memorize the basic opposite color pairs on the color wheel. Once you start doing this and see it work in practice it quickly becomes automatic, and is typically a matter of getting the shadows to lie down or recede in relation to a given set of higher values.
The midtones contain the most pure colors: the highlights contain white and possibly another color, the shadows ideally contain no white and the opposite colors to the highlights. The more you can keep white corralled to only the highest values, making as many tones as you can transparently -- without white -- or with lighter value colors that have a certain opacity, the more lively and vivid your painting will be with an easier to control, limited palette.
Painting this way enables you to paint the light first and foremost, with the detail or identity of things coming second. This means that your paintings will be inherently organized around the color axis or envelope of the day and time you're painting, making them intrinsically realistic without the potential weighty baggage of detail. Painting this way allows you to control the level of detail by always working from big towards small, dark towards light, warm towards cool.
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| transparent to opaque |
Older painting endlessly exploits the relative warmth of transparent pigments in relation to the relative coolness of pigments mixed with white. The darker transparent tones have a physical recessive depth while the lighter opaque tones appear closer or on top. Older paintings were often begun transparently, with opaque higher values placed on top of transparent darker ones. Midtones are made with a minimum of white, the cool midtone is a subtle but important part of still life and portrait/figurative work, occurs a little more randomly or creatively in landscape.
As one approaches Impressionism on the timeline of painting, flat passages of color are broken up more and more using chromatic opposition in a relatively discreet way. This system, from transparent to pellucid to turbid to opaque, creates the maximum illusion of depth and light by exploiting the relative optical warmth of transparent paint and the relative optical coolness of any paint mixed with white. Subsequent layers of the painting continue in the same way. A simple way to think about this type of painting is to try to concentrate the use of white into the upper quarter -- or so -- of the value scale, and to use a second triad of primaries that are lighter and somewhat opaque to make shifts in the midtones. It is much harder to do this with titanium white, which is ten times more opaque than the lead white of older painting. However, titanium white can be effectively cut with the putty medium.
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| perennial palette |
A great many paintings have been made over the centuries based on warm earth colors such as yellow ochre, venetian red, and burnt sienna, used with the cool colors black and white. Handled well, the interaction between warm and cool in these paintings more than makes up for their relative lack of what is thought of in modern terms as color. This is the palette of cave paintings, many Renaissance frescoes, and work of painters such as Rembrandt, Velasquez (above), Hammershoi, and Murillo, below. There are many subtle variations possible here. The most important thing to stress about the earth colors is to get the best. If you use commercial paint the best earth colors are made by Maimeri and Blockx; Old Holland and Williamsburg have good pigments but use a linseed oil which, in my experience, yellows more. Please don't think that an old tube of student grade "Venetian Red" has any relationship to Blockx Venetian, or to the Venetian pigment sold by reputable sources. I've seen many students shocked by the difference between a quality earth color and the student grade which is perceived of as good enough because dirt is dirt. In reality the difference is dramatic, and costs at most a few more dollars per tube. This is true economy.
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| three color palette |
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Above is an example of a simple three color palette made with Blockx Ivory Black, Doak's Tuscan Red Earth, and Blockx Yellow Ochre. If you make some examples of the secondary colors in this three color situation color mixing becomes easier. Mixing a few example values of each color with white is helpful: more if you're using a higher chroma triad.. The great thing about this exercise is it teaches the validity of color relativity clearly, and the way realistic color harmony springs from the interaction of color. The gray made by black and white in this situation looks unnervingly blue, especially if it's anywhere near it's chromatic opposite, orange. Older painters made constant use of the way complements make one another appear brighter. Below is a small study of heirloom roses done in the same set of colors.
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| putty color |
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When using a limited palette, the putty medium offers a type and subtlety of color manipulation not possible otherwise. Set up shows Venetian Red about to be cut progressively with chalk putty, lead white, and titanium white.
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The chalk putty creates lighter values in more discreet increments than either white, and they are warmer by far. These are values that can be achieved in no other way, explaining how painters such as Rembrandt or Velasquez were able to do so much chromatically with the limited palette. Note the pronounced color-obliteration and blueness of uncut titanium in comparison. This effect can be ameliorated to some extent by pre-cutting titanium white with putty before use.
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The putty medium can be configured in many ways. It will make paint which is thin and smooth as well as paint which is rough and broken. It acts both physically and chemically to stabilize the paint film. It is a solvent-free painting system, brushes can be kept on their sides in oil as documented in earlier painting practice. Almost all work on this site from the last three years is made with the putty medium exclusively and no additional resin. This is an extremely versatile and tough material.
More putty process details to be found here.
More putty history and instructional text to be found here.
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| maximum chromatic shift |
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Older paintings by painters who used a chalk medium often exhibit a technique for maximizing the chromatic shift available from a palette of relatively low chroma earth colors, black, and white. This technique involves using the warm colors -- yellow ochre, raw sienna, venetian red, burnt sienna, and including black -- without white, the lighter values of these colors being made by the chalk putty medium. A layer of these goes down first, followed by a cool, opaque layer using only black and white. By controlling the amount in which these distinct warm and cool layers remain separate or blend together through the putty medium, a great deal can be accomplished in one layer while keeping the color, value, and temperature clean. The eye perceives more chroma because of the exclusion of white from the warmer values. As with any technique, more is possible through experience and practice.
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| two color exercise |
A common atelier method exercise is to make a painting with two opposite colors and white, typically a quality burnt sienna and a neutral ultramarine. Let's look at how much color this can make using the putty medium.
First, make up a neutral dark mix of ultramarine and burnt sienna. Then make up twelve values of this using the putty medium and divide each into two. Add a very small amount of white to each value in one set of twelve. This gives a set of warm/translucent and cool/opaque grays. Then do the same twelve value division with the two colors, giving the same warm/translucent -- cool/opaque options.
Pre-mixing to this extent gives 72 different colors to work with from the original three. Further subtlety can be pre-mixed as well if need be. The degree of control available to this system, even without actually pre-mixing to this unusual extent, is significantly greater within a single layer of paint than what can be achieved without the putty medium.
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| direct painting |
An interesting aspect of older painting is the documented use of very small palettes. The conjecture that this might mean the colors were mixed on the painting, not on the palette, is supported by the writing of Samuel van Hoogstraten, a pupil of Rembrandt. This highly efficient method is discussed in depth here in the second half of the text.
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| pre-mixing color |
There are many ways in which color can be pre-mixed on the palette to help the painter get a better handle on the potential of the palette in relation to the subject before the painting begins. A set of lighter tones made using white will encourage the avoidance of pure white. A series of chromatic grays, or simply grays made with black and white, in a few or many values, can also be used to create a cool element. A mirror image of the palette mixed with black or a chromatic -- mixture of red, yellow, and blue -- black will also help keep the painting balanced between warm and cool. These options are illustrated schematically above, much more could be done. Once these simple mixes are made, they can be used to create a set of specific colors for the painting.
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| color theory |
There have been many color theories proposed over the centuries, to the extent that they provide a study of their own. They are interesting to explore, and offer certain general guidelines which are useful. Certainly, to think in color, you need to think three-dimensionally: challenging but ultimately better. But as a painter, you are dealing with color practice in order to make art, and in fact need to think in a fourth dimension as well, that of time, what goes on where and when. Practice is always more complex than theory in word, but simpler than theory in deed. Over time, one learns a system which is functional and expedient. Understanding a dozen pigments and their interaction will be much more valuable in use than understanding a dozen theories.
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| painterly theory: triads |
For this reason, it is often possible in older paintings to see painters organizing the palette around one or two triads of color in addition to white. There are many working variations of this concept, but the general idea is to create the most potential color variety from the fewest number of pigments that will serve for a given painting. This allows easier access to the close color harmony that is always part of any natural scene in daylight.
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Triads of red yellow and blue can be warm, cool, or mixed. Many painters have tried to come up with an optimum triad of red, yellow and blue in order to create the simplest color mixing. I've seen several paintings from the 20's using cobalt blue, vermilion, and yellow ochre to make a landscape, it's not that realistic but very effective. Paint manufacturers now make a set of "primaries" which are modeled on the colors of process printing or the inks in a color printer. These colors constitute a Cold Triad, (above), and are all transparent. They will make a great many different colors, including warm ones. Which brings us to an interesting warm-cool conundrum: cool colors will make warm colors but warm colors will not make cool colors. However, warm colors are painter and viewer friendly, and most palettes end up with a triad of both. If you want to experiment painting with the process triad, try breaking up the intensity of the pigments by mixing a palette of secondaries from them as well before beginning, and also mix some colors with an addition of white.
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| the modular palette |
Unless using all earth colors, one warm and one cool triad with white are almost always enough to make a painting. The art here is to pick appropriate colors for the mood of the painter and the painting. If you think of the palette in this modular way, you can shuttle pigments in and out of your line-up without creating the ubiquitous chromatic chaos of too many pigments, perhaps familiar from the Local Restaurant School of painting. And this might be a very good thing for everyone's digestion. With a modular palette you are relying on mixing pigments effectively, not on a variety of pigments, so each change in pigment has a dramatic effect on the overall situation.
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| double triad palettes |
Because light is logical, palette construction needs to follow this logic, and is most often about the relationship between two pigment triads which are opposites in a way that is relevant to the painter and/or the subject. For example, one triad is selected for high chroma, the other for low chroma: this is the palette that most older paintings use, incorporating earth colors (lower chroma) with a high chroma triad like vermilion, ultramarine, lead tin yellow (Vermeer). This can also be thought of in musical terms, the lower chroma colors providing the bass or bed which supports a higher chroma melody. Both triads could be high chroma, but one is warm, the other is cool: Post Impressionist paintings often use this type of palette, as do modern plein air colorists, example on the right. One triad could be primary, the other secondary, with one being low, the other being high chroma. The possibilities here, given the modern variety of pigments, are enormous. But the creative aspect of this relies on selection, on the acceptance of specific limitations that will, paradoxically perhaps, allow for more facility, harmony, and depth in execution.
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| monet palette |
When using high chroma pigments, even less can be more. Monet used several slightly different palettes during his Impressionist heyday but the one he spoke of as his standard consisted of only five pigments. From left above: Aureolin (above, transparent, or Cadmium Yellow, opaque), Vermilion, Viridian, Cobalt Blue, Rose Madder. Real rose madder is somewhat hard to get and expensive so you might use Pyrol Ruby Red or an Anthraquinone Crimson there, not Alizarin, if possible. This and maybe using phthalo green for viridian are okay as substitutions but you absolutely need real cobalt and real vermilion. This is not an easy palette to harmonize.
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| earth + blue palette |
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A small copy of Corot's Crecy en Brie Road made using the very limited palette of five colors above. Golden Ochre, Burnt Sienna Light, Green Earth, Cobalt Blue, and Ivory Black. This type of palette was used in many different ways throughout the 18thy and 19th Centuries in making landscapes in the studio and outside. In this scenario situation high quality earth colors make a large cumulative difference. Ironically, Corot's actual palette used the brighter vermilion and viridian: see National Gallery Technical Bulletin No. 30.
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| hay wain palette |
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A palette used to copy Constable's first small study for The Hay Wain had six colors. This is a good example of a ubiquitous traditional palette scheme which uses a higher chroma triad over a lower chroma one. The low chroma colors here were ivory black, transparent mars red, and transparent mars yellow. The high chroma colors here were nickel yellow, cadmium red, and a mix of ultramarine and phthalo blue. Not historically accurate pigments.
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| almost corot palette |
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A palette I used outside on a few trips to Italy, similar to Corot's genral palette although he used viridian instead of green earth. Yellow Ochre, Golden Ochre, Vermilion, Green Earth, Cobalt Blue.
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| bright outdoor palette |
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A double triad palette I've used outside to get away from the predominance of summer greens. This could be used very brightly but I ended up liking a slightly more subdued version of it, as in the image of Button Bay on Lake Champlain, above. Colors are: nickel yellow, transparent mars yellow, pyrol vermilion, pyrol red, cobalt blue, and ultramarine blue. The higher overall chroma of this palette can take a somewhat more frenetic approach to outdoor work without becoming muddy.
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| local color |
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Specific places have specific colors associated with them. This palette evolved out of wanting to copy the colors of nature in my location as closely as possible. As a palette it's slightly redundant but quick to use, a helpful quality outside. All the colors are cut about one to one with a chalk and oil putty. Nickel yellow, yellow ochre, brown ochre, green earth, ultramarine with indanthrone, burnt sienna dark, crimson lake (pyrol). All colors are Blockx except the green earth, Holbein.
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| palette development |
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Above is a palette I've been developing in the studio for still life over the years: this is the white peony version, which needs the dark crimson. It began with the idea of learning to use black as a blue by simply excluding blue from the palette. This took a while, but worked. This palette has a very cool dark triad, below, that makes a wide range of elegant chromatic grays with white: the green and black mixed together with white feel very blue in context. An earlier iteration of the warmer colors is in the middle, the more recent version is above. You can see how the second idea would give the palette more range without sacrificing anything except perhaps the more primary yellow. Perhaps the burnt sienna -- upper right -- is redundant, something close could be mixed from the other pigments. Palettes can be fine tuned in this way to a surprising extent without getting into the extended number of pigments that makes ultimate harmony difficult.
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| pigments of interest |
A list of pigments I like. Incredibly subjective! One thing I find myself doing more and more is mixing two pigments together rather than having both on the palette. Examples of this would be indanthrone and ultramarine light mixed one-to-one for daylight, or a mix of two different crimsons, or a green earth augmented with a small amount of a brighter green.
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| cool red |
For a long time Alizarin Crimson was the only choice here, not the most permanent or, in many cases, the most chromatically aligned color. Then the Quinacradone pigments came along and these are still quite useful and permanent. There are several shades from magenta through deep rose: the standard "primary" red pigment is a quinacradone. In spite of having a very specific "rosy" look when uncut, these pigments are all very good mixers, and figure prominently in specialty or boutique reds. Still, there are no real crimsons in this family. Anthraquinone Crimson is deep but too cool on its own, M. Graham makes it, Holbein calls it Crimson Lake. Blockx makes a Pyrol Crimson which is fine but lacks some of the depth of Anthraquinone. Both RGH and Kremer have a Pyrol Ruby which is deeper than anything I've seen from a larger company, Blue Ridge makes this into paint. I often mix a few of these cool reds: equal parts of Quinacradone Rose, Anthaquinone Crimson, and Pyrol Ruby make a good general purpose crimson, less obviously a specific pigment than any of them alone.
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| warm red |
My first choice here is vermilion, especially in the context of an older style palette. Next would be a high end cadmium red light, a dense scarlet that's very similar. The Old Holland cadmiums are also brilliant, as are those from Blue Ridge. Then the Blockx Pyrols, which are fine for more modern type painting and palettes but seem a little two dimensional in the OM context. A good trick for more realistic work is to slightly tone down a brilliant warm red with a small amount of Venetian Red or another earth color appropriate to the situation.
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| cool yellow |
Nickel titanium yellow is a cool, low chroma, opaque sulphur yellow that works well with earth colors. A bit warmer is Bristol Yellow, a higher chroma version of bismuth yellow, and a couple versions of a zirconium silicate yellow from Kremer. For me all of these work better than the cooler cadmiums, although these can be cut with a quality ochre to soften their metallic quality.
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| warm yellow |
Lead-tin yellow II is warm though low chroma and opaque. Real Naples Yellow is similar, again low chroma and opaque. The most versatile modern warm yellow is Indian Yellow, which has been made with a couple different pigments, is a school bus shade, and transparent. Check the pigment number for permanence. Aureolin is moderately warm and transparent, relatively expensive. The warmer shades of cadmium yellow work well, are opaque. If you use a warm Hansa or Arylide yellow -- the "permanent" yellow pigment family -- try to find out the lightfastness, these vary in quality that way.
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| cool blue |
The best all-round pigment for me here has been a cool cobalt, this is available from Blue Ridge as paint and RGH as pigment. You could also use an Ultramarine Light, which would be on the green side. Milori Blue, the more permanent version of Prussian Blue, can be lovely but is ice cold and very strong: this was used really well by Constable in his outdoor work, but can easily take over, and is still of questionable permanence in white. Another perhaps more versatile cool blue in Manganese Blue, which keeps threatening to disappear but doesn't. This is close to Azurite in color and can be used to augment an earth color palette as well as with higher chroma colors: again, a very strong pigment. Phthalo blue is modern and tremendously strong, similar to Milori in color and personality: a small amount of phthalo mixed with ultramarine light can be good. Cerulean has a very special soft semi-opaque quality and is good for atmospheric haze, or as the blue in a low chroma, high value underpainting. There is also a specialty blue called Fra Angelico blue which works well in this position, possibly as mix of ultramarine and manganese. A good place to try mixing two cool blue pigments to get exactly what works for you.
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| warm blue |
I use Blockx Cobalt Dark most for this, but not in the same painting with the cooler cobalt. The Kremer Cobalt Dark is also very high quality, can be mixed in small amounts on the palette, use caution as cobalt is toxic. Indanthrone is interesting, is it warm or cool? But so far when I use it I'm very aware of it as a color. It seems to work best in daylight cut one-to-one with ultramarine. The other classic blue for this position is French Ultramarine, which is almost violet, but Ultramarine violet might be more versatile in conjunction with a cold blue like manganese.
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| secondaries |
There are some secondary colors which you might want to use now and then. Viridian, the green of the Monet palette, isn't a great drier but has a specific quality, especially in that context. Cobalt Green Dark can also be useful, a bit lower chroma, a bit moodier: Manganese Violet is mid-chroma and can be used in an earth color context, I've found the red shade more useful. Cadmium Orange is uniquely vivid if high quality. There are many permanent modern high chroma pigments to experiment with. But, as far as mixing and harmony are concerned, the problem with secondaries is that they aren't primaries.
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| earth colors |
I like to work with earth pigments. Below you'll find a brief guide to what I've learned.
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| trans mars pigments |
Recently a set of amazing clear permanent pigments has been developed based on iron oxide. So these are sort of earth colors and sort of not. Some companies call them romantic names but Blockx calls them Transparent Mars colors: Trans Mars Yellow, Red, and Brown. They are all incredibly useful and cheap; used transparently they are quite glowing and "hot" in feeling. Trans Mars Yellow is a very useful color in traditional style shadows.
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| red earth |
There are several shades of highly lightfast red earth going from a warm orange-red to cool purple red. The Mars reds are all very strong and also opaque, perhaps best used for underpaintings involving white, or cut with the putty medium. Terra Ercolano is a mixed orange earth color. Then comes Terra Rosa, which is more salmon, then Venetian, which is very hot from Blockx, Doak, or RGH (pigment). These are moderately transparent. There are several shades of Burnt Sienna, all of which have an inscrutable and incredibly useful quality in daylight painting. The colder red earths such as Indian Red or Mars Violet are more opaque, but again can be cut with the putty medium for more brilliance and "air".
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| yellow earth |
A lovely natural commercial ochre is Maimeri Puro Yellow Ochre Light. The Blockx ochre is hot and strong in comparison, possibly manufactured not mined. Maimeri Puro also makes two gorgeous Raw Sienas, a light and dark. Blockx Italian Earth is a little different, still very useful. Blockx Gold Ochre is a French-style HAVANA orange ochre, more opaque. There are many high quality ochres available now from places like Kremer and Natural Pigments.
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| brown earth |
The very dark transparent brown of older painting is sometimes burnt resin or pitch, most often asphaltum, which certain painters knew how to use without technical issues. It could also -- less transparent -- be a mixture of burnt green earth or burnt sienna and vine or ivory black. Burnt green earth is a darker and less red brown than burnt sienna, which comes in several shade variations. If you're using Venetian red, for example, you can use the darker, cooler burnt sienna very effectively. This is another area where the new transparent Mars pigments offer a great solution, in this case, Transparent Mars Brown, which substitutes for asphaltum or burnt umber and dries very quickly. Blockx makes a color called Brown Ochre which is a hot transparent orange brown.
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| green earth |
Green earth is relatively transparent and low in chroma. There are several mineral varieties, but mostly the difference is between glauconite -- warm -- and celadonite --cool. Well, sort of. Blockx and Maimeri (Puro) make a good one, as does Williamsburg and Holbein, their Green Earth is warmer, their Verona Green Earth is cooler and pretty much leaves all other green earths in the dust both in terms of chroma and versatility. The green earths from Natural Pigments are all high quality, the most grass green or similar to Blockx is Verona. The Celadonite and Nicosia Green Earth are a very good deal, the Celadonite is on the black-green side and relatively dark, the Nicosia is very blue, lighter, and more opaque.
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| blacks |
The black use most is the Blockx Ivory Black, makes the coolest grays. Maimeri Mars black has the heavier quality of the Mars pigments, also makes very cool grays. Vine Black, plant charcoal, Blockx or Maimeri, is warmer in this area. Many old paintings show evidence of a warm and cool black, and the deMayerne manuscript lists an incredible variety of blacks but I've found myself more comfortable making the various temperature shifts using a blue and various dark earths in addition to the black. Genuine ivory black is sometimes available, made from old piano keyus. Very interesting for its transparence and slight purple cast; a glazing black. Transparent Black Oxide is also available now and then. Blacks tend to be used for power, but can also be used to make an infinite variety of subtle grays.
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| whites |
Titanium white has great covering power but is more difficult to use in a sublte way than the older white, lead carbonate. Titanium can be cut with the putty medium to help overcome this. Lead whites vary a great deal from one manufacturer to another, I can recommend Blockx and Holbein from experience. Even lead white was often cut with chalk in older paintings, this can be helpful in early layers. A small amount of titanium can also be added to a lead white when finishing to get something just slightly more brilliant.
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Numenist, anachronist, maroon.