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What about Color?
the Oil Pallette:
I suspect that
every artist has his or her favorite pigments and colors.
It is necessary to find your own. It can be quite
challenging at first to sort one's way through the huge
selection of colors available at any art supply store.
Experience is the best guide. But that's hard when you
don't have it.
Here's what I use: -
Two yellows (a cool and a warm one, like citron yellow and
cadmium yellow medium)
- Two reds (a cool and a warm one, like alizarin crimson and
cadmium red medium)
- Two blues (a cool and a warm one, like thalo blue and
ultramarine blue)
- Sienna (burnt and raw)
- Umber (burnt and raw)
- Yellow Ochre
- Two whites (Lead white and Titanium)
- Black (Mars or Lamp, I use it rarely)
My thinking is that from these basic colors I can mix just
about any thing I need while maintaining a clear idea of how I
got there. In addition, the spectral purity of a color can
best be appreciated by employing it directly out of the tube,
unmixed. Therefore, one can try to achieve certain 'mixed'
colors through translucent layers of paint, rather than mixing
on the pallette. Doing this means becoming familiar with
the characteristics of pigments themselves (opacity,
translucency and tinting power). It also can mean
using the translucency effects of the medium of oil itself to create rich vibrant
colors, that resonate like a sunset.
Eastlake noted, in referring to Jan Van Eyck, "The
leading attribute of the material of oil painting, as
distinguished from those of tempera and fresco, viz. its power
to transmit light of an internal surface through superimposed
substances more or less diaphanous, was recognized and expressed."
Later he adds, "...it is more probable that Van Eyck
founded much of his style on the principle of glass painting,
because the characteristics of inward brightness and extreme
force were sooner and more fully recognized by him..."
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| some examples of oils |
Medium:
Did you know that the medium dictates the pallette?
Color
Theory
Additive and subtractive color basics...
Oil
Pallette
How to choose?
Egg
Tempera Pallette
Best practices...
Fresco
Pallette
the gentle chemistry of the earth
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