Part 3 – My Palette
If you ask any artist about their preferred palette, you will get a different response from each of them. Some artists use black for example, whereas others loathe it with a passion. We all make personal choices about the colours we use, and this will reflect many factors, including what we are used to, the confidence we have in colour mixing, and the subject matter and style of our painting.
I always lay out my paints in a similar way, placing complimentary colours alongside each other: this simplifies the colour mixing process and means I can quickly find the colour I need. Working from left to right, I place greens next to reds, oranges next to blues, yellows next to violets, and place titanium white and ivory black at the far right. The actual variants of each colour will depend on what I am painting, but I often use a cool and a warm version of each, such as crimson (cool) and venetian red (warm), Ultramarine (warm) and cerulean blue (cool), yellow ochre (warm) and lemon yellow (cool), and so on. This enables me to mix virtually any colour I need. Mixing complimentary colours together produces a beautiful range of desaturated colours, creating a huge variety of greys and more muted tones. Any of these colours can be changed further with the addition of white and/or black. I learned this system at the Norfolk Painting School, and it has never failed me yet.
Similarly, there is a huge variety in the choice of physical palette on which artists mix their paints. This will depend on personal preference as well as the type of paints being used. Some artists mix their colours on traditional wooden palettes with thumb-holes, some like a white palette so they can see the colours clearly, and others make use of disposable paper palettes which offer convenience and save time on clearing up. Personally, when using oil paints indoors, I like to go large. I have a 20×24” sheet of plywood which has been protected with a couple of coats of varnish. This gives me plenty of space for brushes, paint, colour mixing, medium, chalk (and whatever else I feel like using), as well as a large slice of cake and a mug of tea!
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