Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
WARNING!
Artists' materials are very dangerous and can cause injury or death! Use in a well-ventilated area,
read all warning labels, and keep out of reach of children! Use at your own risk!
So, I want to explain to you why I use the colors that I use when I paint.
When I first started painting, I went and bought about 30 tubes of paint,
and I found out that I could mix a lot of those tubes with these 5 colors.
So, this is French ultramarine
which I've got smeared out here...
burnt umber, permanent alizarin crimson and cadmium yellow pale.
This is a titanium white.
You can mix any color in the world with these colors.
There's not a single color you can't mix.
There's no subtle shade that you can't mix.
The only thing you can't mix is the strong turquoise blues.
And if you need to mix a strong turquoise blue, I use Winsor Blue or Winsor Green
just to boost your color up, but otherwise, this is it,
all the colors that I use. And I mix them down with a slow-dry medium the way that I do.
But I would encourage you to think about using a simple palette like this.
Because when it comes to mixing colors, the questions you should be asking yourself are
"Which color is more blue?" if you're comparing two colors.
Or, "which one is more yellow?"
For instance, if my color is too blue, and I need to kill the blue by adding orange,
then I add red and yellow. And I'm always thinking about color in that primary way.
In other words, instead of saying, if I needed a color to be more red...
I don't want to add burnt sienna, even though burnt sienna's got a lot of red in it,
it's also got yellow in it, and blue in it, and I want to add pure red,
instead of using burnt sienna, or some other reddish color.
The reason I use the burnt umber, is because by mixing the burnt umber with the blue
it gives me black.
And the burnt umber is like a really dark orange or a really dark reddish color,
and so it's great when you're mixing "brassy" colors
or the colors you can't get dark enough by using yellow.
The burnt umber is just a nice— The burnt umber and the white
and the yellow and the red and the blue, all together are the perfect palette.
I've been painting with this palette for 25 or 30 years,
painting portraits and everything,
and you can mix any subtle color in the world with just these 5 colors.
There's no reason to make it any more complicated than that.