Often I will hear someone say, after looking at a painting of mine, “I love your palette.” The underlying assumption is that were someone else were to use my palette, the colors in their paintings would be about the same. Not true. The colors that one sees in a painting are the colors that that painter sees or makes up.

In my case, I paint only the colors that I see. So if one were to like the colors in any given painting of mine, a more appropriate comment would be, “I like the colors you see.” Were I to use a different palette with different colors, I would still try and mix the colors I see. So here’s point number one: in developing a palette that will work best for you, choose colors that will make it easier for you to mix the colors you see, or make up – if that is what you do.

My palette is similar to that of Monet’s (although I use more colors). The colors are called prismatic because they are, more or less, the colors of the rainbow or the colors that compose natural light.

Brands That I Use

Were I rich enough to afford my first choice, I would use Old Holland. They are creamy and the variety of choices is extraordinary. However, the brands I do use, Gamblin and Rembrandt, are quite good. They’re not too expensive and they are nice and creamy too. I do not use student grade brands, like Winton or Georgian. Student grade brands aren’t bad but they substitute synthetic pigments for the more expensive ones like cobalt or cadmium, hence the much cheaper prices. So for example, if you mix a Winton cadmium orange hue (hue means fake) with a little white and do the same with Gamblin cadmium orange, the latter will retain that sweet pureness, while the Winton will gray down a bit.

Thoughts on Specific Colors

As time goes along, I often discover colors that I can’t do without. I once copied, in a museum, a haystack painting by Monet – right in front of me – and discovered emerald green. I really thought that I couldn’t do without it, but now I really don’t use it that much. Now one of my favorite colors is cadmium lemon yellow (not shown on the palette above). I find that I can kick very light and bright yellows up a notch with lemon yellow, more so than if I were to use yellow light. Wolf Kahn introduced me to quinacridone. Again, it isn’t that because I love a color, independently of what I see, that I use it. It’s just that after having mixed a little quinacridone with white, I almost stopped using alizarin to get that rosey veil of atmosphere that I seem to see everywhere. Whereas alizarin is a very cool red, quinacridone is slightly lighter and warmer. Hence, the rosey veils that emerge from quinacridone seem to sing a little more.

I stopped using cerulean blue when I discovered Sevres, made by Rembrandt. It has that rich “sky” blue quality that trumps cerulean. (Note: as nice as these rich, pure colors are, I rarely use such colors without mixing. I wouldn’t want to lift my subject matter out of an atmospheric haze, even when I’m painting in the studio. Sometimes in the bright sun and up close, a little dab of such colors will, indeed,  “do ya.”)

Sometimes, I will substitute sap green for viridian, if I need something more earthy and less transparent. But one can get those dark warmish greens, too, by mixing yellows with ultramarine blue.

Dioxin purple is the best purple, but like purple passion statements, must be used sparingly if at all.

Cobalt blue? Can’t live without it – and it is expensive too. But necessary. No skimping when it comes to cobalt. Other than white, I probably use more cobalt blue than any other color. Don’t ask.

White must be goopy; in fact, the goopier the better. Grumbacher used to make a “soft-white” – I think they said it was for underpainting, not sure why, but it was super goopy. Hard to get though. Permelba is okay. In Italy, I have found a brand that is rather cheap (Classico) – student grade probably, but sufficiently goopy to have become my default titanium white.

And lastly, my new love affair: vermilion. Good-bye cadmium red light, hello hot-orangey-red. Where have you been all these years?

Mediums

No. I never use mediums. I use paint thinner to clean my brushes. That’s it.

Keep It Clean

The one thing that it seems most painters do is not clean their palette. Yuk. I couldn’t possibly begin a painting if my palette looked like a pizza. I generally place my colors on the top border of my palette or on the side as well (from cool to warm), depending on the size and shape, but each and every time I stop painting, I scrape off the mixing area with a palette knife and then, with some paint thinner, wash off the remaining paint so that my palette, when I return to it, has that nice middle value warm-gray patina. That way, as I mix colors, I can more easily judge the value of the color I am mixing and its relationship to other colors.

Brushes too: I clean each of them, as I paint. No pizzas. No gunked up brushes in my hand or in the tray. No rags dangling about with fifty million colors oozing and bleeding, just waiting to mess me up.

Order and cleanliness are all part of palette and brush protocol.

And goopiness. Don’t forget that.