Materials and Techniques: Palette

My palette changes with every painting. There are a few colors I can't live without, but I always like experimenting with new colors and brands. Some experiments work better than others... so I thought I'd write a little this week about what materials I've been using lately.

Being an artist on a budget, I tend to use whatever's on sale. So, I have a wide variety of brands of oil paint on my table. Utrecht has always been my favorite student-grade paint. I like its consistency - it's thick yet fluid, without too much oil. It's also affordable.

Williamsburg and Old Holland both make excellent professional paints... there are a few colors of theirs that I can't live without. King's Blue has long been a favorite of mine, as has Courbet Green and Italian Pink. The difference in hue between Williamsburg and Old Holland in the King's Blue is really quite astonishing: the former is a cool blue, while the latter is decidedly warm.

I was given a few large tubes of Georgian brand paint last year, which I've been using in spite of how cheap and oily it is (you just can't beat free paint). Recently I found a jar of Dorland's Wax Medium that I'd forgotten I had; adding a little of that to the Georgian colors has made an extraordinary difference. Cold wax medium extends the paint, absorbs some of the oil, and gives it a buttery texture that I find particularly satisfying. It does give the paint a more matte finish, so if you're into glossy mediums then this probably isn't for you.

I've always been a fan of the spanish palette: titanium white, yellow ochre, venetian red, and black. I like adding ultramarine blue to this for a basic limited palette; I find it extremely helpful in simplifying colors, temperature, and tones. This is the palette I start from most often.

"Palette mud" is perhaps one of the most useful colors on my palette. After each painting session I scrape down the excess paint and mix it into a grey-ish neutral, which inevitably gets used during the next painting session, and so on. Sometimes it harmonizes the colors in a most intriguing way. It's fitting, I suppose... gray has always been my favorite color... so many possibilities.