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'Free Drawing and Painting Articles, Tips, and Resources For Budding Artists and Art Educators' |
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Selecting Your Palette
It refers, of course, to the object on which an artist squeezes out and mixes his colors (which may be an ordinary white dinner plate for the watercolorist, a traditionally shaped board with thumbhole for the oil painter, or any other convenient surface that suits the painter). But " palette " also refers to the assortment of colors an artist uses. It is in this latter sense that I use the word for the most part now. Strange as it sometimes seems to the beginner, who wants to be told precisely what to do and what not to do, the selection of colors for an artist's palette is largely a matter of personal preference. If you ask a dozen experienced painters for suggestions, you will receive a dozen different lists. To be sure, certain colors will turn up on all, or almost all, of the lists; but each painter will have certain preferences and prejudices based on his own experiences, his own methods of working, and, inevitably, that indefinable and unpredictable thing, his own taste. Furthermore, you will often differentiate between the list of colors you like to have on hand and the ones you feel you couldn't get along without. For some subjects, a painter may use only a few colors; this is usually referred to as a "limited palette". For other subjects, you may feel the need for a wide range of hues. Perhaps the best course for the beginner is to choose a reasonably wide assortment of pigments based on the suggestions in this chapter. Then, after you have become thoroughly familiar with the effects you can achieve with these pigments (the exercises in other sections of this site can be particularly helpful in this respect), you will be able to make future selections based on your own experience. The following lists, selected from various books on painting techniques reveal both the similarities and differences of opinion that exist among various well-known artists and artist-teachers.
You will also note several important differences between the lists offered by those whose work is primarily in oil and those who prefer to work in watercolor.
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