So, a lot of you took the title of this discussion, "Paints for a Desert Island," seriously. I meant it only as a reference to an old radio program; nevertheless, it made for an interesting theme. If I'd called this entry “Vacation in the Mountains” or “Journey to the Amazon,” would the palette have been different? My point is that I want you to think of a scenario where you can’t anticipate what subject matter you will paint but are restricted as to what tubes of colors you can bring along.

I really like analogies to music when talking about paint because I want the discussion to be about feelings and perceptions—rather than numbers or concrete amounts. So here is another musical analogy. How many musicians would it take to make a group sound like a symphony orchestra?  Imagine you are seated in the audience with your back facing the stage but the conductor keeps calling in string, wind and brass and percussion players who join the group and pick up with the rest of those already playing a classical piece. You get to yell stop when you think it sounds like the volume and depth you expect from a symphony orchestra. How few or, looking at it another way, how many people do you need before the overall sound feels like a complete orchestra?  Music experts, please don’t scrutinize this too carefully. I realize that various symphonic pieces need multiple players to fulfill the parts written for a score, so a small number of players would not be able to provide all that is needed. However, you get the general idea.

The same hold true with paints.  How many colors would it take to assure that in nearly any situation you could have the right pigments to create anything that is required?

I really liked the answers you gave. Many followed all the conventional rules even without conferring with each other, although the last few entries could have been influenced by reading those entries already posted. Most of you came up with the classical palette choices that artists have assembled for a long time. Purposefully or not, lots of you selected warm/cool primary palettes.

Other observations:

Some of you selected primary palettes of warm and cool, but I noticed that both blue colors listed were warm. Ultramarine and cobalt blue have lots of red reflectance, making them both warm colors. Selecting a cool blue like cerulean or phthalocyanine provides the counterpart to the warm hues of ultramarine or cobalt.

I was interested in which yellows were selected. Many of you place a lot of emphasis on all the other primary colors but yellow. Perhaps that works for watercolorist, but lacking good warm and cool yellow colors in oil paints can be quite a handicap. The palette with quinacridone gold brought this issue of selecting a broad range of yellow colors to mind.

I sensed that most of you don’t use the palettes you describe so using the colors you choose would be a new experience. Try them and see if they fulfill your wishes.

Some of you cheated a bit and went over the 8 colors allowed. That’s fine. Our astute
color police stationed at the airport will confiscate your extra choices.

Why do some of you apologize for using earth colors?  I thought black would be annoying to most of you, but some focused on avoiding earth colors as though they were evil. Go ahead and paint the way you wish and make earth colors out of primary pigments. I suppose I am cheap, but I find it annoying to use expensive cadmium colors to make earth colors. So many earth colors are beautiful, transparent hues that can add so much to a painting.

Food for Further Thought:  Look at your palette and not only think about warm verses cool primaries, but examine the colors you might use to create a transparent versus opaque palette of primary colors. It gets a bit complicated because you could wind up with warm and cool transparent yellows and warm and cool opaque yellows, etc. That would make up a palette of 12 primary colors alone with no secondary hues. However, think about how to play transparent off of opaque colors to achieve fantastic effects.

One question was posed on making a good transparent violet. Several ways exist but the main thing is that both red and blue choices must be transparent to achieve this mixture. Try alizarin crimson with ultramarine blue or quinacridone red with phthalocyanine blue for a higher chroma violet. For variations experiment with other transparent organic red hues like perylene red or pyrrol red with a transparent blue to see if the hue is appropriate for your work.

Finally, the first three entries will be receiving a one -year subscription to The Artist’s Magazine.  My choice for the 4th subscription goes to Dorothy Riley’s entry. This palette, while following the warm cool primary layout, boldly reaches into cadmium yellow deep and Prussian blue to expand the range of the palette. Mixing cadmium yellow deep with a citron (lemon) yellow can achieve a wide range of warm yellow hues. 

Want to read more about artists' palettes?  Look for an upcoming article (April 08) in The Artist’s Magazine called “Palettes of the Masters,”  where I'll discuss the palette choices of several artists who selected colors that provide us with a wonderful tool for learning about materials and techniques.

I have a keen interest in how things are put together. When I was a child, my parents treated me to mechanical toys like tractors, space ships and boats that were made out of metal and had small tabs that bound each piece of the toy together. Using a small screwdriver, I could pry open the tabs and disassemble the toy into its component parts. Once my father brought home a tractor that had a transparent engine with pistons that you could see moving up and down as the tractor moved about the floor. It took me about 45 minutes to take the entire thing apart. I was desperate to see what made the pistons go up and down. 

I’ve carried that curiosity about how things are made into adulthood. I’m fascinated to know how paints are made. While some art material manufacturers may have believed that my probing questions were aimed at exposing the secrets of making paints so that I could go out and start a company of my own, I was merely interested in knowing how the paint was made. (Note: After asking enough questions about paint manufacturing, I believe you would have to be insane to start to make paint today. It is expensive to undertake, fraught with potential problems and comes without much support.

On a number of trips to New York I followed an art materials “pilgrimage route” that started on Canal Street with a visit to Pearl Paint (www.pearlpaint.com).  Moving up through lower Manhattan, I found three art materials stores in sight of each other. David Davis Fine Art Materials (www.daviddavisnyc.stores.yahoo.net), Kremer Pigments (www.kremer-pigmente.de/homee.htm) and Vasari Classic Artists’ Oil Colors (http://www.shopvasaricolors.com) were all within a hundred yards of each other. The art materials walk would conclude on Third Avenue with a visit to New York Central Art Supply (www.nycentralart.com).

I met Gail, the owner of Vasari Classic Artists’ Oil Colors several years ago the first time I made the “pilgrimage” in lower Manhattan. She told me about the paints and had a unique method of discussing the qualities of each pigment. She had a light gray plastic laminate table and mixed paint on the surface to show the working properties of the colors she discussed. I was mesmerized by her knowledge of pigments and the color combinations she produced. Colors I never considered using were transformed by mixing them with other paints to produce a luscious array of hues. It opened my mind to the vast number of combinations that exists for making colors that artist can select. It made me realize that palettes are very personal and based on ways we individually map out our color space. 

Vasari uses a simple approach to making paint. However, the selection of colors and suggestions for mixing are far from simple. Vasari avoids avoid the use of fillers and dryers and make paint in the same fashion as had been done by 16th- through19th-century color men. Vasari basically uses alkali refined linseed oil and powder pigment to produce their product line. Vasari paints contain a substantial amount of pigment, and they carefully select hues from a wide range of pigments available in order to obtain colors that help the artist to avoid making muddy, dull mixtures.

Paint makers have no manual that provides them instruction for making paint. They learn through a combination of trial and error along with some technical support by the pigment and /or binder manufacturer. All of the manufacturers today had to learn to make paint by some very generic formulas along with a lot of experimentation. This is the part where I refer to bravery triumphs over insanity and allows the paint maker to make a living selling paint.

Since our first meeting I’ve grown to appreciate the personal vision that Vasari puts into the oil paints they make. They provide another avenue for artists to explore. The diversity of personal visions is what makes the artistic community so great, and it’s the diversity of personal visions each manufacturer embodies—engineered into the products available to artists—that make this industry so interesting.

Perhaps you have a story to share about a personal experience with a paint manufacturer.  The industry has so many choices for artists. I’ve had marvelous experiences using and talking to the folks who make Gamblin Artists Colors (www.gamblincolors.com), Winsor & Newton (http://www.winsornewton.com), Golden Artist Acrylics (www.goldenpaints.com) and many others. Each has a part to contribute to making the world of artists’ materials.  I will talk about each in future Web log entries.