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 want to explore a theme that has been rattling around in the back of my mind for some time.  Years ago I listened to a public radio station in New York that had a program called Desert Island Disks. The premise was simple. A guest musician for the weekly program would be asked to select only eight pieces of music to take to a desert island. Which albums would he choose as the only things the guest artist would ever be able to listen to for as long as he lived? Yes, it is a bit overdramatic, but you get the point. Certainly, this exercise is about the choice made, but I find it intriguing to consider the scope of the music that had to be left behind. 

What if we were to play this game with paints? Which ones would you take to a desolate location to be the only things you could paint with forever? Let’s limit the palette to 8 colors. That should be generous enough. As a bonus, black and white will not be counted as part of the eight pigments. To put it into modern day practical thinking, the airline taking you to this land without art materials stores is limiting your checked bag volume to 12.5 ounces of paint in tubes that do not exceed 1.25 ounces; hence, 10 tubes of paint. No substituting two other colors for the black and white. In fact, white will be mandatory.

Limited palettes create discipline, and who could not use a bit more discipline in their lives? This exercise makes us think of what is really important about selecting a color. It makes us think about what colors we use as convenience mixtures, and which ones we cannot make by any other means.

Thinking through this strategy from various perspectives, you could select a suitable yellow, red and blue pigment so that you will not have to bring the secondary colors of orange, violet and green.  That leaves you with 5 more color choices.

For split primary devotees, the 3 most obvious choices would be the other yellow, red and blue colors to create the warm verses cool separation.  For those who do not paint with a split primary palette, the field is wide open. 

An artist might start with yellow, red and blue hues that are transparent, followed by 3 opaque primary colors. Since a few of the blue hues we may choose tend to make weak greens, an obvious choice would be to select one secondary green to fortify this side of the palette. The 1 or 2 (if a secondary green is not chosen) remaining open choices, once the first round of decisions is made, require careful consideration.

The color to select beyond the mandatory ones should be unique in their ability to extend the range of the hues that have already been selected. What colors cannot be made from the hues selected thus far? How difficult is it to mix some of the desired hues and select one or two convenience colors to make painting easier? If a maximum range is sought, an artist must become comfortable knowing exactly what colors are attainable with the 6 he first selected. Some artists find that mixing earth tones is a bore so they will supplement their palette with an ochre, umber or sienna. Others find some unique working property of a pigment that allows them to have a tremendous range of hues, using one or two well-planned selections.

In summary, here is the challenge that I would like you to ponder. Select a palette of 8 colors,  with black and white having permanent status, that you would take on a trip that required you to limit your equipment. The environment will vary, so just imagine that all landscape possibilities will be presented for you to paint. Post your replies for all to see: which palette will supply the widest possible range of color mixing solutions, and justify your choices. Let’s see who comes up with the most unique solution. Similarities will abound, but as each artist approaches color mixing in a somewhat unique way, I believe that we can all learn from each other. I will post my choices in a later entry on this blog.

Returning to the musical theme that I started with, selecting 8 colors for your palette is similar to finding a set of audio speakers with the greatest dynamic range. We don’t think of colors in that respect, but this is exactly the goal of this exercise. Find 8 paints that will create the greatest number of colors to suit the demands of any landscape painting.

I feel we are far better at predicting the limits of a color than knowing just how far a pigment will expand to produce a wide array of color combinations. It takes a bit of exploring to see just how much we can “squeeze” out of a color. In landscape painting we rarely exploit the highest chroma achievable with any color, since the natural world is somewhat muted and we mix paint to deliberately dull down colors.

I look forward to seeing your posts. And because you're no doubt in the midst of the holiday rush, I'm going to offer an incentive. The first three artists who post replies will receive a free one year's subscription to The Artist's Magazine. Once at least ten replies have been posted, I'll award another free one year's subscription to the most interesting argument for Eight Colors To Take To A Desert Island. So, what are you waiting for?

I’m continuing my experimentation with selecting a palette of colors that have the fewest hues and the widest range. I regularly employ a spectrophotometer that measures the relative intensities of light in different parts of a spectrum, but all the color measuring in the world will not substitute for actual mixing. I can tell you about the subtle bias of a color and how it leans toward warm or cool, but for all practical purposes, mixing is still the only way to know how any paint will behave when combined with other hues.  Spectral measurements verify and will provide an extension of what the eye can see by revealing the amount of reflectance at regularly spaced intervals over the visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum. While telling me a lot, it still doesn’t provide enough data for me to select an ideal palette.

The set I selected this time was muted primaries supplemented by high chroma colors that extend the range of hues when the muted primaries run to the limit of chroma that they can deliver. My first experiment was with cadmium yellow deep, cadmium yellow, ultramarine blue and iron oxide red. (See the Color Wheel Diagram explanation in a separate blog entry.) Regarding secondary color mixtures, this palette makes nice bright orange and red-orange hues, very low chroma greens and muddy purples. Iron oxide red is a very useful color but is no substitute for cadmium red. Iron oxide red is just a muted form of an earthy orange. Mixing red oxide with yellow provides lots of orange hues.  Combining red oxide with blue activates the color complement rule so that a lovely group of warm or cool grays is achievable. These grays are fantastic—well worth the effort in keeping iron oxide red as part of the palette. Finally, ultramarine blue mixed with cadmium yellow provides a very low chroma green, much like mixtures of cadmium yellow and black.  That is when I thought of incorporating both cadmium red to help boost the range of the warm yellow and orange hues as well as phthalocyanine green to increase the intensity of green hues. I’m happy to say that the addition of the two worked rather well. All phthalocyanine colors are very strong. Combining phthalo green with the cadmium yellow/ultramarine blue boosts the chroma of the yellow/blue mixture.  Conversely, the muted green mixture softens the harshness of straight phthalocyanine green, thus making it an ideal color for a variety of landscape situations. Adding yellow, orange or blue warmed and cooled the green mixture very nicely. The addition of cadmium red provided a respectable violet, since iron oxide red and ultramarine blue made a weak purple. Adding cadmium red also expanded the range of orange hues (when mixed with cadmium yellow). I suppose I could drop the cadmium yellow deep and settle for mixed orange hues. The color is fairly redundant, if the proper selection of warm primaries is determined. 

I’ll use this palette on a few paintings before I decide to settle down and learn its intricacies. I will miss my earth colors, but I can hold them to the side and introduce them as guest colors when needed. I will relish the wide range of grays that can be made with ultramarine blue and iron oxide red. Next time, I’ll discuss a variation of this palette.

In preparing to set out to paint in a remote location, good planning and preparation are necessary. An opportunity to paint outside gave me reason to look carefully at my palette of colors and make some decisions. I am torn between starting out with a very limited palette of three primary colors, along with black and white, and learn to cope with whatever comes my way. However, this yearly painting outing and the opportunity to do some serious outdoor work are not the ideal time to experiment with a palette unfamiliar to me.

I have lectured on palette choices for the last year, and one would think that armed with this knowledge, I could make an educated decision and come up with a reasonable number of colors that would satisfy me. Recently, I worked a good deal with some color mixing exercises that forced me to use a restricted palette. The motions of applying palette knife to paint and spreading it about to create the desired colors felt as if I were using my regular comfortable set of colors, but I had to repeat the “mantra” that outlined the basic primary color mixing combinations that we all learned as children. I did not have a lot of choices, so my natural tendency to reach for a secondary or tertiary color to modify a mixture was taken away. Now I had to make the secondary or tertiary color from scratch and adjust accordingly.

Then I realized, when working with a limited palette of red, blue and yellow, our brains (or at least my brain) are not adapted to see a color that we wish to create as a formulation of percentages of red, blue and yellow. I can’t look at the shadow side of a piece of fruit like an orange and think in my head: 4 dabs of yellow, 1.7 dabs of red and 1.5 dabs of blue. I will make an orange color out of the red and yellow and then adjust it with some blue to provide the right value and chroma to indicate the shadow side of the painting of the fruit in question. I would never start with the blue and yellow to make green and then adjust it with the yellow to make the orange color I required. That is a simple example. Try making a color that approaches a tinted grey. Mixing grey hues from primary palettes takes a fairly high degree of patience and perseverance.  For me, once the right grey value is achieved, I can add the hue to tilt the grey in the direction that I want. The point is that sometimes the most efficient way to get to a color is by a succession of mixing waypoints rather than a straight line. 

Critics of "expanded palettes" would claim that by juggling so many colors, another term for variables, the chance of failure increases. This argument has a lot of legitimacy. So many colors laid out on a palette become a confusing array of choices and they can overcrowd an artist’s work surface. It becomes hard to make sense of the number of combinations that can be used to achieve a desired color. 

"Limited palette" supporters label colors outside of the primaries as “convenience” colors.  The term “convenience” colors seems to imply that artists who use them are lazy or inept at color mixing. I don’t agree for two important reasons. In most cases, I would rather apply paint to the painting rather than spend time mixing. An artist does not get “extra credit” for solving difficult mixing problems. As a matter of fact, an artist is penalized to an extent if color mixing takes so long that production of finished paintings suffers. The viewer does not care how hard the artist worked to achieve a desired color. The second reason that convenience colors seem fine for use is that many secondary/tertiary hues offer subtle overtones that a strict primary palette would be hard pressed to achieve. 

Both primary palette and expanded palette artists quickly realize that compromise is a part of either system. Expanded palette users must gain mastery of the subtle difference and oddities of each of the colors they use.  They gain in having colors that suit their personal style and are shaped to the type of hues they wish to represent. Primary palette users must select three broad ranges, powerful colors, so that with only these hues, they can create every possible color.  While this feat is achievable, the price is high especially for landscape painters. High chroma primary colors must be muted considerable to match the look and feel of a natural landscape.  Primary palettes shout when soft whispers are the order of the day. Primary palette artists have the advantage of quickly creating high chroma mixes that are very powerful.

One of the sayings that nearly everyone who has visited a hardware store knows is, “ the right tool for the job.” This is so very appropriate to the selection of colors for an artist’s palette.  An artist’s style, subject matter and personal approach to mastering color mixing all play an important role in selecting palette colors. Do you have a different opinion or a palette that does amazing things?  Please reply.  

For more information on palettes:
To read Nita Leland’s recommended list of palettes for varying painting occasions, click on
www.artistsmagazine.com/article.asp?id=2466. Practice mixing colors with Judi Betts: www.artistsmagazine.com/article.asp?id=1826. And Kay Carnie advises you to work with a limited palette of primary colors in
www.artistsmagazine.com/article.asp?id=1325.