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.