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.