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.

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.

The misconception of a secret medium comes from drawing conclusions based on observation and some false conjecture. This misconception was substantiated with poorly executed scientific analysis from a period of time where the study of art materials was in its infancy.

A major part of the confusion stems from observing that old master paintings draw their allure from a high degree of transparency of the colors used by the artist. This erroneous observation documents what we now understand to be a physical property of painting materials. As many paints age, they become more transparent. Complex chemical changes in the structure of the paint, as interaction of lead white and components of the linseed oil in the binder occurs, turn the mixture into a metallic soap (a process that’s called saponification). This process makes the paint look transparent.

The old masters did not intend to have their pictures become transparent revealing underlayers in the painting, but the overall effect allows light to penetrate the surface and reflect in ways that give us the look we have come to accept as the style of old master artists. 

One of the major flaws perpetrated in the late 19th and early 20th century was the search for a medium that would produce the effect of this natural aging process. Those who studied the old masters came to the conclusion that a medium must have been used in the past to achieve the appearance of transparency we see today. Somehow the use of this medium was carefully guarded and not readily shared. Jacques Maroger was probably the most vocal and active of the art materials historians who supported the hypothesis of a secret medium. 

Maroger went even farther by producing a number of mediums that incorporated boiling linseed oil with lead, combining it with a resin varnish like mastic, and processing it until it yielded a brownish black gel material. Early experiments by Maroger are both amusing and frightening, as he mixed both leaded oils with water-based materials to create some horrifyingly unstable painting mediums. By the time Maroger settled on a painting medium that suited him and that he thought was the secret of the old masters, he had only succeeded in reinventing a well known 19th century painting medium called “megilp.” Unsafe to make, as well as a disaster to use as a painting material, megilp was known to be unstable and unreliable to painters living during that period. 

This is a simplified explanation of a much larger issue, but illustrates the point that experimentation with mediums that contain a complex mixture of components has potentially undesirable consequences, if inherently unstable materials are used.  Unfortunately, it has nearly been the rule that “old master” medium creators choose components that are unstable from the start; then they combine them with stable and other potentially flawed materials and expect them to behave well together to create a superior painting medium. One rule to remember is that mixing unstable components with stable ones does not create benign combinations. The inherent properties of the problem materials will show their nature and react in unsuitable ways.

This argument for a secret medium has repeated itself in countless ways. If you do a web search, you’ll find manufacturers who tout possession of the secret medium of the old masters. Amber mediums, a variety of Maroger-like substances, black oils, and gels made by small manufactures dot the painting marketplace. Even mainstream manufacturers have bought into the hype and created reproduction 19th century mediums using recipes from that time period. Do not confuse these mediums with alkyds and other modern synthetic materials that exploit the potential virtues of painting mediums without the vice of unstable chemicals.

A few voices in the painting world proclaim what exotic medium suppliers do not want anyone to hear. The secret of the old masters is that they were highly gifted and skilled painters, not amateur alchemists who dabbled in trying to make chemistry substitute for hard work and diligent practice. 

P. T. Barnum was a great student of the human condition. He knew that people could be duped into quickly parting with their hard-earned money for an ephemeral thrill, a cheap curiosity. Today, painters are ripe for the taking. They are naturally inquisitive experimenters who seek to push techniques and materials to the limits of their physical properties. Advertise a short cut or a way of achieving a look and feel of an icon of the art world, and they beat a path to the door of the manufacturer who is selling a little “miracle in a bottle.” 

I don’t deny that some of these materials will perform in remarkable ways. However, the long-term consequence of using mediums with unstable components that will destroy the integrity of a paint film so that the picture darkens, becomes difficult or impossible to clean, or flakes away as the paint become extremely brittle, seems not to matter to a number of artists. Their argument is that they have been using this medium for 20 or 30 years and nothing bad has happened. With a few of these flawed materials, the detrimental effects will not be apparent for upwards of 70 to 100 years. It may be a consolation to the artists who realize that they will not be around when the damage starts to manifest itself, but it is little solace to the owner of a painting who, having paid a high price for a work of art, expects to pass this treasure on to young family members so that they may enjoy it.

Making a painting that lasts is a tricky business. Time, natural deterioration of even the most stable materials, fluctuating environmental factors and transportation—all work against the artist to assure the potential destruction of the work of art. A lot of thoughtful care has to go into the preparation of the painting support, paint selection, surface treatment of the finished painting, framing and selection of a suitable viewing location in order to make a painting last.

Proactive methods and techniques will be the topics of discussion for future entries. Comments on old master mediums are welcome. This debate is far from over and every generation picks up where the previous one left off—to reignite the potential merits and flaws of mediums painters use.