I know, I’m asking for trouble.
Of all the controversial subjects artists like to argue about, one of the most tempestuous is tube pigment choices.
People adhere to their chosen palettes with an almost religious intensity at times. Whether it’s the split primary or the Zorn palette, I’ve seen discussion on palettes descend into name calling and derision faster than black disappears off an impressionist’s palette
Each of these palettes promises something special, and the people that use them will defend them to their last breath.
Here’s what I think: You don’t need any of them.
How to choose your tube pigments
What matters, I think, is the colour gamut you can reach with the paints you have. What I mean by colour gamut is the range of colours you can hit with the pigments you have.
Limited palettes can enforce a certain harmony on you, true.
But what happens when you want a really high chroma, low value red, or green? What about a magenta? Those can be pretty tough colours to reach. Even fans of the Zorn palette must be aware that he added other colours when he needed to.
Truth be told, you don’t really need the widest gamut possible. You can aim for that, sure, you’ll just need some well chosen the colours that hit the highest chromas possible at different values for each hue area.
I do this, when I need to. This painting was the first time I managed to hit the chroma I wanted for the dark reds of the rose on the left. If you’re interested, I used Michael Harding’s naphthol red to get the chroma and pulled the hue around towards red-blue with his quinacridone rose. I think, for this painting, it made all the difference.
But situations where you’ll really need that are quite rare, even for a flower painter. Much more often, the challenge is to get the chroma low enough, since most people, in my experience, over-estimate chroma.
But also, I’ve found that a lot of people have quite extensive collections of tube pigments, thinking that they are all necessary, without realising the amount of overlap there is in what they have. I’ve seen severe cases of pigment obsession where people have many, many tubes, all covering overlapping parts of the same hue area, but with different names.
Of course, the paint manufacturers love this.
The definitive pigment list
I’m joking, by the way, calling this definitive, because there can never be any such thing. Pigment choices are, to an extent, individual and will depend on what your subject matter and how you paint it. And there will always be outliers.
But here’s the list of paints that I recommend for my Mastering Colour online course. This will help you hit a pretty wide range.
Not everything, no. If you have a really intense magenta flower, you’ll be lucky if you can hit it at all. You’ll certainly need something extra to what I have listed here to get close.
But this is a pretty comprehensive list that will give you a wide colour gamut without breaking the bank. If you learn to mix properly, you’ll be able to mix almost everything you need with these.
- Ivory black
- Titanium white
- Burnt umber
- Raw umber
- Yellow ochre
- Cadmium orange
- Cadmium red
- Cadmium yellow (cadmium yellow light if it’s Winsor and Newton)
- Ultramarine blue
- Cobalt blue
- Pthalocyanine green or similar high chroma blue green (Winsor and Newton Winsor green is good)
- Alizarin Crimson
- Sap Green (Winsor and Newton)
Optional
- Lemon yellow
Of course, there are preferences for handling qualities, opacity and transparency etc. Those are things you need to figure out for yourself, though experience. And Actually, that’s part of the fun, and part of the natural evolution of your own style.
But if you just want a box of paints that will let you hit a usefully wide colour gamut without having tubes sticking out of every available draw in your studio space, this should do it for you. Get these and you’ll be sorted.
That lovely Indian yellow you can’t paint without? I bet you can mix it with these colours. There’s no reason at all not to use convenience pigments, of course, if you like them and they get you to a particular part of the colour space quickly. I have a couple added above, the earths. But my point is that you don’t need them.
Now I’m about to duck and cover because this is such a controversial subject that I probably shouldn’t have touched it at all! But before you start ranting at me, please bear in mind I’m trying to be helpful here and save you money whilst helping you hit a usefully large range of value and chroma at different hues.
And yes, I’ll probably edit this list (a little) depending on the comments and what I test because of them 🙂
I’d like to leave you, if I may, with a little advice:
Base your paint buying decisions on your own explorations of colour. Don’t simply follow someone else’s ideas, which are probably parroted without much personal testing and investigation anyway. Don’t even follow mine without testing them for yourself.
Here’s something really useful to try: Get the Munsell student book and try and match the highest chroma variants of all ten of the main hues on the Munsell hue wheel and see which ones you can’t reach.
Doing that alone will teach you more about colour than doing a hundred paintings. It won’t even take you that long. And you’ll carry that knowledge with you every time you sit down at the easel.
Best wishes and thanks for reading,
Paul
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Paul . . . I was gratified to discover that the colors you listed a necessary are the one I’ve come to over the years. I am mostly a portrait painter, so my usual palette doesn’t carry all of these, and I usually use mostly yellow ocher.
I once read a book by Jose Parramon called The Big Book Of Oil Color. In the chapter on color, he urges students to start out with alizarin, cal yellow medium, Prussian blue, ivory black and white. I have used lead/cremnitz for 30 years. I tried this and was able to mix almost every color under the rainbow with it. I have since enlarged my palette somewhat, but not as much as before reading Parramon.
Cobalt blue is a bit expensive. Won’t pthalo blue cover that hue, and have higher chroma as well?
Sap green is just pthalo mixed with yellow – a convenience colour really. Since you are likely to have to add either yellow or blue to it to get the exact hue you need, why bother? Just add more yellow to the phtalo green you’ve already listed.
Alizarin Crimson – since its lighfastness is so bad, I would go with Quinacridone red/rose instead.
No not really. Cobalt is primo for sky. I Cobalt makes a really dense blue background or sky color. Phtalo is more transparent.
True, Sharon. With white, though, which you’d need to bring the value up, it will become more opaque. These are really good points, Kent. I’d like to have a play and see if I can eliminate cobalt, just for interest’s sake – if I can find the time 🙂
Nice! This list is pretty much the selection of pigments I’ve been using and have found to be able to reach nearly any desired colour.
Great information! Thank you!
Hi Paul,
Thanks for this posting! It came at the right time! Also thanks for the list for the essential colors. I must say I do have most of them and more except for the pthalocyanin green. I will buy this color to complete the set for the class. You are right when we do not know or we do not have the right instructor we will fill of tubes of paint unnecessarily. My last instructor taught me to use two colors of each in the Pallette, one cool and one warm plus titanium white. (cad yellow, lemon yellow, cad red, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, cerulean blue, burnt umber and raw
sienna). I was very pleased with these set until I found out about the Munsell color book. I am now for the big challenge, but I am very confident I am in the right path. How do you feel about transparent colors? Is this something to be concerned about?
Great posting Paul! Blessings.
Excellent post!
Thank you for a list to start from. When I first started buying oils, I begged fellow artists for a list, and they often looked at me in confusion. While there are many different lists to start from, I believe yours is one of the best. Your encouragement to “Base your paint buying decisions on your own explorations of colour”—spot on!
Your posts are incredibly helpful.
Thank you.
This is wonderful. My teacher has us new students using an even more restricted range of 6! I have secretly purchased many more. I love that learning to mix color has been such a high priority since you learn so much and can react to any situation you come across. Before learning this, when attempting to teach myself to paint, I overlooked this and was often at a loss for how everyone was able to afford every single pigment in existance, not realizing they created the colors themselves. You site is so very helpful and I always learn something new. Thank you so much!
I am certainly guilty of hoarding quite a few tubes of paint… including a surprising number of secondhand tubes of varying quality. Much like with paintbrushes, however, I tend to use only a few for a given painting, as much due to ease as anything else. I also tend to believe that mixing colors yourself creates more authentic and interesting hues than relying on anything prepackaged.
One of my personal pigment-related quirks is my love for the cyan and magenta tubes gifted to me by my aunt, as they’re excellent for some more unusual colors, particularly purple.
Thanks Paul, I am going to put the other colors I have in a plastic container and only use the ones you are suggesting. I have purchased the Mastering Color class and I just completed the first assignment but used a yellow green not on the list because that is what I have used along with cad yellow medium when painting a lemon such as the one I used that shows some green in the lemon itself. In the shadow area I did not use the yellow green but stayed with the colors in the palette you have suggested.
Very good article, as always, Paul. That’s pretty much the same as my core palette too. In recent years I’ve tended to use chrome titanate yellow PBr24 more than yellow ochre, I don’t have sap green, and I use Pyrrole Crimson PR264 as a lightfast alternative to Alizarin (PR264 is called Crimson Lake by Blockx, which is the tube I have).
hi again paul
i think the reason we end up with lots of different tubes of paints, brands and colours, is that it’s just so much fun. 🙂
I know we don’t need them, and it’s really good to put it out there so people coming into oil’s can see it need not cost the earth.
I must admit though, I do love to mess around with a new colour or brand.
it can also be really interesting, and challenging, to switch the palette around. remove a pigment you find yourself always reaching for and replace it with something new. just for the hell of it. I love to do that, its really amazing how a small change can result in a new feel to a work.
I know this has nothing to do with striving for a solid representation of your subject. it’s just fun 🙂
cheers Paul.; hope all is going well for you and family and the move you mentioned to all going to plan. Sounds like a great move to me. get some greenery around you. lovely.
g
Are you recommending Cadmium red light or Cadmium red medium?
Good list by the way. I find the earth neutrals very useful.
You are a grate teacher. This article looks very helpful. Thank you so much.
Personally I’ve never had a problem with gathering too many colours, I refuse to paint anything higher than chroma 8 anyway so I’m happiest using the good old colours made from dust and dirt. I did allow myself a tube of Italian Green Umber because the name suggested to me that it would make me paint like Fillipo Lippi but, oddly, it didn’t.
As a begginer I use only five tubes. Three primaries: cadmium yellow, cadmium red and ultramarine blue. Burnt umber and titanium white completes my set. I do not use any black.
I am learning how to obtain almost any color from my limited palette.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge.
I wish you the best, especially health.
Twenty-five years ago, my view of colors was changed forever when I worked my way through the Munsell “challenge”! The insight has been invaluable. GREAT recommendation.