Oil Painting Lessons. Part One- Choosing Colors.
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Part one of my oil painting lessons involves deciding on which colors to use for your palette. Why should you pick certain colors? Does it make any difference?
It actually makes a big difference! The reason for this is that certain colors have certain uses. I choose colors for their functionality. You don't need 50 colors on your palette. What you need are colors that have a distinct purpose and use.
The colors...
Here's a list of colors that I am using at the moment: cadmium yellow light, indian yellow, cadmium orange, cadmium red, venetian red, alizarin crimson, burnt umber, french ultramarine blue, thalo blue, dioxazine purple, thalo green, titanium white, and sometimes zinc white. Okay, so about a dozen colors or so.
That list may change as I try new brands and find colors that fit my particular color schemes more naturally, but mixing these colors will make just about any color you want.
Some tips...
I like to have an opaque version of a color and a transparent one. Some examples are cadmium yellow light (light and opaque) and indian yellow (dark and transparent. Also, cadmium red (light and opaque) and alizarin crimson (dark and opaque). Having a light-opaque and a dark-transparent of each color comes in handy for highlights and shadows.
Some of the darker colors like blue and purple are going to be transparent anyway for the most part, so you don't really need a "lighter" version. You can mix blue with zinc white or titanium white for a lighter blue. I also tend to mix blue with orange to dull in down in some cases. I'll talk more about specific color combinations and mixtures in a later lesson.
Uses for colors...
I don't use very many earth colors anymore. Burnt umber is the only one I kept. I mix it with ultramarine blue for a nice black and mix it with some of the warmer colors like like yellow and orange to make the lighter earth tones like yellow ochre. I found that most earth tones look to dull to be used straight out of the tube anyway, so by the time you get done mixing them with yellow, orange, or red, you might as well have just made the color yourself.
This is also where purple comes in. I said I used dioxazine purple, well here's why. You can mix it with your lighter warm colors like yellow for example. It makes some good brownish earth tones depending on the proportion of each color you use.
I use both ultramarine blue and thalo blue. Ultramarine is more of a red/purple blue and thalo blue is more of a green blue. They each have their uses. In the example above, I used ultramarine for the sky and thalo for the shadows.
Thalo green is the only green I use. I mix it with orange to get a more natural looking green, and I mix it with purple and white for a nice gray. Use it sparingly.
You may wish to try a simple coloring exercise to experiment with color. I remember seeing one in a color theory course I was taking. I've also found a site that talks about things like hand-eye coordination and creativity. It has some ready-made color exercises which are great for both artists or kids. If you are more of an advanced artist, you can draw out a simple still life or landscape and color that in different ways as well.
Check out my other articles for more oil painting lessons.
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