The evolution of an oil painting color palette

In recent days I have been engaged on various projects in my studio. Most of these projects consist of oil paintings on canvas and wood panels of different sizes. For all of these I use a consistent palette with predictable results that enables me to keep the work under an relatively speedy and ordered process. By having all of my colors premixed on my palette I avoid wasting time between focusing on a composition and mixing colors. By just concentrating on picking up colors from the palette with my brush and adding them to my composition, the process of painting becomes more direct, engaging and less distracting.

First of all I want to emphasize as I have done previously in demos and classes that there is no "one" way of doing art and the reader and art student should assume that this formula may work for some forms of painting and may not be well suited for other forms of painting. In my case, it has proven to be the most effective when it comes to small and medium sized highly detailed and well rendered realistic oil paintings on canvas and panel. I have worked with this palette on a few occasions for bigger works but this required using more painting mixed on a larger palette.

In an older post on this blog I already mentioned the importance of the use of this palette. It is called a "closed" palette because it leaves little or no space for mixing more colors once it is completed. An open palette is what most painters learn to use and use it freely mixing colors without any specific order. A traditional "open" palette is composed of an "spectrum" place where one adds the color, usually on the outer rim of the palette and the "atrium"  (place where one mixes colors together, usually at the center of this palette.) This is the palette that most artists I know currently use. I myself worked with it for some time and it was the first palette with which I learned to paint much to my own frustration. One thing is for sure, it has been the most popular and preferred palette in history. Of course this doesn't mean its the best palette we can use.

 "Open" oval shaped palette  v.s. "closed" rectangle shaped palette

As the term "open" implies, this is a painters palette that allows you to mix new colors at any time while painting and even though one may follow a specific order from values to chromatic intensity, it is a very flexible palette, allowing certain chaos to reign in it. It is a wonderful palette to use and in some works I still find myself making use of it. But some it has some problems. These problems may give a hard time for some painters who are looking for order and structure not only for their ideas but for their colors as well. 

Many of my most disastrous paintings have been produces by the "open" palette. First I found myself trapped with many odd mixtures I could not replicate once the colors dried. Also I found it quite easy to break with tonal  and chromatic unity using a wide range of colors on an "open" palette. I remember giving up painting for a while and going back to drawing after feeling frustrated with the chaotic  muddy mixture of colors I had created on my palette. Then I studied under Rose Urbina a professional portrait artist who had studied and followed the tradition of John Singer Sargent. She introduced me into using the "closed" palette for a portrait. Pre-mixing all of these colors on my palette took over an hour. Very boring after a while but the results of it made every minute of this portrait painting worth it.The idea was to have as many value scales of strips as possible of every color one used on the painting allowing more richness in light and darkness of each color. By having  white mixed with black and all the grays in between on a horizontal strip of the palette, one could mix these with the different reds below, graying and de-saturating these in turn. The "closed" palette did limit a bit my color selection but in turn it added more richness to my values and values (light and darkness in colors) has been the major concern of the great European masters from the Renaissance and Baroque.

My studio setup left to right: color palette, laptop and easel with painting

Over time I experimented over many different surfaces and used many palettes but have returned once more to this "closed" palette. at the end of each painting session I have evaluated the creative process analyzing everything from the brushes and colors I use to my palette and the way I arrange and mix my colors. If one is aware of this and is willing to get rid of bad habits and willing to spend more money on better art supplies, it should be no surprise that the work in turn should improve. I shall write more about these issues in future posts but here I have turned my attention towards my palette.

7 color palette

Here's my most recent palette photographed with the seven colors I use identified. I have used only Raw Umber mixed with white with 8 value scales between these two colors. This is my first strip

On my second strip I have mixed Ivory black with Yellow Ocher having at least three or four values in between and from Yellow Ocher to white, four values in between. Then on the lower strip I have mixed Alizarin Crimson with Cadmium Red Light having at least two to three variations in between and from Cadmium Red to White mixing at least four value scales. The last value strip is composed of a bluish black mixed gradually with white. The bluish black may be indigo blue or Ultramarine blue mixed with Ivory black. A drop or two of "oil of cloves" may be added to each of the seven colors. This will  extend the drying time of the oil paint allowing you to work on a painting for about a week instead of a day or two without using the clove oil. The palette is a clear Plexiglas 18" x 24" over a cardboard painted gray. The neutral gray ground will give you a correct perception of your true colors while the Plexiglas being a nonabsorbent surface will keep the paint wet for a longer time and it is also easier to clean with a palette knife.  As one may see in the picture colors may be mixed between the horizontal value scales I have described creating a  much more complex diversity of colors. A "closed" palette like this one will enable you to paint  human figures, animals and landscapes with rich values and in chromatic proximity to the work of the "old masters" who did not use a wide range of bright colors like most painters use today . In no way it should limit your imagination to have a limited color palette but on the contrary give free reign to it and total freedom to concentrate on your own compositions.  If you enjoy the colors of Leonardo, Caravaggio and other great painters from the Renaissance and Baroque periods, you may wish to consider using a color palette similar to this one.

How to paint like Peter Paul Rubens

After studying the work of the seventeenth century Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens in College, books and at the museums, one can conclude that there was not only one set of steps or fixed formula this particular Old master followed. In art school I was taught that he started out with a "grisaille" (underpainting with grays) and then glazed over this underpainting with transparent colors.  This seems to fit perfectly well  into the nineteenth century French Academic painting protocol but Rubens to me seems to be far more spontaneous and even less methodical.  Before the French Academy there was little or no systematic way of teaching painting. You learned how to paint becoming an apprentice to a master in his workshop and every master had a  different approach to their craft. Having a closer look at the work of Rubens at the Metropolitan Museum , National Gallery of the Philadelphia Museum of art, the work seems to reveal a different set of steps.  I had already thought about this debatable issue a time ago and devised for  my Old Master techniques class two useful demos. These demonstrate the two possible ways that someone like Rubens might have worked. The first follows the protocol I was taught at The Savannah College of Art and Design. The second derives from my own observations on the different noticeable layers Ive studied of Rubens work. Ive written many notes about how he worked by observing his work up front.  What I'm showing here is super simplified information. Both protocols should be valid approximations to the original. Of course there are many books on techniques of the old masters but they don't seem to agree all the time on how a particular painter from the past painted so most of the time I find it  even more useful to go on directly to the work of a painter I admire and see for myself what the painting has to say about how it was done.  Every time you go to a museum you should be able to learn something new about art. Take many notes and make the museum your school. That is my best advice. So here I share with you my two demos. Enjoy!

Note: I have substituted Flake white by Titanium White for those who are afraid of being poisoned with lead.

I myself use Lead white as it gives  a warm, metallic semi translucent  and fast drying quality that is so much appreciated in the work of Old masters.

Sharing my own approach to painting Sixteenth Century Venetian Way

Venetian painters at the time of Titian used a different technique from that of

later painters. The modern artist usually paints the forms directly on the canvas

with color mixed in his palette. This is essentially a one‐step method, although

the artist may paint over a preliminary sketch. By contrast, theVenetian painter

from the sixteenth century used  a two‐step method. First, he defined the forms

of his composition in monochrome, and only after that was completed he applied

color. When he applied color, he did so in translucent layers called glazes.

To demonstrate the Venetian method of painting for this book, I have illustrated a

step by step of the process. The intention is not to show how exactly someone like

Titian painted this picture (The Gipsy Madonna) but to illustrate the main steps of

work in a simplified demonstration of fundamentals. By emulating this process one

can understand the importance or order, structure, discipline and patience involved

in making a painting. Something that most of the contemporary art world has forgotten.

This is the original Gipsy Madonna  painted by Titian in 1510

The following is part of a demo I used in a class on how to paint like the Old Masters .I taught this class at the Maitland Art Center. 

Step #1: “Bozzetto” ( Preliminary Sketch)
Prepare a pencil preliminary study of the composition on paper

Step #2: “Disegno” (Drawing)
Transfer and draw the composition on to canvas with vine charcoal.

Step #3: “Sotto Disegno” (Underdrawing)
Draw and re‐define lines with Burnt Umber and Turpentine
(This is called “The Sauce”)

Step #4: “Imprimatura “(Toned canvas)
Over the underdrawing, apply a light tone of Venetian Red or Red
Ochre (PR101) with a mixture of linseed oil and turpentine.

Step #5: Togliere Strofinare” (Wipe out technique)
Wipe out the strongest lights in the composition. This is done with a dry
fine cotton rag and gently rubbing out the selected areas where the
lights are supposed to be.

Step#6: “Sotto Dipinto” (underpainting)

With black, white and yellow ocher paint and define values with grays

present in the composition.

Step #7 Velaturas (Color Glazing)

Thin color glazes are applied using the “motherload” glazing medium. Semi‐dry

paint scumbling is applied over the dry glaze. Additional elements in the

background are added to the composition. You may apply various layers of glazes.