In search of an Ideal palette

In my last blog entry I explored a closed controlled oil  painting palette in a linear method. That is to say that colors were mixed horizontally across the palette from left to right or right to left on four rows. I have limited my palette on purpose from four to seven colors and there is a reason for this.  According to Euphrosyne Doxiadis on her book "The Mysterious Fayum Portraits the great painters from antiquity such as Apelles, Aetion, Melanthius and Nicomachus used only four colors for their paintings. White, Yellow ochre, Red Earth and black seem to be the preferred color palette not only for these great masters of antiquity but also for the lesser known authors of the surviving Fayum portraits found in Hellenic Egypt. It is amazing to see how well executed these portrait are and with so little. These have never ceased to capture my imagination. Below an example of one of the portraits I am referring to.

Fayum Portrait of a woman Louvre Museum , Paris

Our modern color theory teaches us that we need only the three primary colors (red, blue and yellow) to make any other color. Even though many of these portraits have traces of other exotic pigments, most of them are painted with a four-color palette.  One might think this palette will limit the range of possible mixtures creating a monotonous painting but to the contrary, the range of colors is maximized and at the same time color harmonies are even richer. The color black obtained from soot or carbon is a much cooler black than other blacks. Also known as Vine black, when white is added it becomes a cool bluish black.   

Classical Tetracomy

 Other paintings and mosaics found in Pompey  follow this principle which is also a reflection of the fourfold world view shared by Greek and Roman cultures. The world was divided in four cardinal directions, as well as four seasons. In the diagram below we find an interesting study of the four bodily fluids or humours according to the classical tradition. Ancient medicine was based on this system. What I find particularly interesting about this as a painter is how colors were believed to correspond to these four seasons, cardinal points or humours. The colors are always the same: white, black, yellow and red. Even though Phlegm is represented here with a light blue triangle, it was usually associated with white.

The Greeks were not the only ones to believe in the sacred tetrachromy composed of red, yellow, black and white. On the other side of the Atlantic the Mayan and Aztec civilizations held the same four colors to be the most basic colors of the Universe. It is truly amazing how much one can stretch the color spectrum with Lead White, Vine Black, Red Ocher and Yellow Ocher. It is said that Rembrandt Van Rijn used to work on such a limited palette. Specially if the painter is specializing in the painting the human figure, you probably will not need much more than this. Im aware this makes no sense to most contemporary painters who have access to such an infinite variety of synthetic vivid pigments available in the market. But following the same modern premise of "less is more" one can find  beauty and truth in limiting size, amount and variety. This may well apply to food in many cases.

Mayan Calendar

Kala Chakra Mandala

Astrological calendar

One may find truth in many shapes and colors. Ive seen perfection embodied in a circle. From the Tibetan Mandala to the Zodiac wheel, from the planets to the atoms, nature has a favored the globe and the circle over and over and this is also reflected in the sacred symbols of many ancient cultures. Going from the four-fold world to the circle has taken me to the next experiment in studio practice. Why not create a four-fold color circular palette? Would this be the ideal palette? The linear closed and controlled palette has its cons. One cannot be as flexible with mixtures and make new ones up along the way as with the  traditional oval shaped open palette. As I mentioned on my previous blog entry, the latter also has its cons as in many occasions it becomes chaos with unstructured muddy colors running wild around the surface. So why not have both palettes come together in one?  Here's what I found out from my little experiment.

Four-fold cross like  color palette

The human eye has an organic tendency to look at everything in a circular motion. This might be the reason why we feel more attracted to rounded shapes like oval shaped palettes which are favorites among art students and professional painters alike. Square or rectangular linear row like palettes can become constraining patterns too boring for the mind so I decided to make a variation on it using the same seven colors I always use. I could have done the experiment with four colors but I believe seven will give up more color variation and richness to this equation. A few days ago a kept thinking about the Sun and our solar system and an idea hit me. Why not have Titanium white at the center of my system. It is pure light and the most important color of all because it is the sum of all colors. This served as an inspiration for my new palette. Light after all is the center and main protagonist of painting.

Our Solar System

First of all I establish the center of my Plexiglas palette and have plenty of Titanium Oil color placed there.

I place the color Raw Umber on my extreme left side of my palette. Raw Umber is one of the best colors to start with in an oil painting because it dries very fast and serves perfectly well as an underpainting with a neutral greenish brown that becomes grayish when mixed with white and that is not distracting to the eye.

I add a few drops of Clove Oil to my Raw Umber color and then proceed to create a  short value scale mixing it with white. I have four middle values between pure white and pure raw umber.

 Vertically above my white color I have Blue black or Indigo color place and mixed together in four middle tone values with white. This color can be very blue or very gray depending on your principal mixture and departing point. Ultramarine blue with Ivory black or Indigo blue seems to be a good choices but make sure to add some clove oil drops to make sure it dries slowly on your palette. Ive noticed dryness in the environment have a serious effect on your palette. That is why I sometimes add more than one drop of Clove Oil. When humidity is high in the environment one drop would suffice.

I then Add Yellow Ocher on the middle part of my next horizontal left to right row. Ivory black will be placed at the extreme right side and mixed with yellow ocher to create a darker version of this color. Yellow ocher can be mixed with white to have some lighter versions of the Yellow Ocher. I have noticed that Yellow Ocher chromatic qualities are enhanced by adding a little of Indian Yellow to the mixture. This is one of my favorite colors specially when glazing.

Vertically below the white center I added Cadmium Red Light and Alizarin Crimson with enough space between them and white. The red don't require much clove oil to retard the drying time. They are slow drying pigments already, specially Alizarin Crimson. Still I add a drop to each so I can work with these colors for an extended period of time (about a week).

 Once this is done I have  each scale of the yellow row mixed with each scale of the red row. creating a fifth leg to the cross shaped color palette. This leg has now created a nice flesh color in different values. I do the same with each leg or row of my palette creating a beautiful color asterisk  shape (*)

The spaces between become open spaces where one can mix glazes and additional colors. In the end of the painting session my closed controlled palette looked more like a psychedelic color wheel than a relatively clean linear closed palette. It is like having the best of both palette systems and working circularly around the white. The results in my paintings were quite impressive as well. I shall soon document these once they are completed. For now I want to conclude that no matter how many colors you use, how is the shape of your palette or in what order you work, make it meaningful. Have your palette be a part of your philosophy. Make the process relevant to your way of thinking. I find myself thinking in crosses, septenary, four-fold systems and circles. These numbers and forms seem to re-connect me with the origins of the Universe. Buddhist monks meditate on sacred Mandalas. As a painter I find myself in a trance like state when mixing colors in my palette. These are the mysteries that make art so interesting and imbue it with deep mysticism.

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.