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Picking Paint
1/28/2024 10:31:36 AM | By Dawn Sutherland | Comment on this
I am often asked how artists choose paint colors and what brands of paint do I use. I thought I’d give you a little insight to those questions in this month’s Wet Paint blog.
Paint “leans” toward warmish tones on the red-orange side of the color wheel, or cool tones toward the blue-green side of the wheel.
A very basic palette consists of three primaries: a warm and a cool blue, a warm and a cool red, and a warm and cool yellow along with white. From those seven pigments, a painter can supposedly derive every color one would need to do a painting. Then there are painters like me, who follow that design to some extent, but have landed on other pigments that give me exactly the results I want. That all comes from novice experimentation; looking for that perfect tube of paint that will get the results desired. Artists tend to narrow down that variety as they build experience and confidence mixing pigments. I have a rather wide variety of colors I use and some of the oddball pigments help me get exactly the results I need..
So, here is an example of a warm and a cool blue-Ultramarine Blue on the left and Cobalt blue on the right. You can see what they look like straight out of the tube and also mixed with a little white.
In the second photo, you’ll see three yellows—Indian Yellow to be exact.
Look at the difference in color! I’ve mixed equal parts of each with white in the first row and in the upper row, equal parts with a magical pigment I use all the time called Pale Ochre ($12.00/37ml tube) from the Sennelier company. I landed on that one some years ago just out of curiosity. It is expensive, but well worth the price. It has the effect of enriching any color mixed into it rather than diluting color as white would. My go-to Indian Yellow is the one of the right by M.Graham. It's pure, bright, and concentrated, so a little goes a long way..
And that brings me to what brands I use. Again, by experimentation, I’ve landed mostly on reliable pigments by a variety of companies. I love Charvin’a Provence Blue ($25.00/150 ml tube) and use a lot of it in afternoon skies, distant cliffs, and reflections on water. I cannot use Charvin’s Cobalt Blue simply because it is so stiff that I can barely squoosh it out of the tube. The Gamblin company produces “safe” low volatility paint. I use a lot of Gamblin, not necessarily because of that, but more so because I like its texture, ease of mixing, and their line of “Radiant” colors ($22.80/150 ml tube). That company makes a “warm white” which I used exclusively in the sky along with radiant turquoise and a few other pigments to jazz things up.
Some years ago, I attended a plein air convention in San Diego and swooned over the Michael Harding line of paint from England. The rep was persuasive, I was feeling indulgent, I bought a bunch, and within a year, I found that I’d fallen out of love with most all of them except King’s Blue Light ($74.00/225 ml tube) and King’s Blue Deep. The rest of them are languishing in my paint drawer. Occasionally, I’ll decide to either use one up or throw it out. It’s hard to throw out an old half-used $40.00 tube of paint, however.
So here's my palette with blobs of paint and their corresponding tubes:
And down the left side, I have some of my oddball pigments:
The large tubes are typically 150 ml and the smaller ones are 37 ml. If I go through a lot of one color, I'll order the larger tubes. Smaller ones like "Brilliant Pink" from the Michael Harding company, I order in smaller sizes because I use it in only specific circumstances like getting the just-right reflection of light on red rock.
Notice the crimps in some of the tubes? That's done by a tube wringer. That thing has been the handiest device in my array of tools. Next time, I'll tell you about the tools used in the studio!
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