Oil Painting Color Palette

Seeing someone paint amazes me, so I keep on looking at my cousin’s back while she’s doing an oil painting. She’s taking a Fine Arts degree so she’s always doing those things. One thing that I notice is she always use primary colors (red, blue, yellow) but a little bit different, so I asked her what colors she’s using.

She said that, You’ll need only eight tubes of oil paints to get started and from these, you can mix any color that you might need. She mainly uses Utrecht paints brand but you can use Winsor & Newton and Grumbacher. Although it is expensive, it is worth it to use those kind of brands since it will make your painting look more stunning.

And now, this are the following colors that she’s been using:

• Titanium White. This color is very opaque, so it covers and mixes well especially when you think that the color that you’ve put is kinda wrong. This is an all-purpose permanent white.

• Cadmium red light. An intense, versatile color that blends well, the version of Utrecht is more warmer but still mixes a range of cool, gray-violet tones. You can use this color to gray down greens a bit.

• Alizarin crimson. It is super dark, cool red and has a lot of blue in it. You can use this color if you need a real purple or violet that the cadmium red light can’t produce. This color is not entirely permanent but if you’re concern about this how about using rose madder instead?

• Cerulean blue. Like the titanium white, this is also opaque (opaque blue). It is warm and has a lot of tinting power in it so you need to use this in discretion. If you want to make clear blue skies, then you can use this color especially near the horizon. It can make intense color such as the warm greens and blue grays, If you really need a green color then you generally need to start with this color.

• Ultramarine blue deep. This color is very transparent blue and also cool when you need to make great skies in different mixtures. If you need a base for a wide range of grays, and makes cool, relatively gray greens then you have to use ultramarine blue deep. This is not an overpowering color, so you can use this a lot of times.

• Cadmium yellow light. If you’re using Utrecht’s brand, then this color is slightly darker compare to if you’re going to use other brands. It is a medium-value yellow, very warm, it mixes well, and it has a lot of tinting power. You can mix a cool, lemon yellow very easily, what you need to do is you just have to mix white so ou don’t really need a cool yellow in your palette. If you want to reach yellow-ochre like, you can just cool and gray it down the cadmium yellow light. (My cousin said that yellow ochre doesn’t mix well so she just removed it in her palette) Cadmium yellow light is also the source of greens when mix with the blues and black in your palette.

• Cadmium orange. The color is good for toning down greens—putting a little bit of it will help in creating warm greens, but won’t gray them to the degree that the cadmium red light does and for mixing a different variety of warm grays.

• Ivory black. You need to use this color with understanding, You can make a limitless array of wonderful grays and green and also makes a cool, gray greens, as well as deep, transparent darks when you mix it with cadmium colors.