The Painter in Oil Part 4

I will suggest several palettes of different combinations which will give you an idea of how you may compose a palette to suit an occasion.

I do not say that you should confine yourself to any or all of these palettes, nor that they are the best possible. But they are safe and practical, and you may use them until you can find or compose one better suited to your purposes. They will all be made up from the colors we have in our list, and will all have the arrangement I called your attention to as to the use of two of each primary.

It would be well if you were to compare each of the colors with the corresponding one in the plates at the end of the book, and get acquainted with its characteristic look.

[Ill.u.s.tration: =No. 1.= =No. 2.= =No. 3.=]

=Expense.=--I have several times referred to the relative expense of colors, and stated that when the good color was of greater cost than others, there was nothing for it but to get the best. I cannot modify that statement, but it is well to say that as a rule the expensive colors are not those that you use the most of, although some are used constantly. Vermilion is so strong a color that the cost hardly matters. Of the deep blues the same is true. But the light yellows, and the madders and cobalt, will often make you groan at the rapidity of their disappearance. But you can get more tubes of them, and their work remains, while were you to use the cheaper paints, the flight of the color from the canvas would make you groan more, and that disappearance could never be made good except by doing the work all over.

=Sizes.=--The cheapest colors come in the largest tubes. In the ill.u.s.tration, No. 3 represents the full size of the ordinary tube of the average cost. Some of the most commonly used colors come in larger tubes at corresponding price. Only professionals get these large sizes except in the case of white. You use so much of this color that it hardly pays to bother at all with the ordinary tube of it. Get the quadruple tube, which is nominally four times as large, but contains nearly five times as much.

No. 2 represents the actual size of the second size of tubes in which a few regular-priced colors come; while the smallest tube is the size of No. 1. In this sized tube all the high-priced colors are put up; the cadmiums, the madders, vermilions, and ultramarines and cobalts.

The cheap colors are the ordinary earths, such as the ochres, umbers, siennas, the blacks and whites, and all sorts of greens and blues and lakes, which you had better have nothing to do with.

=Arrangement.=--In the following palettes I shall give the names of the colors, as you would look down upon them on your palette. The arrangement is that of a good many painters, and is a convenient one.

It is as well to arrange them with white at the right, then the yellows, then the reds, the browns, blues, blacks, and greens. But I have found this as I give it, to be the best for use, simply because it keeps the proper colors together, and the white, which you use most, where it is most easily got at, and I think you will find it a good arrangement.

=A Cheap Palette.=--This palette I give so that you may see the range possible with absolutely sound colors which are all of the least price. You can get no high key with it. All the colors are low in tone. You could not paint the bright pitch of landscape with it, yet it is practically what they tried to paint landscape with a hundred years ago, and it accounts largely for the lack of bright greens in the landscapes of that date. But for all sorts of indoor work and for portraits you will find it possible to get most beautiful results. You will notice there is no bright yellow. That is because cadmium is expensive and chrome is not permanent. Vermilion is left out for the same reason. Add orange vermilion and cadmium yellow and orange cadmium, and you have a powerful palette of great range and absolute permanency.

WHITE. NAPLES YELLOW.

VENETIAN RED. YELLOW OCHRE.

LIGHT RED. ROMAN OCHRE.

INDIAN RED. TRANSPARENT GOLD OCHRE.

BURNT SIENNA.

RAW UMBER.

PERMANENT BLUE.

IVORY BLACK.

TERRE VERTE.

=An All-Round Palette=:--

WHITE. STRONTIAN YELLOW.

ORANGE VERMILION. CADMIUM YELLOW.

ROSE MADDER. ORANGE CADMIUM.

BURNT SIENNA. YELLOW OCHRE.

RAW UMBER.

COBALT.

ULTRAMARINE.

IVORY BLACK.

TERRE VERTE.

This palette is a pretty large one, and you can do almost anything with it. But for many things it is better to have more of certain kinds of colors and less of others. This is a good palette for all sorts of in-the-house work, and if you call it a still-life palette, it will name it very well. For a student it will do anything he is apt to be capable of for a good while.

=A Rich Low-Keyed Portrait and Figure Palette=:--

WHITE. CADMIUM.

CHINESE VERMILION. ORANGE CADMIUM.

LIGHT RED. YELLOW OCHRE.

ROSE MADDER. TRANSPARENT GOLD OCHRE.

RAW UMBER.

COBALT.

BLUE BLACK.

TERRE VERTE.

=A Landscape Palette.=--Landscape calls for pitch and vibration. You must have pure color and great luminosity, yet a range of color which will permit of all sorts of effects. The following will serve for everything out-of-doors, and I have seen it with practically no change in the hands of very powerful and exquisite painters. There are no browns and blacks in it because the colors which they would give are to be made by mixing the purer pigments, so as to give more life and vibration to the color. The blackest note may be gotten with ultramarine and rose madder with a little veridian if too purple; the result will be blacker than black, and have daylight in it. The ochre is needed more particularly to warm the veridian.

WHITE. STRONTIAN YELLOW.

ORANGE VERMILION. CADMIUM YELLOW.

PINK MADDER. ORANGE CADMIUM.

ROSE MADDER. YELLOW OCHRE.

COBALT.

ULTRAMARINE.

VERIDIAN.

EMERALD GREEN.

If you paint figures out-of-doors you will need this same palette.

Madder carmine or purple madder, and cerulean blue may also usefully added to this list.

=A Flower Palette.=--For painting flowers the colors should be capable of the most exquisite and delicate of tints. There should be no color on the palette which cannot be used in any part of the picture. The range need not be so great in some respects as in others, but the richness should be unlimited. In the matter of greens, it is true though hard to convince the amateur of, that if there were no green tube in your box, and you mixed all your greens from the yellows and blues, the picture would be the better. As to the browns, they will put your whole picture out of key. In this palette I am sure you will find every color which is needed. There are few greens, but those given can be used to gray a petal as well as to paint a leaf; therefore there is no likelihood of your using a color in a leaf which is not in tone with the flower.

I am calculating on your using all your ability in studying the influence of color on color, and in mixing pure colors to make gray.

Here as elsewhere in these palettes I have in mind their use according to the principles of color and light and effect as laid down in the other parts of the book, which deal specially with those principles.

If you do not understand just why I arrange these palettes as I do, turn to the chapters on color, and on the different kinds of painting, and I think you will see what I mean, and understand better what I say, about these combinations.

Of course you do not need all of these colors on your palette at the same time. Some are necessary to certain flowers whose richness and depth you could hardly get without them. The colors you should have as a rule on your palette are these:--

WHITE. STRONTIAN YELLOW.

ORANGE VERMILION. CADMIUM YELLOW.

PINK MADDER. YELLOW OCHRE.

ROSE MADDER.

COBALT.

ULTRAMARINE.

VERIDIAN.

EMERALD GREEN.

To add to these when needed, you should have in your box, pale and deep cadmium, Chinese vermilion, madder carmine, and purple madder.

CHAPTER VI

VEHICLES AND VARNISHES

A vehicle is any liquid which is mixed with the color to make it fluent. The vehicle may be ground with the pigment or mixed with it on the palette, or both. Oil colors are of course ground in oil as a vehicle; but it is often necessary or convenient to add to them, in working, such a vehicle as will thin them, or make them dry better.

Those which thin or render more fluent the paint are oils and spirits; those which make them dry more quickly are "dryers" or "siccatives."

All vehicles must of necessity have an effect on the permanency of the pigments. Bad vehicles tend to deteriorate them; good ones preserve them.