Artist color palettes: Is Less More?

Every artist has a palette -- not just the physical vessel for holding their paint -- but a group of colors they are invariably drawn to over and over. The reasons they continually return to these colors - and how many colors they use - is as varied as the artists' work. 

Anders Zorn, Mrs. Frances Cleveland, Oil

Some famous painters are known for using a quite limited palette of colors. Swedish painter Anders Zorn (1860-1920), for example, was known to have used mainly 4 colors: white, ochre, vermilion and ivory black - which have become known in artist and education circles as the "Zorn palette," with artists and students continually trying their hand with it.

17th Century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer (1632 –1675) apparently used a palette of lead white, yellow ochre, vermilion, madder lake, green earth, raw umber and ivory black. His color selection may have been influenced by what was - and was not - available at the time.

Johannes Vermeer, Girl With a Pearl Earring

According to The Vermeer Newsletter, "In Vermeer's time, each pigment was different in regards to permanence, workability, drying time, and means of production. Moreover, many pigments were not mutually compatible and had to be used separately or in a particular manner...One thorn in the side of the 17th-century painter was the chronic shortage of strong, opaque yellows and reds...The exceptionally brilliant red and yellow cadmiums, now obligatory paints in any contemporary painter’s studio, had not been commercialized until the 1840s." (http://www.essentialvermeer.com/palette/palette_vermeer%27_palette.html#.Vr4MWLQrIrg)

Jackie Afram, Ghost of a Coast, Oil

Today's painters have a much wider palette to choose from, but sometimes are limited by the type of paints they are using. Gallery member Jackie Afram's palette is influenced by her use of glazes. "Because I use glazes in my oil paintings, I depend a lot on transparent pigments." she says. "I use ultramarine blue and burnt umber often for grays and shadows.  While my palette varies, I almost always have cerulean blue, ultramarine blue and burnt umber on my palette.  And I don't think I have painted a painting without white."

Member Deborah Taylor says that her palette is "pretty consistent: titanium white, alizarin crimson, cad red light, cad yellow med, cad lemon yellow and ultramarine and sometimes burnt sienna." She has recently begun experimenting (an artist's greatest joy is in experimentation!) with prussian blue, which she feels may become a staple of her palette, especially for landscapes. "I use it in skies as well as for making greens.  I used it in the far trees in Fort Hunt." 

Debbie Taylor, Fort Hunt, Oil

Gallery member Sandra Hill is a watercolorist, which provides different challenges with the palette, being done on paper rather than canvas. "The watercolors on my palette are winsor yellow, (a very vibrant yellow), burnt umber, yellow ochre, permanent rose, alizarin crimson, winsor newton french ultramarine blue (a sedimentary color), cobalt blue and burnt sienna," she says. "Notice there is no white or black.  Watercolor paper left unpainted serves as the color white.  Greys and deep dark rich watercolors (which approach black) are achieved by mixing colors opposite on the color wheel."

Sandra Hill, Layers of Leaves, Watercolor

 

Hill says (in contrast to the Zorn method), that as her skills have improved, and her paintings have gotten larger, she has begun to use bigger palettes with larger, and more, paint wells. She says,"There are three ways to alter colors: 1) mixing on the palette, 2) mixing on the paper (wet-in-wet), and 3) glazing (one layer of color is placed over another dried color). And, of course, all rely on using less or more water with less or more paint."

Artists' palettes continue to evolve, with lots of experimentation involved - and the viewers of their art are captivated by their colors, whether they use a little, or a lot of colors.

--Sandi Parker, Gallery Underground Co-Director