Palette management
 

Recently I have come to the conclusion that one of my biggest deficiency is my inability to create a proper palette. I don

Mike:

One method I have used is to premix and tube certain colors that I know I use on every painting. I have tubed a series of neutral grays from dark to light, and have tubed flesh tones which I use as a baseline and modify them to match the subject's individual skin tones. This works really well for me.

The other thing I have done in the past is to premix the entire palette for the whole painting on one of those Masterton tupperware palettes. The whole thing goes into the freezer and I take it out each day and pull colors from it onto my hand palette and then stick it right back in. I did this for my most recent painting of Anastasia which was 24x32 so I needed quite a bit of paint.

Hope that helps. :)

Michael,

Would you describe how you "tube" paint? I'm not familiar with this. I can never get that stuff back in the tube after I squirt it out. I tried putting it in my mouth and blowing it back in the tube but that just made me dizzy and nauseous. I'm sure this is not what you mean. You must have a tubing plant somewhere in the neighborhood.

What would be the ingredients of your baseline flesh tone and do you have quantity formulas for this?

My trouble is that I am mixing too many baselines in the course of the day and on a big surface it's hard to control the consistency.

Mike,

I know exactly what you are talking about and have to force myself to preempt it every time.

I think there are several things that cause the problem, primarily. First, having too many colors laid out on your palette - one of the strong reasons to keep you paint palette very limited.

Second, as you very directly state, not mixing big enough piles of paint. I have a landscape painter friend who literally mixes color in a Waring blender, and who buys the huge Utrecht tubes that are squeezed out with a caulking gun. When I look at his mixing taboret (which is about 4' x 6') I get a twitch in my eye. But realistically , unless you paint with great speed, you will end up throwing lots of paint out at the end of each day.

In this situation I think there is probably some merit in "tubing" (something we here in AZ think of as floating down the river on a hot day) pre-mixed colors* or in using a mixing system like Daniel Greene, or John Sanden's pre-mixed colors.

The end goal in all of this is to simplify and be able to continue a painting seamlessly.

The third factor is, I think, contained in the way you work. If you work the whole canvas up in each level of finish, the problem is lessened. But if you work the way I now do, (which is to come close to completing each section as I move acress the canvas), you are left with having to match on Thursday some skin tones you completed on Tuesday. Back to the advantages of a limited palette.

* Tubing: you can buy empty paint tubes at the art supply store, where the crimp end is open (so you don't have the toothpaste-back-into-the-tube syndrome) then just premix your colors and pack the tube, close up the crimp end, and use it like a regular tube of paint.

Mike,

This works for me: I use a limited palette for the underlayer, and I use mars colours for their richer quality and opacity. These colours are Mars yellow light, Mars Red (cold), what was sold to me as Mars blue black (actually iron oxide blue black) and now an opaque Titanium White.

This is essentially a red,yellow,blue palette.

Doing this I can concentrate on modeling, shape correcting and so on. The colours are easily rematched and anticipate the overcoat. The overcoat is much brighter, by the way.

I no longer have to worry about rematching or whether I have made sufficient paint mixes for areas to be painted. However, please note that I am working off of an oil colour study and a cartoon. My hand held palette size is 9.5" x 7.25".

Ever since figuring out the entire layer process like this, life has become very simple and I can totally focus on my compositions, as well as my colour studies.

Hope this helps.

Oh, my paintings are generally over 36 x 36" and getting larger.

Mike:

You can buy empty paint tubes from Daniel Smith. You can fill them from the back and tap them on the lid to seat the paint down inside. You then fold up the end and crimp it with a pair of canvas pliers.

For my grays, I mixed and tubed nine values using Flake White and Mars Black. I mixed a tiny amount of yellow in to kill the blue and make them more neutral - Raw Umber for values 1-3, Raw Sienna for values 4-6, Yellow Ochre for values 7-9.

For my baseline flesh, I mixed and tubed nine values of flesh from dark to light. I began with Yellow Ochre, Red Ochre, Titanium White, and Ivory Black. Bought new tubes of all from Old Holland.

I mixed equal amounts of YO and RO. This made a good value 3 base for me to mix everything else from. Mixed the value 3 with ivory black to create two darker values 2 and 1. Mixed the value 3 base with titanium white to get values 4-9.

I think I bought four tubes of everything and then used it all up to create nine tubes of flesh. You will be working with BIG piles of paint. You put them into the tube with a long palette knife.

In practice I have found that this palette is too bright and needs to be knocked down in intensity a bit. For this I use my neutral grays. I mix a little of the corresponding value gray into the paint nut to neutralize it a bit. You could easily add some gray to yours when you tube them. I have thought about squeezing mine all out and fixing them to my tastes, but that would waste tubes and I am too stingy. :)

Mike,

One more thought: if you mix larger piles of paint, you can keep them wet for quite a few days with a couple of drops of clove oil. It's easiest to find in health food stores.

Mike, in addition to the clove oil suggestion, you can purchase tubes of paint that are ground in slower-drying oils: walnut or poppy oil. For instance, Grumbacher and Old Holland dry very quickly (they're ground in linseed oil), but Rembrandt, Windsor Newton and M. Graham dry very slowly.

Chris,

This is exactly what I'm talking about. This is a further extension of my complaint. I tend to work in this same manner.

Michael, Khaimraj, Mari,

Thanks for all that good information, I am going to do some version of what you describe. I'm getting old too soon and wise too late. But, I have this terrific forum resource to draw from.

Hi Mike,

You didn't mention what kind or size of a palette you own. One thing which has really changed my painting has been to use a hand-held wooden palette. I was persuaded by Peggy Baumgaertner's videos and also by Bill Whitaker to give it a try.

There's something wonderfully freeing about being able to walk around with all your paints right in your line of vision. When I used my big table easel I used to look down at it to mix the colors and then back up at the painting. I think it somehow broke up whatever good-flow mental state I had worked up and that fraction of a second (or more) gave me time to mutter, fume, question my existence, and indulge in the usual self flagellation.

By the way, if you play music when your paint, your palette becomes your dance partner, but if you let it lead all the paint ends up on your chest.

I'm not a limited palette painter, so mixed piles can quickly get to be a problem. I scrape them into new piles of cool light values, warm light values, cool dark values and warm dark values. I pile these up seperately on my taboret easel. At the end of the day I put all these mixed greys (as well as the usable clean colors still on my hand held palette) onto a Tupperware rectangle and stick it in the freezer. I've tried the tube thing and it didn't work for me. It's a big plus for me psychologically to save my big globs of paint and I find myself less worried about "waste."

Now I'm scheming to build a really big hand held palette, possibly even bigger than the one June Blackstock holds in her wonderful publicity photo on her SOG website:

www.portraitartist.com/blackstock

I'm thinking of ways to maybe hang it around my neck or buckle it around my waist. I could drum on it with my brushes if things got dull. Heck, maybe I could drum up more business.

Like you, I consider myself a fairly intuitive painter. (By the way, Michael, your organization is very impressive. I sure wish I could manage this.) If you change one aspect of your painting habits, a domino effect seems to kick in and it affects all aspects of your work. Simple, physical changes can effect remarkable mental changes, much like the way putting a smile on your face can actually stimulate your brain sensors into happiness.

Best wishes,
Linda