Aromatherapy Advice

In this article I will discuss the tube colors belonging to an advanced palette based on a basic 6-color palette. I find these colors the most useful and often necessary to round out a versatile palette.

The 6-color basic palette consists of the following colors:

      1. Lemon Yellow

      2. Cadmium Yellow

      3. Cadmium Red

      4. Permanent Rose

      5. French Ultramarine

      6. Phthalo Blue

To these 6 colors we, of course, add

      7. Titanium White

      8. Ivory Black

Note that you can already create amazingly diversified paintings with the above palette. But, for various reasons, artists tend to add a variety of other colors to their palette. One reason is that tube colors are, by and large, always brighter than mixed colors. Other reasons have to do with the tinting strength or the undertone of certain tube colors. Or, maybe just because a certain tube color looks particular good to the artist and can not easily be mixed.

Here are a number of tube colors I like to work with beyond the ones already mentioned:

* Burnt Sienna – Burnt Sienna is a warm, orange-red, and transparent brown. This brown is a medium-to-fast drier and has a medium tinting strength. Mixed with Lemon Yellow it yields a clean orange-brown.

* Cerulean Blue – Cerulean Blue is a cool, green leaning, and opaque blue. This blue is a medium-to-fast drier and has a medium-to-low tinting strength. Mixed with Lemon Yellow it yields a spring green.

* Cadmium Orange – Cadmium Orange is a warm, red or yellow leaning, and opaque orange. This orange is a slow drier and has a high tinting strength. Mixed with Permanent Rose it yields a sharp hot orange.

* Cadmium Yellow Light – Cadmium Yellow Light is a warm/cool, somewhat green leaning, and opaque yellow. This yellow is a medium-to-slow drier and has a high tinting strength. Mixed with Cadmium Red Light it yields a bright orange.

* Cadmium Red Light – Cadmium Red Light is a warm, orange leaning, and opaque red. This red is a slow drier and has a high tinting strength. Mixed with Cadmium Yellow Light it yields a bright orange.

* Yellow Ochre – Yellow Ochre is a warm, brown leaning, and opaque yellow. This yellow is a medium-to-fast drier and has a medium tinting strength. Mixed with Cadmium Yellow it yields a glowing sandy color.

* Burnt Umber – Burnt Umber is a warm, red leaning, and fairly transparent brown. This brown is a fast drier and has a medium-to-high tinting strength. Mixed with Cerulean Blue it yields a series of colors from green-gray to green-brown.

* Viridian – Viridian is a cool, blue leaning, and transparent green. This green is a medium drier and has a medium tinting strength. Mixed with Burnt Sienna it yields a nice fall green.

* Cobalt Blue – Cobalt Blue is a cool, violet leaning, and semi-transparent blue. This blue is a fast drier and has a low-to-medium tinting strength. Mixed with Permanent Rose it yields a glowing violet.

There are few more colors I use occasionally, such as Dioxazine Purple, Permanent Sap Green, Raw Sienna, and Raw Umber. But the palette here described has more than enough colors in it to paint just about anything as long as you also use mixtures of these colors.  

In this discussion we assume that you use a basic 6-color. The 6-color palette could consist of the following colors:

      1. Lemon Yellow

      2. Cadmium Yellow

      3. Cadmium Red

      4. Permanent Rose (Alizarin Crimson)

      5. French Ultramarine Blue

      6. Phthalo Blue

      7. Titanium White

      8. Ivory Black

You could use a no. 10 filbert.

As a beginning artist, the first exercise to try is to color eight 2″ x 2″ squares with each of the above tube colors and study the result. Try to memorize how these colors look. Use a cheap canvas or a sheet of thick drawing paper.

Lemmon Yellow is, of course, yellow, but can you also see the green undertone or bias? Stare at it for a while and see if you can discern the underlying green. Do the same for:

        – Cadmium Yellow (orange bias)

        – Cadmium Red (orange bias)

        – Permanent Rose (violet bias)

        – French Ultramarine Blue (violet bias)

        – Phthalo Blue (Red Shade) (green bias)

Memorize and visualize the bias of the six colors on your palette.

Next, you can color 2″ x 2″ squares with mixtures. Start with Lemon Yellow and Phthalo Blue (Red Shade) which both have a green bias. You should get a clean green. Then:

* Mix French Ultramarine Blue and Permanent Rose (both have a violet bias) which yields a clean violet.

* Mix Cadmium red with Cadmium Yellow (both have a violet bias) which yields a clean orange.

Again make an effort to remember the colors of these new mixtures.

Now you can cross mix your tube colors two at a time. For example, mix Lemon Yellow with French Ultramarine Blue. This should give you a green but because Lemon Yellow has a green bias while French Ultramarine Blue has a violet bias it will be different from the one you got before. Compare the two greens and try to remember the difference. Then:

* Mix Cadmium Yellow with Phthalo Blue (Red Shade)

* Mix Cadmium Yellow with French Ultramarine Blue

This will give you all together 4 different greens. Look at them and judge them regarding hue, value, and intensity.

You can do the same with the two blues and the two reds which will you give four different violets. Finally, repeat the process with the two yellows and the two reds which will give you four different oranges.

Next, use different amounts of Titanium White to create tints of, say, French Ultramarine Blue. Mixtures of a tube color with white are called tints. Study a number of French Ultramarine Blue tints to see how Titanium White lightens the mixture and if the tints become chalky or not.

You can also mix each of the six tube colors with black. These mixtures are called shades. And finally, you can mix any tube color with any other tube color or with blank and white (i.e., with varying degrees of grays) to get what are called tones.

What is important here is to create a habit of observing and remembering the mixtures you produce. By now, you can probably guess the potential diversity of color a 6-color palette can produce. We haven’t even added the tertiary colors, i.e., the mixtures of three colors.

Make sure you save your painted squares and that you duly record the colors involved as well as the approximate amounts of each of the colors that make up the mixture. In other words, save your color charts and study them at regular intervals.

The ultimate objective is to accumulate enough active knowledge about mixtures that you can reproduce just about any color without having to think too much. 

At that point all your attention can be directed towards artistic expression. Although it is a rather tedious job, it is nevertheless a necessary one. So do a little bit of it every day.

In this article I will detail the tube colors of a starter palette for beginning artists. These are in fact the colors I personally use most often

Here is the proposed 6-color palette:

 1. Lemon Yellow

      2. Cadmium Yellow

      3. Cadmium Red

      4. Permanent Rose (Alizarin Crimson)

      5. French Ultramarine

      6. Phthalo Blue

      7. Titanium White

      8. Ivory Black

Note that White and Black are generally not classified as colors.

A color is often known by different names depending on the manufacturer. For example, Permanent Rose is more or less the same as Alizarin Crimson.

The above palette has the capacity to produce very clean secondary colors, i.e., colors that are a mixture of just two tube colors.

Notice that there are two versions of each primary color (yellow, red, and blue). One is a cool version (i.e., leaning towards the blues and greens) and the other is a warm version (i.e., leaning towards the reds and yellows).

I recommend using this simple palette for quite a while before adding other tube colors. First learn to completely understand how the six colors together with black and white interact in their numerous mixtures.

Here are some of the more important properties of the palette colors:

* Lemmon Yellow – Lemmon Yellow is a cool, greenish leaning, and opaque yellow. Opaque means solid or not-transparent. This yellow is a medium-to-slow drier with medium to low tinting strength. Low tinting strength means that you need to add a lot of this paint to see its effect in a mixture. Its greenish bias makes it an ideal yellow to use with Phthalo Blue (Red Shade) to produce very clean secondary greens.

* Cadmium Yellow – Cadmium Yellow is a warm, orange leaning, and opaque yellow. This yellow is a medium-to-slow drier and has a high tinting strength. Its orange bias makes it an ideal yellow to use with Cadmium Red to produce very clean secondary oranges.

* Cadmium Red – Cadmium Red is a warm, orange leaning, and opaque red. This red is a slow drier and has a high tinting strength. Its orange bias makes it an ideal red to use with Cadmium Yellow to produce very clean secondary oranges.

* Permanent Rose – Permanent Rose is a cool, violet leaning, and transparent red. This red is a medium-to-slow drier and has a medium tinting strength. Its violet bias makes it an ideal red to use with French Ultramarine to produce very clean secondary violet.

* French Ultramarine – French Ultramarine is a warm, violet leaning, and semi-transparent blue. This blue is a slow drier and has a high tinting strength. Its violet bias makes it an ideal blue to use with Permanent Rose to produce very clean secondary violets.

* Phthalo Blue (Red Shade) – Phthalo Blue is a cool, green leaning, and transparent blue. This blue is a medium-to-slow drier and has a very high tinting strength. Its green bias makes it an ideal blue to use with Lemmon Yellow to produce very clean secondary greens.

* Titanium White – Titanium White is an opaque white and covers up just about any color. There are other whites such as Flake White and Zinc White. As a beginning artist you may want to avoid using Zinc White because it tends to crack when applied thickly.

* Ivory Black – Ivory Black is the cleanest of all the tube blacks and is extremely constructive in lots of mixtures. Other tube blacks include Lamp Black and Mars Black.

This simple palette is amazingly versatile and many minimal-minded professionals use nothing else. Because there are so few tube colors involved, becoming an expert in this palette is fairly easy.