From the Artist: My paint palette is 16x20 inches (40x50cm). When I go out to paint, in addition to the easel and canvas, I carry a separate box that contains just this palette. I find that I need at least this much space to mix colors comfortably and often I need to clean my palette during the painting process. I clean my palette with paint thinner each and very time that I paint.
The colors are:
1. Vermilion
2. Cadmium orange
3. Cadmium yellow medium
4. Cadmium yellow light
5. Permanent yellow green
6. Permanent green
7. Emerald emerald
8. Viridian
9. Turquoise
10. Cerulean
11. Cobalt blue
12. Ultramarine blue
13. Dioxin purple
14. Alizarin crimson
15. Quinachridone rose
16. Titanium or lead white
This palette uses what are called "prismatic" colors; that is, the colors that white light breaks into when it passes through a prism. These are also the colors of the rainbow. The reasoning is that everything we see is light and one way of painting what you see is to paint the light. So, we use the actual colors of light, when broken down into its component wave lengths to help create the feeling of light on the canvas, as opposed to painting descriptively or painting things with names - house, tree, person, sky, etc.
It is rare that I use colors straight out of the tube because the odds that a manufacturer produced exactly the color that I am seeing when I look at something is very low. Also, remember that when we look at anything, we are like fish in water looking at something, except our water is the atmosphere. This means that everything will be mediated and unified by the atmospheric colors at a particular time and place. In short, that we mix a great deal both on the palette and on the canvas.
It should also be pointed out that colors are always relationships. A bright red, for example, is bright only because of what is around it. This means that we must always be squinting. Otherwise we are not able to see color or value relationships well.
The colors are:
1. Vermilion
2. Cadmium orange
3. Cadmium yellow medium
4. Cadmium yellow light
5. Permanent yellow green
6. Permanent green
7. Emerald emerald
8. Viridian
9. Turquoise
10. Cerulean
11. Cobalt blue
12. Ultramarine blue
13. Dioxin purple
14. Alizarin crimson
15. Quinachridone rose
16. Titanium or lead white
This palette uses what are called "prismatic" colors; that is, the colors that white light breaks into when it passes through a prism. These are also the colors of the rainbow. The reasoning is that everything we see is light and one way of painting what you see is to paint the light. So, we use the actual colors of light, when broken down into its component wave lengths to help create the feeling of light on the canvas, as opposed to painting descriptively or painting things with names - house, tree, person, sky, etc.
It is rare that I use colors straight out of the tube because the odds that a manufacturer produced exactly the color that I am seeing when I look at something is very low. Also, remember that when we look at anything, we are like fish in water looking at something, except our water is the atmosphere. This means that everything will be mediated and unified by the atmospheric colors at a particular time and place. In short, that we mix a great deal both on the palette and on the canvas.
It should also be pointed out that colors are always relationships. A bright red, for example, is bright only because of what is around it. This means that we must always be squinting. Otherwise we are not able to see color or value relationships well.