What oil paints should a neophyte purchase?
Peter
Just starting out with oil paints - I'd like recommendations as to
what colors to have in my first palette... Granted, I should probably
limit myself to 3 or 4 at first, but I always tend to go overboard...
Could someone give me 10-14 colors that would be a good starter set?
Also, my prefered genre is portraiture - if that would have any
bearing on the color selection? Many thanks to all!
Holly Daize
iam...@hotmail.com says...
>
>Hi,
>Just starting out with oil paints - I'd like recommendations as to
>what colors to have in my first palette...
The best you can afford. And the same goes for
your brushes. All you'll do if you buy according
to lowest price is handicap yourself from the
beginning.
>Granted, I should probably
>limit myself to 3 or 4 at first
If your short of cash, that's a wise choice.
Same applies to brushes. Several good ones to
begin with are all you need.
You can paint "full color" portraits with only
the basic earth colors. I have on my web site
a portrait done as a demo for my students that
uses only basic earth colors. The earth colors
also happen to be the least expensive pigments
in any given manufacturer's offering.
For example: raw and burnt sienna, raw and burnt
umber, yellow ochre, and black oxide. I would add
only ultramarine blue (and a white, of course)
to this list for painting portraits.
Check out my "example" at this URL:
http://www.zianet.com/jaxart/people/lilylady.jpg
This portrait was done solely with the earth
colors I've listed above.
Dik F. Liu
should buy, and how to set up these colors in his palette. I suggest that you
begin with one of the limited palettes I discussed in the article.
http://www.artfaces.com/artvoices/features/featured/oct992.shtml
Dik
Registered User
says...
>
>In article <3e35f700.01123...@posting.google.com>,
I am continually astonished at the bad pallette recommendations I hear,
in this message and Dik Liu's as well. I can scarcely believe Dik is a
teacher, but then, my sister always told me that the instructors at Parsons
didn't know squat about color. Don't you remember what it was like to be a
beginner? Everyone churns out muddy brown tones until they get their
colors under control, you certainly don't need to recommend that a tyro
load up on useless earth tones, it will just confuse them and make it
harder to figure out what happens on a pallette.
A beginner should start at the beginning, with the 3 primaries and white.
That's correct, no black. For each primary color red blue and yellow, you
need a warm and a cool pigment. Some painters like to select this by
mineral vs. chemical, i.e. pthalo blue vs. cobalt blue. But in each instance,
you need a warm and a cool of each color. As an example, for red I use
Cad red deep as warm and alizarine crimson as cool.
Contrary to the cockamamie system Dik advocates of arranging your
pallette dark to light (how ridiculous!) you should arrange your colors
around the edge, in warm/cool pairs, in order of the color wheel. This way
you can drag in a bit of each cool/warm primary color, to give each primary
the proper tone before you mix it with secondaries. Also putting adjacent
colors according to the wheel makes it easier to mix secondary colors.
Mix primary colors (i.e. to get a purple via red and blue) before adding
white (or medium).
You can even simplify further by using only one general purpose primary
color, skip the cool and warm pairs. This is something I usually
recommend to people who have trouble mixing even the most basic
colors without turning everything into brown mud. You can get by with just
Cad yellow light, Cad red light, ultramarine, and white. Again, mix your
primary colors until you have the mix you like, before adding white or
medium.
Nobody ever needs black in a full color oil painting. If you need a black,
you should mix it from colors already present in the painting, or in a color
scheme coordinated with those existing colors (i.e. a complementary
tone). The blackest black I know of from colors is pthalo blue and cad
yellow dark. It sucks as a black unless used properly with other similar
colors. But you can vary the tone from a cold bluish black to a warm
yellowy black. That's about 2/3 of the color spectrum to play off.
If you can paint whites like Malevich or blacks like Barnett Newman, then
OK, but otherwise, you should not use raw black and white pigments.
Most students have the urge to tone down colors with black, that's not how
it works. Learn to tone down with complementary colors. Once you learn
this, you might adopt a few intermediate tones, for example cobalt violet is
a more direct complementary color to cad yellows than any blue pigment.
I particularly like using greens to tone reds.
Tina Mammoser
with fewer colours and as you learn how colours mix you can add more.
With experience, even just a bit, you can better decide if you really
want that tube of ochre, or pthalo blue, or whatever. :) And yes, start
with artist grade paints.
My very first colours were:
Reds: Alizarin crimson (permanent version)
Blues: Cerulean, ultramarine
Yellow: Yellow ochre
Titanium white.
Cadmium orange (which mixes with the blues to make wonderful neutral
colours)
I later added cadmium yellow and burnt sienna (now probably my most used
colour, makes great 'blacks' mixed with blues, particularly ultramarine
or phthalos). Since burnt sienna is such a wonderful earth colour you
may want to add it to your start list for portraits.
Colour is not the first thing to worry about in painting. First
understand composition, drawing and tones. Do tonal studies of faces and
figures using one colour and white - you'll learn so much that way! :)
Tina.
P.S. sorry I accidentally posted this as a new thread. :(
Holly Daize
>I am continually astonished at the bad pallette recommendations I hear,
>in this message and Dik Liu's as well.
You are an arrogant ass! That's my opinion
based on your opinionated post. There are
as many ways to teach art as there are
ways to produce art, as anyone who's been
around the art scene very long knows.
The originator of this thread SPECIFICALLY
asked for a palette that would be amenable
to painting portraits. Using the primary
colors is NOT the answer I would give, and
therefore I didn't.
There was no indication in the post that this
person is such a rank beginner that they need
to learn how to mix colors from the primaries.
That alone is an entirely different issue that
is best addressed by reading one of the numerous
"how to" books devoted to beginners.
Holly Daize
>
>I agree with the previous poster. Don't overdo it - it's better to learn
>with fewer colours and as you learn how colours mix you can add more.
As for a beginning palette of GENERAL colors,
every artist's supplier I know of carries
beginner's sets that include the basic colors
they sell which the manufacturer knows will
mix to form intermediate colors.
But as I've already pointed out, the person
who began this thread wanted a specific
recommendation for painting portraits. And
that is what I addressed in my reply.
It's obvious to anyone who has been painting
for awhile, or studying art history, that
there are as many approaches to portraiture
as there are to art in general.
Bob & Dale Ford
Gee you started a fight eh? :-)
Just a comment, portraits are a difficult starting point. Might be easier
on you to start with a more.....ummmm how shall we say........ less
"lofty" maybe subject matter until you master the basics. (i.e. basic
still life, common objects, bottles, oranges, etc......) Or else you may
be setting your self up for failure.
As far as colour goes, I am a primary colour person myself, but every one
usually picks their own favourites through use. I'd buy big quantities in
the basic primaries ( I like the cadiums, and cobalts) first then add a
few smaller tubes in what you think might work for you, some of the
colours suggested are very good starters if you really don't have a clue
on what you like. But really there isn't one way of doing business. Most
who do portraits do buy a typical flesh tone paints like some suggested.
But again I caution against starting with portraits.
Oh yeah I do use black and white too (pure). We are starting a bit of a
purist argument with that one. I used to shun black, but I grew out of
it. Pure black does exist in nature we should use it and yeah I mix them
with lots of different colour.............. But I am not a beginner.
Have fun, experiment, you'll hopefully figure out what works for you and
what doesn't
Good luck
Dale
sketchdude
A good minimum oil pallette for portraits:
Titanium White (Large Tube)
Cadmium Yellow
Cadmium Red Light
Alizarin Crimson
Burnt Umber (warmer) or Raw Umber (cooler)
Ultramarine Blue
If you aren't yet confident mixing and matching colors,
Take some time out and paint yourself a chart on a scrap of
canvas or paper. Your best teacher is experience. Looking at charts
and diagrams in books is useless if you don't mix the colors yourself.
To make a chart,
Paint an area of each of those six or seven colors somewhere
near the center, and make it look nice so you won't be imbarrassed
having it in your studio. Make a big pile of black with umber &
ultramarine blue.
On one side of each color, create tints mixing that color with white.
Mix at least 3 shades of each tint, going progressively lighter to
white.
On the other side of each color, create tones mixing each color
with black, getting progressively darker in at least three steps.
That first chart will give you just a hint at the multitude of
different colors you can squeeze out of a few tubes.
In traditional portraits (of a caucasion), most skin colors
will revolve around a muddy mixture of orange, which
you can get with Cad Red, Cad Yellow and a bit of Umber.
You can take that basic mixture as primary for a portrait painting
and think it through the same way:
Tints- adding white
Tones- adding black
Good Luck,
--
sketchdude
http://home.earthlink.net/~o0sketchdude0o/
ejudy
> In article <a0oqm...@drn.newsguy.com>, regis...@user.com says...
>
> >I am continually astonished at the bad pallette recommendations I hear,
> >in this message and Dik Liu's as well.
>
> You are an arrogant ass! That's my opinion
> based on your opinionated post. There are
> as many ways to teach art as there are
> ways to produce art, as anyone who's been
> around the art scene very long knows.
>
Nah. I agree wholeheartedly with the person you are trashing.
That person has a better grasp of paint mixing than you do.
Lay off. It astonishes me.........too. Black ussually deadens paintings
and folks don't want to hear simple stuff like that because they
have their success palette which earns them some money
which they have used for perhaps half a century. Rigid
institutionalized methods shouldn't be guarded so visciously.
ejudy
Peter H.M. Brooks
Bob & Dale Ford <bdf...@mb.sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:3C309D98...@mb.sympatico.ca...
> Hi Peter
> Gee you started a fight eh? :-)
>
--
The truth is an ambition which is beyond us.
Peter Ustinov
NightMist
>On 30 Dec 2001 10:38:42 -0800, iam...@hotmail.com (Peter) wrote:
>
>>Hi,
>>Just starting out with oil paints - I'd like recommendations as to
>>what colors to have in my first palette... Granted, I should probably
>>limit myself to 3 or 4 at first, but I always tend to go overboard...
>>Could someone give me 10-14 colors that would be a good starter set?
>>Also, my prefered genre is portraiture - if that would have any
>>bearing on the color selection? Many thanks to all!
>
(Snatched out of sketchdude's post because my propagation is all wonky
and I don't have the original yet.)
I work in acrylics, but evolved my fleshtone pallate from a very basic
oil pallate.
The colors were:
yellow ochre
rose madder genuine
ultramarine blue
I added raw umber and burnt sienna to expand beyond basic caucasion
tones with greater ease.
Having a white and a black is generally a good idea. How much you
actually use them will depend entirely on how you choose to do things.
These are only a start. You will probably find other colors that are
useful in your style of portraiture later. You may abandon these
entirely and turn to other colors that work better for you. Whatever,
it is one way to start.
I will leave it at this. I haven't painted in oil for some time, so
though I have Opinions on a good beginners palatte, I shant express
them.
Besides, I haven't taken my asbestos undies to the drycleaners and I
really should hop to and get that done! <G>
Barbara
everybody is somebodys chew toy
Bob & Dale Ford
Dale