2. Single-Pigment Paint, Part Two: The 21 Essential Colors
Old Holland’s color chart of their 168 formulations, current as of June 2020.
I like to keep things simple, and tube colors are no exception. Reducing your palette to its essentials brightens and tightens your paintings.
In this series I’m going to explain:
Part 1. Who are the best manufacturers of artist-grade extra-fine oil colors
Part 2. What single-pigment colors are essential for your paint palette
Part 3. Where to buy single-pigment paint
Part 4. How to tell what pigments your paints use
Part 5. Why you should limit your palette to single-pigment paints
Part 2
What colors are essential for my palette? Here’s the list:
Anthraquinone Blue
Burnt Siena
Burnt Umber
Cadmium Red
Cadmium Yellow
Chromium Oxide Green
Cobalt Blue
Cobalt Violet
Dioxizane Purple
Indanthrone Blue
Lead White
Nickel Yellow
Phtalocyanine Green
Phthalocyanine Blue
Prussian Ferrocyanine Blue
Quinacridone Magenta
Raw Siena
Raw Umber
Titanium White
Ultramarine Blue
Yellow Ochre
My list of oil paints has been developed over twenty years of teaching and includes colors from around the wheel, with warm and cool examples of each, of earth tones, whites and, and as you can see, nothing using black pigment. I’ve found the pigment blacks (PBk) to be too strong for students. I myself rarely use them for still life and plein air painting when the full richness of dark colors can be mixed from this comprehensive palette.
This list above is common pigment names only so you can have a standard reference point when selecting paints. And, since I only recommend pure pigments, no dyes or lakes, one of the finest colors in a painter’s palette, commonly known as Alizarin Crimson, the best choice for blood and wine, is too fugitive to include. More on Alizarin, other traditional but impermanent colors, and their permanent substitutes in a future article.
Charvin’s color chart remains unchanged from 2008.
For oils, Old Holland makes 168 colors, Charvin mixes 149, and Graham produces 75. They all name them differently. That is purely marketing. My list is purposefully limited, and I believe, the only palette you’ll need for 95% of your painting situations.
The list is also formulated for painting from life: portraiture, still life, and especially tropical and coastal plein air painting. Specialty colors and media are invariably needed from time to time, of course, such as any metallic or iridescent paint.
All of these manufacturers also make paint in other media: acrylic, watercolor, and gouache. Pigments behave differently in different base vehicles. For example, as a rule of thumb, any pigment in any drying oil - linseed, poppy, or walnut - dries slower and lasts longer than a watercolor in an aqueous solution that incorporates gum arabic and honey.
M. Graham’s Oil Color Palette is from 2017.
This part of the series presents the list at the top as simply as possible, but there are other important details that factor into your decision-making. As you can see from the manufacturers’ charts I’ve introduced in this part, in addition to the colors, there are other identifying numbers, letters, and markings.
Spoiler: I have produced a free color-chart download as well as a comprehensive guide - the likes of which I’ve seen nowhere else - that collect and collate all the information you could need to make proper choices regarding these colors. However, decoding them requires a little more knowledge, so please read on. Meanwhile, one of these downloads is my specific list of which paints to buy from which manufacturers.
(Update: Charvin paints have been demoted after significant quality issues in an alarmingly short time frame.)
Questions? Comments? Shoot me a message below.
Next up: Part 3. Two Recommended Suppliers >>