Zinc White. (Lead white enough so.)
Cadmium yellow.
Cadmium orange.
Cadmium yellow, pale.
Strontian yellow.
Yellow ochre.
Roman ochre.
Transparent gold ochre.
Raw sienna.
Burnt sienna.
Raw umber.
Aureolin.
Chinese vermilion.
Scarlet vermilion.
Orange vermilion.
Light red.
Rose madder.
Pink madder.
Purple madder.
Madder carmine.
Rubens madder.
Ultramarine blue brilliant.
Ultramarine blue French.
Permanent blue.
Cobalt.
Cerulean blue.
Ivory black.
Blue black.
Veridian.
Emerald green.
Terre verte.
Here is a list of colors which will work well together, and with which you can do as much as is possible with colors as far as our present materials go.
Most of these colors, I am aware, are among the more expensive ones. This I am sorry for, but cannot help. The good colors are at times the expensive ones, but as there are no cheaper ones which are permanent to take their places, it would be the falsest of economy to use others.
Palette Principles.—In making up your palette, you must so arrange it that you can get pure color when you want it. There is never any trouble to get the color negative; to get richness and balance is another matter. If you will refer to the color plates, you will see that in each of the three primary colors there are pigments which lean towards one or the other of the other two. The scarlet red is a yellow red. The Chinese vermilion and the rose madder are blue reds. The same holds with yellows and blues, as orange cadmium is a red yellow, and strontian yellow is a greenish yellow. This is, in practice, of the utmost importance in the absence of the ideal color, for when we deal with the practical side of pigment, we deal with very imperfect materials which will not follow in the lines of the scientific theory of color. If we would have the purest and richest secondary color, we must take two primaries, each of which partakes of the quality of the other. To make a pure orange, for instance, we must use a yellow red and a red yellow. If we used a bluish red and a bluish (greenish) yellow, the blue in both would give us a sort of tertiary in the form of a negative secondary instead of the pure rich orange we wanted. This latter fact is quite as useful in keeping colors gray without too much mixing when we want them so, but nevertheless we must know how to get pure color also.
These characteristics have a bearing on the setting of our palette, for we must have at least two of each of the three primary colors—red, yellow, and blue—and white. There may be as many more as you want, but there must be at least that number.
But the character of the work you are doing will also have an influence on the colors you use. You may not need the same palette for one sort of picture that is essential to another. You can have a palette which will do all sorts of work, but a change in the combinations may often be called for in accordance with the different color characteristics of your picture.
I will suggest several palettes of different combinations which will give you an idea of how you may compose a palette to suit an occasion. I do not say that you should confine yourself to any or all of these palettes, nor that they are the best possible. But they are safe and practical, and you may use them until you can find or compose one better suited to your purposes. They will all be made up from the colors we have in our list, and will all have the arrangement I called your attention to as to the use of two of each primary.
It would be well if you were to compare each of the colors with the corresponding one in the plates at the end of the book, and get acquainted with its characteristic look.
Expense.—I have several times referred to the relative expense of colors, and stated that when the good color was of greater cost than others, there was nothing for it but to get the best. I cannot modify that statement, but it is well to say that as a rule the expensive colors are not those that you use the most of, although some are used constantly. Vermilion is so strong a color that the cost hardly matters. Of the deep blues the same is true. But the light yellows, and the madders and cobalt, will often make you groan at the rapidity of their disappearance. But you can get more tubes of them, and their work remains, while were you to use the cheaper paints, the flight of the color from the canvas would make you groan more, and that disappearance could never be made good except by doing the work all over.