Sizes.—The cheapest colors come in the largest tubes. In the illustration, No. 3 represents the full size of the ordinary tube of the average cost. Some of the most commonly used colors come in larger tubes at corresponding price. Only professionals get these large sizes except in the case of white. You use so much of this color that it hardly pays to bother at all with the ordinary tube of it. Get the quadruple tube, which is nominally four times as large, but contains nearly five times as much.
No. 2 represents the actual size of the second size of tubes in which a few regular-priced colors come; while the smallest tube is the size of No. 1. In this sized tube all the high-priced colors are put up; the cadmiums, the madders, vermilions, and ultramarines and cobalts. The cheap colors are the ordinary earths, such as the ochres, umbers, siennas, the blacks and whites, and all sorts of greens and blues and lakes, which you had better have nothing to do with.
Arrangement.—In the following palettes I shall give the names of the colors, as you would look down upon them on your palette. The arrangement is that of a good many painters, and is a convenient one. It is as well to arrange them with white at the right, then the yellows, then the reds, the browns, blues, blacks, and greens. But I have found this as I give it, to be the best for use, simply because it keeps the proper colors together, and the white, which you use most, where it is most easily got at, and I think you will find it a good arrangement.
A Cheap Palette.—This palette I give so that you may see the range possible with absolutely sound colors which are all of the least price. You can get no high key with it. All the colors are low in tone. You could not paint the bright pitch of landscape with it, yet it is practically what they tried to paint landscape with a hundred years ago, and it accounts largely for the lack of bright greens in the landscapes of that date. But for all sorts of indoor work and for portraits you will find it possible to get most beautiful results. You will notice there is no bright yellow. That is because cadmium is expensive and chrome is not permanent. Vermilion is left out for the same reason. Add orange vermilion and cadmium yellow and orange cadmium, and you have a powerful palette of great range and absolute permanency.
White. Naples Yellow.
Venetian Red. Yellow Ochre.
Light Red. Roman Ochre.
Indian Red. Transparent Gold Ochre.
Burnt Sienna.
Raw Umber.
Permanent Blue.
Ivory Black.
Terre Verte.
An All-Round Palette:—
White. Strontian Yellow.
Orange Vermilion. Cadmium Yellow.
Rose Madder. Orange Cadmium.
Burnt Sienna. Yellow Ochre.
Raw Umber.
Cobalt.
Ultramarine.
Ivory Black.
Terre Verte.
This palette is a pretty large one, and you can do almost anything with it. But for many things it is better to have more of certain kinds of colors and less of others. This is a good palette for all sorts of in-the-house work, and if you call it a still-life palette, it will name it very well. For a student it will do anything he is apt to be capable of for a good while.