A Rich Low-Keyed Portrait and Figure Palette:—
White. Cadmium.
Chinese Vermilion. Orange Cadmium.
Light Red. Yellow Ochre.
Rose Madder. Transparent Gold Ochre.
Raw Umber.
Cobalt.
Blue Black.
Terre Verte.
A Landscape Palette.—Landscape calls for pitch and vibration. You must have pure color and great luminosity, yet a range of color which will permit of all sorts of effects. The following will serve for everything out-of-doors, and I have seen it with practically no change in the hands of very powerful and exquisite painters. There are no browns and blacks in it because the colors which they would give are to be made by mixing the purer pigments, so as to give more life and vibration to the color. The blackest note may be gotten with ultramarine and rose madder with a little veridian if too purple; the result will be blacker than black, and have daylight in it. The ochre is needed more particularly to warm the veridian.
White. Strontian Yellow.
Orange Vermilion. Cadmium Yellow.
Pink Madder. Orange Cadmium.
Rose Madder. Yellow Ochre.
Cobalt.
Ultramarine.
Veridian.
Emerald Green.
If you paint figures out-of-doors you will need this same palette. Madder carmine or purple madder, and cerulean blue may also usefully added to this list.
A Flower Palette.—For painting flowers the colors should be capable of the most exquisite and delicate of tints. There should be no color on the palette which cannot be used in any part of the picture. The range need not be so great in some respects as in others, but the richness should be unlimited. In the matter of greens, it is true though hard to convince the amateur of, that if there were no green tube in your box, and you mixed all your greens from the yellows and blues, the picture would be the better. As to the browns, they will put your whole picture out of key. In this palette I am sure you will find every color which is needed. There are few greens, but those given can be used to gray a petal as well as to paint a leaf; therefore there is no likelihood of your using a color in a leaf which is not in tone with the flower.
I am calculating on your using all your ability in studying the influence of color on color, and in mixing pure colors to make gray. Here as elsewhere in these palettes I have in mind their use according to the principles of color and light and effect as laid down in the other parts of the book, which deal specially with those principles. If you do not understand just why I arrange these palettes as I do, turn to the chapters on color, and on the different kinds of painting, and I think you will see what I mean, and understand better what I say, about these combinations.
Of course you do not need all of these colors on your palette at the same time. Some are necessary to certain flowers whose richness and depth you could hardly get without them. The colors you should have as a rule on your palette are these:—
White. Strontian Yellow.
Orange Vermilion. Cadmium Yellow.
Pink Madder. Yellow Ochre.
Rose Madder.
Cobalt.
Ultramarine.
Veridian.
Emerald Green.
To add to these when needed, you should have in your box, pale and deep cadmium, Chinese vermilion, madder carmine, and purple madder.