My current palette...

Today I am going to talk briefly about my current palette of paints that I use for most of my work. The artist palette always evolve with time and hence my current selection of paints is based upon not only my needs to create the actual painting but also on background knowledge about pigments and paints. Knowing about what actually is in your paint tube is important for two main reasons. Paint manufacturers, like any other kind of manufacturer, are always looking at making profits and to do this they are very creative in creating as many paint tubes as possible for you to buy. This can be overwhelming especially for a beginner painter, to go to the art store and you face a never ending variety of paints and colours. The reality is that you do not need to buy that many colours and most of those colours you see are actually made up of combination of the same basic pigments that you can easily prepare yourself on the palette. So one needs to have a look at the label and check the pigment numbers and ignore completely the fancy names sometimes given on the tubes. Pigment numbers are standardised and hence they should be the same for a particular colour irrelevant of the brand. There are also certain pigments that are very unstable and negatively affected when exposed to even normal day light, and some of these are very popular and expensive. Manufacturers still produce them as there is still high demand for them, since most artists do not have the knowledge to know what is in the tube.

Since I paint mostly landscapes my basic palette is made up of a selection of paints coming from the traditional master painters as well as impressionist artists. I find this combination to give me a wider range of colours that I can mix from them. As a quality of paint I always use artist grade paints that contains only pigment and oil with no additives. My preferred brands are Michael Harding, Art Spectrum, Old Holland, Gamblin, Langridge and MasterClass.

My basic palette consists of:
Ultramarine blue deep  PB29
Cadmium yellow light   PY35 (still my preferred yellow although I occasionally use Arylide lemon PY3)
Permanent Alizarin Crimson (this is the permanent alternative to alizarin crimson) I also replace this with Quinacridone magenta PR122
Burnt Umber (Michael Harding as I find it to be very dark compared to other brands)
Burnt Sienna
Indian Yellow (Masterclass as the pigment PY83 is very stable)

The above colours (plus white) are enough to produce a wide range of mixes to paint most realistic paintings, still life and portraits. For landscape painting I have an extended palette of paints that I use to a lesser degree but that are useful to expand the variety of colour. Here they are:

Yellow Ochre
Lemon yellow (Michael Harding since this is the only company that prepares real lemon yellow)
Indian red
Phthalo Blue
Cadmium scarlet
Phthalo green (I replaced viridian with this one since it has a more intense colour)
Cadmium orange (that I find slightly warmer than the scarlet and hence better for highlight)
Blue Black (very rarely used)

As white I use three kinds:
As a basic white I use a blend of titanium white and zinc white (from either Gamblin or Norma) This is a relatively cool white with a very soft texture.
I also use flake white replacement by Gamblin that is thicker in texture and warmer in tone. However this is titanium white in linseed oil which gives the yellowish tone.
For the main highlights I use a mix of lead and zinc white prepared by Old Holland that is warmer in colour and thicker in texture. I usually reserve this to mix with highlight colour.
I always keep a tube of pure titanium white to add if I need an opaque white to create mist etc.