Palette Setup for Oil Painting

Have you ever wondered where to start when setting up your own palette? I'll tell you how I set up mine, and you can come up with your own variation for your own. Everyone kind of has their own little thing that they have going, but I kind of start in one spot, and then expand from there. So I always start out with my lead white. You can use titanium or any other white that you like, but I like my lead, because it's creamy, it's warm, and it's a strong, strong paint. Then I move onto my cadmium lemon, and that is just a little softer than cad yellow. My yellow ochre is a classic kind of earth tone. You'll find this in just about every painting ever made. Alizarin permanent is also a really great color for kind of more earthy reds. And most people like to use Alizarin in some way. Sap green is a great all around green color, and ultramarine blue is a really great deep blue to kind of build up on. We have raw umber here, which is a bit more of a neutral brown than say a burnt umber, which is a bit kind of redder in tone. But I like the more neutral brown myself, because then if I need to vary the tone a little bit warm to cool, I can add some blue or some red in there myself. And then Van Dyke brown. That's what I use kind of as my black. I'll usually mix my own black, but the Van Dyke brown is really great because it is a very neutral gray color when mixed with white. I love that color. I have Oleogel here, as you can see. It's just a linseed oil mixed with a silicone that just plops right there. So I don't have a cup sitting on my pallet anymore. I just have what is basically another color that I can dip into to get my medium. So that's my basic light to dark, warm to cool palette setup. Again, everyone else has kind of their own variation, but this is kind of basic where I can build up off of and know where I'm going when I'm in a painting. I know my white is here, my dark is here, and I can pull everything down from there. Now, depending on the subject, I can vary those colors a bit. So if I'm painting a portrait, I want really subtle colors instead of more vibrant colors, like if I were painting flowers. So I have some lemon ochre here, which is just a bit grayer than this yellow ochre. It's softer pigmented, instead of the bright punchiness that a yellow ochre will give you. Over here, I have my genuine vermilion, which is a really beautiful soft pink for say cheeks or lips. Just absolutely beautiful for portraiture. And then over here, I have my genuine lazurite, which again, is kind of a blue that is similar to the ultramarine, but it's grayer, it's softer, it's more subtle. Absolutely beautiful for those soft undertones of flesh. So portraiture, really gray. But if I want to bring up the pigments, say for flowers, I'm going to really pull the punches. Alizarin is great for kind of all around earthiness, but it's not really great for flowers. So I have my quinacridones right here. I have my quinacridone red, quinacridone rose, and quinacridone magenta. They are really punchy, really bright pinks that when mixed with white, aren't gonna lose that really punchiness to them, which Alizarin tends to lose. I also have, if I need them, I have my cadmium orange and orange molybdate. If I need just a little bit more orange punch to it, again, flower colors can be pretty vibrant depending on what at your painting. So I really want to pull the punches and bring out all of the great pigments that I can for my flowers. And these two, you don't need a lot of for mixing your colors. Now, if I'm gonna paint a landscape, the only color that I've found that is really, really great for just a blue, bright blue sky is cobalt blue. That really is just the absolute perfect blue for a sky. I've tried to make it with ultramarine. It doesn't work. So cobalt blue is great. So you can see that I have my basic colors here. My light to dark, warm to cool, little variations, depending on the specific subject matter, but it's kind of up to you. What are you painting? What are you needing in your color pigments to get the painting that you need? So I hope this has been helpful and that you can kind of experiment with your paints a bit.