Setting up a Palette

Setting up your palette is something that is going to be very personal to you. But there are a few pointers that I can give you so that as you start to figure out your own way of setting up your palette, you can keep those in mind. Hi, I'm Katie Lydiard and let's set up a palette together. Ok. So this is how I typically set up my palette. I have my lights to darks and to a certain extent there's a rainbow uh order here except that I have my yellow and red flipped. So again, it's going from my lights down to my darks, but I do have them separated into warmth and cools. Of course, white is going to be a cool color, but I use lead white, which is a bit warmer of a white and it's also of course one of my brights and so that's going to be on this side next to my yellow. And then coming down here, I have my Van Dyke Brown which acts as my black um or a neutral gray depending on how I'm mixing it. Uh but you can see a very nice gradient from light to dark. So that's how I prefer to set up my palette. But I know that not everyone likes to set up their palette. That way. This, of course, is my medium that doesn't have to be there. It can be anywhere on the palette. Sometimes I have it off to the side if I don't have room up here. But let's figure out some different ways that we can set this up. That might make a bit more sense to you. The main thing is that whenever I come to my palette to grab a color, I know what color that is and I know how it's going to react within my mixtures. I don't have to think about, about anything too much. I just have to focus on this color is going into to this mixture and it's going to react this way. So I only need just a little bit or I need a little bit more or whatever it is. But I know exactly what that color is and I know exactly how it reacts. So I know that some artists like to take their white and bring it over next to their black. The reason being that they like knowing what their extremes are within the painting, you have white and black and that's as far as you can go within your value scale. Some artists don't need that value scale. They know that all of their mixtures are going to be within here. So they don't need that, that extreme. That reminder of these are my extremes, white and black. But I know that some artists interestingly enough will have their white in the middle and they'll build out from there, getting their rights there. And then kind of coming down after that. The reason being from what I've heard from the artists that set up their palette this way is that they like that they're white, the most commonly used color for them is right in the middle. So they can always kind of refer back to that white easily. And so then of course, you would have the rest of your colors on this side just like that. This makes sense to some people since you use white, the most have it right there. Dead center for you. Um Whatever makes sense to you, and of course, you can mix up how you set out your colors. But again, the most important thing is that, you know exactly what color is, where and how it will react within your painting mixtures. So I hope that gives you some ideas on how to set up your own palette. You're going to have to understand how your colors work together and how you tend to reach for each color individually. So I hope that you try a few things out and see what works naturally for you. Thanks for joining.