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Acrylics and watercolour
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Message
Posted
What 8 to 12 colours(as recommended number by various experts) would you choose as a complete, not limited , palette for acrylic and/or watercolour painting? .....Syd
PS This forum needs posts or waking up before it completely withers. Has everything stopped for Christmas.?
Edited
by SydEdward
Posted
You've been reading my thoughts Syd...
Watercolours - Daniel Smith, here we go..
Quinacridone Gold, Yellow Ochre, Transparent Red Oxide, English Red Earth, Ultramarine Blue, Sodalite Genuine, Amethyst Genuine, Lunar Violet, Nickle Titanate Yellow, Green Apatite Genuine, Zoisite Genuine.
Merry Christmas, Syd.
Ellen
Posted
The Forum has entered a sleepy, pre-Christmas phase - it does that now and then. And not always just before Christmas.
But in the interests of waking it up - and waking myself up, come to that - my watercolour palette is usually more limited than my acrylic and oil palettes; not really sure why to be quite honest, but for example I find I rarely use scarlets or crimsons in watercolour. So what would it be, then ..... let's have a rummage in the paint-box.....
Watercolour: Burnt Sienna; Venetian Red; Raw Sienna; Lemon Yellow, Naples Yellow, Viridian; Ultramarine; Pthalo Blue.
Acrylic: Burnt Sienna, Red Iron Oxide or Venetian Red, Quinacridone Rose, Cadmium Red, Raw Sienna, Cadmium Yellow, Lemon Yellow, Gamboge - now and then - , Viridian Hue, Ultramarine, Cobalt Blue, Pthalo Blue, and of course White - Titanium or a thicker, more opaque white depending on the make.
And oil: Varies hugely - a range of whites, including Cremnitz and Titanium; Light Red; Indian Red; Winsor Red, Cadmium Red Deep, Permanent Rose; Naples Yellow, Indian Yellow, Cadmium Yellow,Lemon Yellow or Cadmium Lemon; Viridian or Terre Verte; Ultramarine; Cobalt Blue, and any other blue or Umber that's called for at the time. And maybe Mars Violet.
And all of that may change - I don't really stick to a basic palette even though there's usually a red,yellow, and blue, plus a green (usually viridian) , in there somewhere.
And I don't like black, or grey, but I do have both. I know I've cheated by going on to oils as well, but I found it quite interesting to remind myself of what I really DO use.
http://www.isleofwightlandscapes.net
http://www.wightpaint.blogspot.co.uk
Posted
Syd, I don´t know about using a complete palette as mine is very limited. The colours I use most of all are cerulean blue, cobalt blue, lemon yellow, yellow ochre, burnt sienna, raw umber, Paynes grey, and white with the occasional ultramarine. All the other paints in my paint box hardly get a look-in. The starter kits on offer usually offer 12.
Posted
Well here goes working my way round my watercolour palette:
Winsor blue
*Ultramarine Blue
*Cobalt Blue
*Paynes Grey
*Raw Sienna
*Burnt Sienna
*Light Red
*Burnt Umber
Olive Green
Sap Green
*Lemon Yellow
Cadmium Yellow
Cadmium red
Ultramarine Violet
The ones with a star are my basic colours. I use cad red for the odd highlight and rarely if ever use the greens without mixing. I find a violet useful when it comes to shadows although I can always mix my own. My most valued colour has to be cobalt blue which I find so useful for mixing greens, for roofs and for use in skies - in fact it is usually the common colour which holds all the others together.
Posted
At a guess in reply to your last point, probably Cadmium Scarlet - though I like plain old Cad Red. A really vibrant red in watercolour (or anything else) will be essentially opaque - and the cadmiums are. Arnold Lowrey says that Cad Scarlet is the nearest you can get to pillar-box red/ There are newer reds, of course - I don't know of any that have the punch of the Cadmiums.
Are they the same as the oil colour equivalents .... now there's a question. As always, the truth is likely to vary between makers, but the short answer is "they should be" - only the chemical composition/pigment number will tell you for sure. I imagine that you, like me, have seen many different forms of vermilion over the years (rather more years in your case than in mine, tee hee...): there's an oil vermilion available, at very high cost, which contains mercury: certainly not available in watercolour, and although I'm not normally too fussed about hazardous materials, I won't be using it - I can't foresee any circumstance in which I'd need it, and I'm not going to take the risk just to try it out. On the whole, though - the trouble is that some of the colours you mention are just trade names, eg Potter's Pink; W & N make it, I think, don't they? Going from memory there, because I'm not too good at trawling websites at the moment. I don't recall what actually goes into that particular pigment. Indian red is an iron oxide in all media, so that would be likely the same; scarlet lake...? Could be so many different things, and probably is - different manufacturers will have their own recipes for it. Naples Yellow varies between makers - and even the earth colours we both grew up with are being synthesized now, because the natural earths are harder to find in the quality required. There's not necessarily anything wrong with that, though - one of the first colours to be synthesized was ultramarine, by the wonderful Monsieur Guimet: it made a colour available to all of us which had previously been as expensive, or more, than gold.
In short, the metallics will be the same basic pigment across the media; 'hue' colours vary hugely; the earth colours are still likely to be the same - it's just the binder, the medium, that's different. Thing is, though, and of course you'll know this because you've tried most things, they don't always behave in quite the same way - obviously ultramarine doesn't granulate or flocculate in oil as it does in watercolour; interestingly though, it CAN, in acrylic when used with water - but.... it doesn't always: it's very interesting to compare the behaviour of colours in acrylic and nothing but water, on w'colour paper: you'll get different results if you use a tension-breaker or acrylic medium, and these differences can be exploited in your work.
And that's about all I can see to type at the minute! If they hadn't taught me to touch-type at school 50 years ago, I wouldn't have got this far!
http://www.isleofwightlandscapes.net
http://www.wightpaint.blogspot.co.uk
Posted
Syd: I recommend Magic Color...but you will have to dilute & mix them. Its not every day I make this suggestion.
One of first colour drop of ink plus say 5-10 drops of tap water...One drop of second colour plus say 5-10 drops of tap water...now mix dropwise sort of Blue + Yellow = Green.
Based on working with 360 g/m squ. acrylic paper [Fontaine Color?]. Build up the required depth of colour layer by layer...the drying time is only 5-10 minutes @ 16C/60F.
From my gallery..about 3-5 hours of work...http://www.painters-online.co.uk/gallery/art-view,picture_165307.htm
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