On finding a palette, pt. 1
When I first started painting I would usually grab a tube of paint, put it on my palette, maybe mix it with a little white to tone it down before applying it to the canvas. I would then grab another tube at hand to apply another color, then another and another. After a while my palette would be a mix of different paints, most blended with each other, that would I use to continue working on the canvas.
This was a very intuitive process - I would just reach for whatever was at hand to blend into the picture I was working on. I think my main influence for this approach was musical. I grew up playing percussion where you have a table of different instruments in front of you like drums, rattles, cymbals, cowbells, etc., each with its own texture and sound that could be mixed with each other to create new sounds.
In both cases, you kind of know what each is like before picking them up which comes with practice and experimenting. I love the improvisatory element of just trying something new and seeing what happens both musically and visually.
It wasn’t until I started painting from nature outside that I started to really think about palettes. Part of the reason was that you have limited space and limited time when painting outdoors so getting all the colors on a palette is a necessity to quickly sketch in the picture and start applying the colors to capture the light of the day that only lasts a few moments.
Looking at the history of palettes I realized was a little like Kuhn’s idea of scientific paradigms in the way certain pigments that were available shaped the style and color of the painting of an era. Art historians generally define three main eras of oil palettes in the western tradition of painting and the oil paint manufacturer Gamblin does a nice job of outlining these color schemes and even selling those remanufactured pigments to allow one to explore those palettes.
The first palette is called the Old Masters palette which would be available to painters during the Renaissance and Classical periods of Caravaggio, Rubens, and Rembrandt. It is characterized by earth based pigments like ochre, sienna, ivory black along with ultramarine blue which was very expensive at the time and thus used sparingly.
The old Masters palette tended to be limited in colors, sometimes only four colors were used (black, white, yellow and red), stressing the importance of form and laying values on the canvas to slowly build up the composition. For some painters, like Caravaggio and his followers, the majority of the painting surface was black creating a dark backdrop to the scene in the foreground.
When I was working on a painting outside with dim light in the evening, it became apparent to me how important form is when light is low such as under candlelight. For the painters of this era living in enclosed spaces and going to churches lit only by candles, the figure of the form is all one sees like a sculpture coming out of the canvas.
The major break of this tradition comes with the impressionist period which can fairly be said to also announce the modern era. New pigments like cobalts and cadmiums were discovered with advancements in chemistry along with the invention of tubes that allowed painters to take their paints outside. These inventions helped spawn the explosion of bright impressionist paintings we’re so accustomed to seeing now with their studies of the many shades of color to capture the light and shadow of everyday scenes in France and elsewhere.
The impressionists, now armed with more pigments, devised a palette that introduced “warm” and “cool” colors. In a scientific fashion, they adopted the three primary colors as the core of their palette but adopted warm and cool for each leading to the 6 colors of the impressionists along with white and other ancillary pigments for underpaintings and toning.
Along with pigments, the study of complimentary colors to produce colorful greys and also to create intense color fields, along with techniques of loose brushwork and pointillist style painting lead to a further break with classical painting and seemed to anticipate pixelated television and digital media in some respects.
Since the impressionist period, new pigments have been developed, mainly pthalos, that have increased the intensity and transparency of paints and lead to updated contemporary palettes that have a very “high key” effect. Contemporary paintings have also followed a much looser logic where the goal is breaking rules, overturning norms and discovering new spaces and color relationships and almost deconstructing the palette and painting itself as in the process of Gerhard Richter .
That said, the return to a traditional type palette in my own painting was very refreshing and lit a spark in my landscapes. It was almost like finding the major and minor scales again on the piano instead of just experimenting with notes. Working within rules can actually be quite liberating and seems to be a motivating factor for many artists and musicians working in the aftermath of 20th century modernism. More in part 2….
What a thoughtful interpretation of color and palette! I will keep tuned to see what other insterstitial wanderings can enlighten my soul. thank you!