Working outdoors, however, can actually help you to appreciate fine pigments. Our color codes will show you just how much can be produced from only a few basic tubes. You’ll need to take with you the colors listed below.

Oil colors are pigments already mixed with a small amount of oil to help them flow. You can add more oil, or turpentine, to thin out the paint, or white to lighten the effect. Never use white spirit instead of turpentine; made of rectified paraffin, it usually contains impurities that affect some of the colors quite badly.

An important reason for mixing your own colors is that some commercially produced tones are extremely fugitive – that is, they will fade or discolor quickly. This is especially true if they are subjected to strong sunlight, as they would be out of doors.

Although there are some colors that will not be as clear in the cheaper grades, those listed below are all perfectly satisfactory in student quality. As your work improves, do add some artist’s colors to your palette; they are more finely ground, have few or no additives and are of incomparable intensity.

Basic palette

• White
• Cadmium yellow
• Yellow ochre
• Cadmium red
• Alizarin crimson
• Burnt umber
• Viridian green
• Ultramarine blue
• Ivory black

Acrylic paints often have different names from traditional oil paints, and the range is much more limited. However, you will be able to find the basic seven colors you need by looking at the chart in your local supply store. If you are using canvas or boards, you will need a special acrylic primer, and there are gloss, and matt mediums instead of linseed oils or turpentines. Acrylics dry more quickly than oils, are more flexible and don’t harden with age or change color, but the texture is different. Working with one or the other becomes a personal choice.

Once you have mastered the basic colors, you can add already mixed paints in a few shades to save time. The colors I would choose for any long painting trip would be those based on the earth and sky shades that I use most often in outdoor painting.

Remember that the color will vary slightly according to how you put it onto the canvas. Like most artists I learned to work in a way that is generally known as ‘lean to fat’,

In this the first washes are applied with only enough turpentine to smooth the paint Into the fabric. The effect is generally quite opaque, the colors changing from the deep blobs on the palette to a much dryer, almost filmy look.

These lean washes provide the best background for any style of painting.

Gradually, as I work nearer the foreground, and therefore nearer surface of the finished painting, I mix turpentine and! Or oil with the pigment, achieving more and richer coloring, and greater depth of intensity and tone. I add the top highlights with pure pigment and oil to give a final sheen, providing sparkle and light wherever it is most appropriate.

You will find that one of the great advantages of painting in oil is that you can physically move the paint about. If you go off to lunch, leaving the painting to dry, you may well come back and decide that a section on the right or left is not what you really want; with a few flicks of the palette knife you can be back to the canvas. No other medium can be treated this way. It makes it easy to begin when you know that changing your mind is always a possibility.

Extended palette

• White
• Lemon yellow
• Cadmium yellow
• Yellow ochre
• Cadmium red
• Alizarin crimson
• Purple
• Indian red
• Viridian green
• Light green
• Raw sienna
• Burnt sienna
• Raw umber
• Cerulean blue
• Cobalt blue
• Prussian blue
• Ultramarine blue
• Ivory Jack
• Lamp black

By learning and understanding the many different vehicles and how they will perform, you will build a sound knowledge of their usage. It does not make sense to me to search for a medium that will do all things, such as I dry slow, dry fast, be opaque, be transparent. The artist can from the outset easily select the ingredients for his medium that will do the job for his particular painting. A reliable painting medium, if used with knowledge and used sparingly, should hold up well and cause no bad effects in the future.

Once you select a particular medium for a painting, it would be bad procedure to change to another while in the process of painting. You may experience all sorts of bad effects on the paint if you do not follow this rule. [f you start your experiments with a basic medium, such as one-third turpentine, one-third linseed oil and one-third dammar varnish, you will have I a good point of departure. If you want to slow the drying time, decrease the amount of varnish. To increase the drying time, add turp or varnish. There is a point beyond which too much varnish will make the paint sticky and hard to handle. Also if you use too much oil, the paint will become and hard to handle. Also if you use too much oil, the paint will become disagreeably greasy and have a poor drying rate.

No amount of words will put together a medium that will give you just what you desire. The following checklist should allow you to select media I for the particular quality you personally desire in your finished painting. Any addition of turpentine or petroleum distillates will hasten this drying I time.

1. Resin ethereal varnishes-damar or mastic-will give the medium the desired depth of luminosity and transparency. If used in excess, these become disagreeably sticky and hard to handle. The drying time under normal conditions is one to two days.
2. Balsams-Canada balsams, Venice turpentine, etc.-lend a smooth effect to the paint surface. They combine well for a glaze medium and, if not used to excess, dry in two to three days. The effect of blending one color into the next can be obtained with the use of the balsams-no other medium will produce it so well, especially in conjunction with the thickened oils.
3. Sun-thickened linseed oil gives the paint surface an elastic enamel-like quality. It dries rather fast when mixed with turpentine, allows for a fluid I draftsman like application. The same may be said for stand oil, except that it has a slower drying rate.
4. Linseed and poppy oil are the basic vehicles used today in the grinding of tubed paints. Linseed oil gives the painting a hard surface and, if used in excess, tends to yellow considerably and to wrinkle. Poppy oil will yellow less but, if too much is used, and if painted in layers, wet over dry, will I crack. Poppy oil is best suited to painting that is to be finished wet-in-wet. It possesses a good buttery quality and feels good on the brush. The drying I time of these vehicles is influenced by a number of things, such as the absorbency of the ground, heat and cold, and humidity. You will also find that the size of the canvas enters into it. On a canvas 4 feet by 8 feet, the medium and its requirements are totally different from a small 12 by 16 inch canvas. We could sum up by saying that there are so many intangibles and personal preferences that you must, with experimentation and experience, build the medium that suits you best.

The palette selected for “Evening” was cadmium yellow light, cadmium orange, cadmium red light, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue and Prussian I blue-ultramarine blue for the violet side of the spectrum, and Prussian blue for the green side.

One may observe very easily the use of complementary colors in painting this type of picture: Yellow for the glints of light on the clouds in the sky against the violets in the foam of the foreground and the shadows of the rocks; orange for the light on the clouds as they recede from the source of light against the blue zenith being reflected on the ocean below; pink for the lights on the clouds that are still more distant from the source of light against I the greens of the sky and the reflection in the ocean and foam of the foreground.

In the late afternoon and evening, colors and values change very rapidly I and it is rather hard to make sketches that are complete. One must work very fast and small so as to capture the essence of the moment. I have found the use of very heavy (300-lb.) water-color paper tacked to a small board useful to work on with oil paint, turpentine being the vehicle. The watercolor paper, being absorbent, dries the paints sufficiently fast to allow me to work one color over the other and to arrive at a very quick effect. Casein paints can be used similarly. But with oils the dark tones stay dark and do not dry out of value as much as a water-based paint does.

When the brilliant colors have faded from the sky, and greys, blues and violets have taken their place, my sketches are finished. It is time to return to the studio. I am not the only one calling it a day. The clatter of the gulls has ceased. The flowers in the meadow that faithfully follow the course of the sun on its trip across the zenith have closed their petals. Quiet prevails. Only the sound of the never-ending ocean disturbs the air.

On subsequent days while working on a canvas made up of a composite of my sketches, it will be very important that I retain the feelings and mood of that evening in the meadow. You cannot think a storm and paint a quiet picture. Art rises above mechanical procedures. The artist with a sound background who is creative can and should live the mood of the picture he is painting.

The fishing folk of the world use this knowledge, especially in the tropics where the white sands and coral reflect large amounts of light, revealing different shades and hues of color, determining for the fisherman the depth of the water for his safe passage. In actuality, the colors in the foreground of a painting from shore may be the same as the colors on the horizon, but are not revealed to us as the same. We are the stationary ones. The light and colors are moving through layers of atmosphere which restrict their and colors are moving through layers of atmosphere which restrict their tones and intensities-they reach the viewer sapped of strength and changed in character. Along with the usual dark-to-light value changes as you recede into your canvas, you must create the illusion of great depth by adding these color changes.

Many fine artistic, scientific books have been written on the subject of color and its relation to the artist and nature. Study them and experiment by yourself to gain a working knowledge of the subject. There is no end. Often I have observed students of painting returning day after day to the same spot on the rocks to work. The first day they lay in the sky, the second the ocean, and so forth, finishing each as they go, never thinking that the first day’s sky may have no relation to the color of the water the next day. There is no better way to miss the boat.

A good painting must be of the one moment in time when the artist made his decision: this is it! From that second on, the painting must stem from your mind, always holding true to your original concept, reflecting and relating one passage to the other, building an over-all concept of your first thought, only using the scene before you as a foundation block to your composition. If for a moment you allow yourself to copy what is in front of composition. If for a moment you allow yourself to copy what is in front of  the painting. The sun has moved, the sky has changed, the colors are different. If you go on by the hour in this manner, then the painting will end up as a hodge-podge of unrelated and uninteresting facts. Science may have use for these facts, but not the artist. An orchestra that allows its musicians to play as they wish, one giving no thought to the other, does not make music, only discord. A conductor must make each musician take his place and play in relation to the others, reflecting his command in order to make harmony. You, the artist, must be the conductor making each value in color do its part to produce a painting with harmony and beauty.