All Things Fine Art

Good palette practices and brush habits are essential in obtaining desirable painting results.

Students are often careless in setting up their palettes, mixing paint and in loading, holding and making brush marks to best effect. Much of this is simply unskilled ignorance and some of it is lack of discipline resulting in poor rather than clear thinking while painting. Hopefully the following points will be of benefit to you if you find yourself among those who are frustrated with their results.

 

The Palette

First and foremost, keep the palette clean and set it up the same way for every painting session. One of the biggest problems for beginners is placing too little paint on the palette.  A tiny pinch of pigment is clearly not enough. Be sure to squeeze at least the size of a quarter of each pigment for a painting session.

 

These two things will help to enhance good results and create less confusion and frustration during the mixing and painting process. I generously squeeze out my paints in a row across the top of my palette in this order, from right to left with white on the right:

 

Earths, greens, blues, violets, reds, yellows, white

 

An example for students using only three colors plus white, would include leaving a space between the primaries so the secondaries may be mixed and placed accordingly, i.e.:

 

(green)    blue   (violet)    red (orange)    yellow      white

Obviously, in order to mix those secondaries it is essential that enough paint be squeezed from the tube to allow for the mixing of additional puddles of paint. A small dab of paint will not do it.

I scrape and then wipe the mixing area on my palette clean often so as to keep future mixtures from being contaminated with other mixed paints. Keeping the palette’s mixing area tidy and clean goes a long way towards clean color in the painting. Unwanted muddy passages in a painting can often be attributed to dirty brushes and a dirty poorly maintained palette.

 

Preparing and Mixing Color

The palette is an artist’s workbench, where all work of the painting is done. I cannot stress this enough. The tool we use with it is the palette or painting knife. We use the knife, instead of the brush, to mix clean paints.

 

To begin, take the time to mix (ALWAYS with a painting knife) “mother” puddles of colors you will need in the painting. For instance, if you are painting a red apple, you will need a mother puddle of general shadow and general light-struck reds. The same for each of the major elements of the painting including the background.

Begin by mixing a generous puddle of mid-tone red. Divide this puddle in half. One half will be darkened for the shadow side of the apple and the other will be lightened for the light-struck side of the apple. They are both general  hues, in the "ball park" of the color needed.

 

After each mother puddle, is mixed, scoop them up with the knife and place them in a row below the squeezed tube colors (see photo). Be sure to scrape or wipe the knife and palette clean after each mixture is placed in preparation of making the next mother puddle. WORK CLEAN!

 

As one paints, small amounts of the mother puddles will be placed in the mixing area with a knife to be adjusted for each specific passage in the shape to be painted. These specific mixtures may increase/decrease value, temperature or intensity from the mother puddle. Remember, even here, generous sized puddles of paint allow for brushes to be loaded correctly. Little dabs of paint do not load a brush and give poor results. (Please note - “How to Load and Paint with Brushes” is the next Blog post soon to be published in this series.)

 

I hope this information helps you in creating exciting clean colors in your work and lessens the confusion and frustration students often experience when results are less than desired. Preparing generously and cleanly goes a long way for making painting a pleasurable experience.

 

Thank you for taking the time to visit my site and read my posts. I’d like to hear from you if you have questions or wish to comment. Only in this way do I know if my writings are clearly understood and of help to you. Happy painting!