Re-Introduction
In the previous installment, Choosing Paints, Part I: Fat and ... Translucent?, we discussed picking your first paint, monochromatic painting and the two-colour and Zorn palettes. For 3300 words. And you thought that was enough learning.
What we're trying to prevent: Bad life choices, and unsaleable art that leads to the ramen diet.
The Six Colour Palette
Like in the previous article, assume your palette includes at least one white (paint in oils/acryls/gouache/encaustic/cat sacrifice; paper in watercolours) and possibly a black that don't count toward your colour total. A six-colour palette includes a warm and cool pigment for each primary colour - red, blue and yellow. This mix lets you blend a wide range of colours more or less approximating the full spectrum, though you may have to rely a bit more on black depending on which specific pigments you choose. (Or you can buck the black and use a complimentary two-colour mix or a bit of all three primaries instead of a tube black, if you're feeling extra artistic - this in theory will create more harmony between the tones of your painting, but might give you some unpredictable results until you're used to your tube colours.)
Oh the possibilities.
Warm versus Cool
Cool Reds - reds with a bit of blue or violet skew, like crimsons; pinks read as cool reds
Cool Yellows - yellow with a bit of a blue or green skew, like lemon yellows; light neutral yellows usually read cool, but there are some exceptions
Cool Blues - blues that skew toward green, like turquoise; light neutral blues often read cool too
Warm Reds - reds leaning on the orange side, like scarlets; most of the "red" reds read warm, and some warm oranges can pass for really warm reds
Warm Yellows - yellows tending toward hints of orange or brown, like golds; the darker yellows almost invariably read warm, except for dark lemons
Warm Blues - blues that aren't green, like indigo; almost all neutral blues look warm in mass tone
A Preliminary Note On Mixing Colours
You never put a warm yellow with a cool blue to make vibrant green: it makes dull baby diarrhea. This is because as you get closer to mixing complimentary colours, your result gets further from the pure secondary colour and closer to neutral grey. In practice this makes mud on your canvas or paper - a washed-out, not-quite-brown, not-quite-grey shade of the pure secondary colour you're going for. It's a useful tool when you're trying to tone down a mix though - if you have a vibrant green, let's say a phthalo turquoise in a hansa yellow, and add a little deep red it will subdue that green to a more natural tone. It's because of this that the six colour palette includes warm and cool tones of each primary - to allow mixing either vibrant, pure secondaries or more subdued tertiaries.Warm Blue
The first colour we'll pick in a six-colour palette is your warmer blue - the blue that skews a bit more neutral or even indigo. Your typical choice for a warm blue in a traditional palette is a (French) ultramarine, PB29; it is a moderately tinting, semi-transparent and quite neutral blue that has a bit of an iridescent sheen to it if used in thin glazes in oils. It also flocculates in watercolour, which basically means it granulates in weird rod-like clumps, filling the gaps of rough paper when it's diluted enough.Gif unrelated.
Cool Blue
The typical cool blue in an artist's palette is PB28 cobalt, a toxic heavy metal pigment that is quite expensive, opaque, moderate in tint strength, and a bit on the neutral side of the cool spectrum. For landscapes and other applications where you may want a less vivid blue the go-to is PB29 cerulean, another cobalt pigment that's lower tint, much lighter, and a bit less opaque; it also granulates in watercolours. PB36 cobalt turquoise is also an option and is especially useful if you'll be mixing a lot of greens; it's about as semi-opaque as cerulean, but doesn't granulate in watercolours. Cobalt pigments are expensive, and cerulean is among the most expensive you'll find in most lines.Cobalt is the Honey Boo Boo of pigments.
The importance of checking pigments - only one of these is actual manganese.
Cool Yellow
Other options that could serve you well in the opaque group are PY154 benzamidazolone, a synthetic lemon yellow similar to hansa but opaque; PY30 turner's lead, a subdued yellow similar to naples but not quite as fleshy; or PY53 nickel-antimony lemon, a favourite of mine in watercolours since its opacity is based largely on how dilute it is - going from fully opaque to semi-transparent as you add the tiniest bits of water. If you want a transparent cool yellow you are severely limited and pretty much have to use either hansa lemon or PY31 barium lemon, an older synthetic that is more transparent but lower-tint. Or you can come out of left field and use PY192 green gold, a much greener yellow (closer to a yellow-skewed green, really) that's subdued and granulates in watercolour.
Oh, transparent yellow, how you're a jerk.
Warm Yellow
PY1 hansa yellow is a possibility if you want something semitransparent with high tint power, but be warned it isn't lightfast; if you want a lightfast transparent warm yellow (mouthful much?) you're limited to PY40 aureolin, which has slightly lower tint power than hansa.
You can also use a yellow-skewed orange if you're feeling really risqué. Or raw umber.
Cool Red
If you decide to try a true red for your cool red, historically you would have used PR83 alizarin - a super high tint very intense transparent crimson pigment - but it's terribly fugitive so it's rarely even available now. Instead, PR264 pyrrole rubine or PR149 perylene tend to be used, with similar properties but less tinting power and much better lightfastness. There are also some interesting pink options that read as a cool red but offer a subdued overall feel in your work, like NR9 rose madder (a natural plant lake that's only used in watercolour and isn't lightfast but has a very earthy feel and smells amazing) or PR259 ultramarine pink (which behaves exactly like any other ultramarine pigment - iridescent in thin oil glazes, flocculating in watercolours, and semitransparent). You could even pull in one of the fugitive but intense pink dye pigments, like PR122 quinacridone magenta or PR173 fluorescent rhodamine and make the colours really pop!
SO BRIGHT.
Warm Red
Good modern substitutes for vermillion include PR108 cadmium red (in a deeper, warmer shade if you can find it) which is also highly toxic, opaque and expensive but won't react weirdly with flake white; PR254 pyrrole red which is a high-tint synthetic but a bit cooler in tone than true vermillion; or PR188 naphthol scarlet, which is warm like a true vermillion but a bit more transparent so you may find you use more in your tints.
Black
In the previous article we discussed - briefly - that ivory black can read as a cool blue in the Zorn palette. On its own, however, PBk9 ivory black is warm-neutral. It's the juxtaposition of ivory black against vermillions and ochres that makes it look like the "cool" element of the image. PBk6 carbon black is a pure neutral, PBk7 lamp black is warmer, PBk8 vine black is neutral-cold and PBk11 mars black is the coldest; all these black pigments are made from carbon of various sources (burned petroleum products, burned bone, burned wood and straight-up graphite), are semi-opaque, moderately tinting and lightfast. And kind of boring wait did I actually just type that.Sorry, I just don't really use them so I'm biased.
There really are few options for black that aren't carbons, but PBk28 spinel black is becoming a favourite of mine in oils - it behaves like an ultramarine, iridescent in thin glazes and semi-transparent, lending itself well to sfumato work. It's made from the same substance as found in emeralds, too, which is kind of fun?
... And Beyond!
Outside of these pigment families, most of what you see in tube colour are "novelty" pigments - like PR233 potter's pink, a granulating watercolour that is great for skin tones and textures, or PBk31 perylene green, a counterintuitively named black pigment that tints to a green-brown appropriate for accenting foliage. These pigments are great for specific uses, but finding those uses is often a mix of experimentation and prayer. There are thousands of numbered pigments and even more pigment blends available as tube colour and the sky's the limit for adding to the basic palette. Just remember, the more pigments you add, the less "organic" the piece will generally feel and the more muddy tones you risk making!
Adding random dioxazine violet to a painting that so far has only contained brown earths and alizarin will make you have all the fashion sense of Patsy tho.