I keep a Box of Rocks in my Studio for inspiration. I pick them up everywhere I go. I call my colors, "The Earth Palette." My colors are made from the minerals of the earth, ground, mixed with oil and tubed.
Animal or Vegetable, With the earth palette, I can match any color that nature can invent.
Above are some of the paintings in which I have used this palette. You can see how well they would fit, color wise, into my box of rocks.
What I don't have - and don't want - are the modern "chemical" colors that I see in those "toy store plastics." I think that these colors don't make very nice paintings.
My palette is very old fashioned and my pigments are made from mother earth.
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Here's some of the natural iron oxides you get when you grind those rocks: Yellow Ochre, Raw Sienna, Burnt Sienna, Raw Umber and Burnt Umber (shown above).
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Add some linseed oil, put the mixtures in tubes and get these earth colors: Venetian Red, Indian Red, Ivory Black (shown above).
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Yellows
Each color family in my palette, red, yellow and blue has both warm and cool colors.
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Reds
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I like to surround myself with the colors of earth as it helps keep my eye "true." You can see a little piece of this old Oriental Rug on my (natural red tile) floor that was dyed with natural earth colors - naturally.
Blues
In paintings I usually mix Ivory black and white to make a color that looks "blue." Then I can glaze other colors into that to approximate any of the natural blue mineral colors you see above. I haven't seen any color in the sky that I cannot match with one of my rocks.
Black
There is an endless variety of deep rich natural blacks in nature. I don't have any coal in my collection yet. Drat.
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White
Just look at the delicious colors that represent white. None of them are the color of a sheet of white paper...they are so much richer than that.
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Greens.
Another group of interesting colors. I have a rock to match nearly every leaf and blade of grass that nature makes.
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Purples and Violets
2 comments:
I'm usually a lurker on your site, and it's funny that your "box of rocks" post has made me surface, as I admire your work so much, but I just had to tell you what a treat and good reminder your post was. Thank you!
Karin,
I absolutely love this post! What a wonderful way to receive inspiration for color choices!
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