Is Your Palette Right Side Up?

It makes me nuts. (And some days it doesn't take much.)

Upside down palettes.

Here's an upside down palette from a stock photo house. This silly palette is guaranteed to hurt your thumb and get paint all over your hands and clothing.

And besides that's an awful lot of paint laid out on such a small palette, isn't it?

I took this picture of the upside down palette above in the studio in the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam.

The great artist's house and studio are loving and meticulously recreated....but it appears that somebody neglected to consult a real painter before setting up this particular display.

I've seen people who have painted with upside down palettes for years. And that can cause some serious thumb-pain.

Here's how it looks when a right handed artist is holding his palette correctly in his left hand - right side up.

Michael Balsley at Turtlewood (business card above) made my favorite large (counter weighted) studio palette.

A comfy palette can be tough to find and Turtlewood makes a large variety of the best. I can paint all day and my hand won't hurt.

If the artist is right handed (palette for holding in in left hand shown above), he or she will hold the palette, brushes, rag and mahl stick in the left hand and paint with the right hand.

There are also left-handed palettes and flipping a right handed palette over doesn't work.

Palettes come in all shapes and sizes. Note that the thumbhole is cut at a slant for comfort when the above palette is being held in the left hand.

Here it is again: the above pix shows two rectangular right side up palettes that are to be used by a right-handed person who holds a palette in the left hand. The thumb holes are always cut at a slant for comfort.

Also note: some artists like to make their own palettes. Nice idea and I don't discourage it. But make sure that if that palette is to be held, make it as light weight as possible or a fun day of painting could necessitate ice packs applied to the thumb by the end of the day.

So now you know that it matters which side of your palette you put the paint on. If you forget, your thumb will hurt, you'll get paint on yourself and it will be generally uncomfortable.

No more excuses.

More about Zinc White Oil Paint

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TITANIUM WHITE is an opaque non-yellowing white. Most brands contain some zinc white to aid in mixing (even if the label doesn't tell us that). Pure titanium white is chalky and hard to mix. Pure zinc white is a little too transparent for most uses. 

I avoid using Lead White, Flake White or Cremnitz White, all of which contain toxic lead. But maybe now I'll have to rethink this. 

The following material (in blue below) about Zinc White oil paint has been excerpted from an interview with Edward Hopper by John Morse, June 17, 1959:

"JOHN MORSE: Then back to your own techniques, you mentioned that only one painting that you know of of yours has had to have some attention, Nighthawks in Chicago. What was the occasion there?

Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks"

EDWARD HOPPER: Well, I think it was because in order to get a greater whiteness and brilliancy, I had used zinc white in a certain area of the picture. I think that had cracked or scaled, whereas the parts where I had used lead white did not. This is my remembrance of it.

JOHN MORSE: Was that due, do you think, to an inferior quality of the zinc white or to the nature of the materials?

EDWARD HOPPER: No, I don't think so. I think that zinc white has a property of scaling and cracking. I know in the painting of houses on the exterior, zinc white is apt to crack and scale, whereas lead white merely powders off.

JOHN MORSE: I see.

EDWARD HOPPER: So I think that the same would be true in pictures.

JOHN MORSE: And since that experience you have avoided zinc white?

EDWARD HOPPER: Yes, I use only lead white now."

Edward Hopper's "Pennsylvania Coal Town," 1947

Then I got an email from Hylla Evans (who really knows her paint chemistry) and have posted her remarks in green below:

"The problems with zinc white have been known for a long time. You know I like lead/flake white for oils and don't get it on my skin (or wash it quickly if I do).

The article casually mentions the interaction of the zinc oil paint with acrylic (presumably underpainted). This screams for the same attention to be published about reactivity of other oil paints with acrylic emulsions.

Here are my over simplified and obviously personal thoughts:

All oil paintings crack; it's just a matter of when - not if.

Painting on a rigid substrate will make for less humidity-related cracking than comes from expansion and contraction of canvas.

Stick to materials and practices that have been time tested. Meaning don't include acrylic in any aspect of your oil painting. It might be okay and it might not - but why have your art be the experiment?

Fat over lean; thick over thin, etc.

Linseed oil is good but will yellow over time with most whites (titanium especially). It's the oil that's yellowing. Put a yellowed painting in sunlight for a day or two and the yellow will disappear.

Except for the above, keep all oil paintings out of sunlight - direct or indirect - to extend the life of the work at its best.

That said, and other pigments not addressed, museums are best able to control environments for art.

True though that zinc is not a good paint ingredient and really never was.

Also, most drying agents that come in and out of fashion put paintings at high risk. As convenient as they are, they are a serious compromise compared to allowing drying time and natural resins that have been successfully used for hundreds of years.

I'm afraid we are all taking chances with alkyd and other modern resins."

Red, Yellow, Blue, Black & White

Here's another secret that the Old Masters knew & it is hiding in plain sight. You can check this out in a stroll through at any good museum.

Almost every good painting has some representation of the following five colors:

It doesn't matter if you paint like the Old Masters (or like your own unique contemporary self) - this is one of the fundamentals of painting and it works.

Max Beckman knew this in 1921 and I am sure this Old Master principal was learned from his original classical training in art.

If one of these colors is missing, the eye will hunger for it - and the painting will, somehow, seem incomplete until it is included.

The red is a tiny touch at the waist and the drapery is blue. The background is yellow.

How's this for subtle color? The head of the cane is blue. The cane is made from a deep reddish wood. The frock coat is a warm yellowish grey. The shirt and gloves are white and the tie is black.

It doesn't have to be obvious. For example, red doesn't have to look like a fire engine. It can be represented simply be the color of cherry wood. It can be a reddish neutral. 

The color doesn't have to cover a large area - it can be "just a touch." But it has to be there.

The secondary colors (the combination of two primary colors, i.e., orange can stand for either red or yellow depending on the shade or how and where it is used).

I learned to paint by copying the Old Masters. Copying a Vermeer was the first time I noticed this "secret." I looked around - and sure enough, all the greats did it.

Painting a sky is such a good way to put blue into a painting.

The "red" in this painting is just a little on top of the book.

Black objects paint well - shadows don't count as "black."

Once you see this, you can't stop seeing it.

Sometimes it is very obvious.

The black in this one is the detail around the neck of the child's clothing.

I'll bet that people didn't really dress this way with these colors. The artist manipulated it because it serves the painting so well.

 

Despite the pale skin, it is the "white" band in the hair that counts.

Even The Mona Lisa follows this rule.

This one is obvious.

This one is even more obvious.

Greenish blue counts as "blue" in this one. The hair is red.

I am so sorry that these pictures are so small and hard to see - but the artist was very clever to put the pages of the book in yellow and the roof of a distant building in red.

I'd say that the wood of the table is red. The book pages, yellow and the stone door frame is blue. See the tiny touch of white at his throat?

You'll see a lot of strong primary colors (plus black and white) in the religious paintings of the Italian Renaissance..

It's a bit of a formula once you begin to notice this "secret."

The spot in the necklace is red. Blue appears in the dress.

Next time you wonder what color to paint something - ask yourself, "what's missing?"

Tiny little spots of color can - and often do - make the painting.

All the colors are on her palette in this painting.

Sometimes it is really subtle: Yellow and Red on the palette. Blue in the painting. Black and white are obvious.

Even a study in gray has red, yellow, blue neutral grays. 

This Corot is one of my favorites. And yes, red, yellow, blue, black and white are represented here. 

It was painted with a very limited earth palette: My guess is that Corot used Burnt Umber, Raw Sienna, Raw Umber, Ivory Black and Titanium White.

Burnt Umber represents red.

Yellow is Raw Sienna and/or Raw Umber used as a glaze.

Blue is represented by Ivory Black plus White

White is made by mixing Raw Umber and White

I'll chat about limited earth palette paintings in another post sometime soon. I think that they are uniquely beautiful.