what are the best colours for basic oil painting pallete, if limited to a dozen, flake white, zing or titiniam

Question

which white is for what, flake, zing and titiniam

Answer 1

True "flake" is lead - the best being Cremnitz. It is thick, opaque, warm, and initially dries fairly quickly. It can yellow over time from air pollution but was favoured by the classics like Rembrandt. Zinc and titanium, both cool, are often mixed for a ground, or as a working white, especially for blocking in with thin tonal washes. Titanium is less opaque than zinc and can be used in glazes. The rest of my own pallette is based on warm and cool primaries: Cadmium Yellow med (warm), Cad Lemon (cool), Yellow ochre (cool). Cad Red light (warm), Alizarin Crimson (cool, very useful in mixes, such as "greying" a green, or for violets), Burnt Sienna (not essential, because you can easily mix browns all of which are based on reds, but BS has lovely inner lights and you can treat it as a cool red, or to grey back other mixes such as blue skies over cities etc), Ultramarine Blue (warm - makes brighter violets with Alizarin than with Cad red, say), and either Cerulean Blue or Phalo Blue for a cool blue - but Pthalo requires careful handling as it is powerful. So there is eight, and all you really need but you have to learn their characteristics by practice. For landscapes (Australia) and for seascapes, I also carry Viridian, and Indigo. And sometime Cad Orange if lazy for rich dark greens with Ultra or Indigo. You can mix Indigo from Ultra, black, and ochre, but not as "lively" as the commercial version - and I don't carry black. I know no-one who can mix up a viridian on the pallette. These are colours for outdoor work, with a fieldbox or pochade. I use a half-box to save weight, and made my own pochades of various sizes, which I support on a light camera tripod when required. In the studio I have a range of other colours, collected for experiments over the years, but rarely use any of them, having learned to mix most of the "sports" that seduce many amateurs and make the colourmen richer to little purpose. That pallette will serve for any subject or style. My favoured brand of oils is "Old Holland". If you can get them the pamphlets will explain why. But being more pure pigments and slightly coarser ground they are dearer and more "idiosynchratic" (varying intensity between different colours, etc) than, say, Winsor and Newton etc. But always buy the best quality you can afford, learn how to use them and how they behave in mixes. And for shere joy, use linen canvases, not cotton or boards, I reckon! They "sing" totally differently.

Answer 2

Titanium white is sort of the universal white and it covers better than zinc or flake white... Yellow ochre is a must, cad. yellow and red, ultramarine blue, chrom. oxide green and cerulean blue... you can also add alizarin crimson and ivory black, or a carbon black. The point really is to mix your own colors with what you have to make a broader pallette. Having the right cool/warm colors when mixing will result in less muddy hues.

Answer 3

Ivory black, titanium white, raw umber, burnt umber, raw sienna, burnt sienna, yellow ochre, cadmium yellow light ("cool'" yellow), cadmium yellow medium ("warm" yellow), cadmium red light ("warm red"), alizarin red ("cool red"), French Ultramarine ("warm" blue), Thalo Blue ("cool" blue), Sap green. That's 14 colors but these are the ones I have come to use as a professional after much trial and error over many years. I have found that you can mix ANY color you want with these. Mix the cools with the cools and the warms with the warms and you will never get "mud".

Answer 4

The basic colors for oils run like this: two shades of green, dark and light, cadmium yellow light, yellow ocher, burnt sienna, burnt umber, reds(two shades), viridian green, olive green, pthalo blue, aquamarine, cadet blue, yellow orange, grey, ivory black.
You can mix just about any colors from those. If you are strapped for cash, buy just seven colors: yellow, orange, red, green, indigo, blue, violet, along with ivory black and titanium white. You can mix all colors from this very basic palette. All you have to do is have a good color wheel with you and voila.

Answer 5

Titanium white is the usual selection by many artists, but zinc follows a close second.