A Landscape Painter’s Guide to Pigments(Part 2) – Easel Talk #42
Every color on your palette should earn its place
Welcome back. This is part two of our palettes and pigments deep dive, we’re picking up where we left off with the oranges and reds. I’ve got two solid outlines to get us through the remaining colors, and while I could stretch this into three parts, I’m keeping to the broad strokes. The real in-depth information, the codes, the technical specifics, that’s all in the book. What I’m giving you here is the logic behind my choices.
One thing worth noting upfront: the order on my palette might look random, but it’s anything but. Raw umber sits on one side, Mike’s green in the middle, then orange, which kicks off my reds and browns. Raw umber is technically a brown, sure, but it’s a greenish brown, so I keep it separate. The point isn’t where you put your pigments; it’s that you put them in the same spot every time. You don’t want to be hunting around while you’re trying to make your painting work.
Cadmium Red Hue
After the orange comes my cadmium red hue. When you see “hue” on the label, you’re not getting the real thing. Real cadmium red costs four times as much and has three or four times the opacity. The difference is apparent, just look at them side by side. Straight cadmium red dominates mixtures. It’s brutal. That’s why I only use it strategically.
Cadmium red hue, though, is semi-opaque, semi-transparent, more like a hansa yellow or yellow ochre in behavior. It’s a supporting player on my palette, but an incredibly valuable one.
When something’s going too green in a mixture, instead of reaching for burnt sienna (which brings its own baggage, all those yellows and oranges muddy things up), I’ll add a touch of cad red hue. It brings pure red without the contamination. I can add it to greens, to any color really, and subtly warm things up. Clean. Clear. It earned this spot on my palette during those limited palette demos I was doing with the Winton sets. I discovered how useful it was and just kept it.
Cadmium Red
Next is the real cadmium red. This is essential for the jobs where you need actual red, the kind with real teeth. And it supports the cad red hue beautifully.
This tube here is ancient. A neighbor gave it to me years ago from an old paint box. The code is PR 101, red iron oxide. Now, red iron oxide is not the same as burnt sienna, and that matters.
Real burnt sienna is semi-opaque and semi-chalky. Red iron oxide is far more transparent. Watch what happens when I mix them, absolutely beautiful together. But when you want opacity, when you want that rich red that’ll actually hold up, cadmium red is critical.
Burnt Sienna
Burnt sienna, I use this constantly. First thing I do when I’m mixing with Mike’s green is chuck in burnt sienna without thinking about it. That warm red added to green makes it look more natural, especially in tonalist work.
The shift I made recently, though, is moving toward burnt umber for my shadow work. But burnt sienna remains essential.
Burnt Umber
Here’s the color I didn’t have on my palette for a long time. I thought I could just mix raw umber with burnt sienna and call it done. But burnt umber is now desert island status for me, same as raw umber. It’s my underpainting color.
You can mix it different ways: a little black with cad red hue, burnt sienna with a touch of black, or burnt sienna mixed with raw umber. But it’s inexpensive and truly essential. It’s the color of earth, of dirt. I use raw umber constantly in mixtures to make things look more natural and warm. For cooler naturalism, I use ivory black. Burnt umber works as both, it brings red, which gives you a little baggage, but in the right context, that’s exactly what I want.
This is also why I brought in mars yellow as a replacement for yellow ochre. Yellow ochre brought green undertones that required compensation in my mixes. Mars yellow doesn’t. Cleaner work.
Rose Madder Deep
This is a cool red, and that matters more than you’d think.
Rose madder is essentially the same as alizarin, interchangeable with alizarin crimson. Here’s the thing about alizarin though: the original wasn’t lightfast. Don’t buy that version. Get permanent alizarin or this rose madder instead.
I don’t use much of it, this tube’s lasted me a year and a half, maybe two years, but when I need it, I need it. And I use less of it now than I used to use rose madder, though most of my paintings still have it somewhere.
Why? I need it for warm reds. Mars black goes cool. In my shadow work especially, when I want to bring in a cool red to beautiful effect, rose madder is there. I’ll mix it with burnt sienna and cad yellow to make a wonderful burnt sienna, or with more yellow for a great orange. It’s versatile, subtle, and it just earned this place on my palette.
It replaced alizarin crimson because rose madder does everything the crimson does, without the purple overtones. Less work. Less compensation required when mixing.
Perylene Black/Green
You’ll hear me refer to this color all the time. It looks like straight black until you see it with white, then its true identity emerges. That is not a color you can mix.
This is my phthalo green substitute. My cool green. In shadows, when I want range and control, perylene is there. I used phthalo green for years, and it does the job, but here’s the problem: phthalo is intense. You bring it into a mixture and it just blasts everything into oblivion. You spend the next twenty minutes adjusting, trying to recover from going too green, too intense.
Perylene does the same work but more subdued, more manageable, more beautiful. And easier to stay in the flow. Phthalo’s still on my palette, I’ll show you why in a minute, but as my go-to cool green? Perylene, every time.
Permanent Green Light
is made from Hansa Yellow and Phthalo Green Hansa yellow (also called Acrylide yellow from Gamblin) is a modifier I don’t have on my palette, but it’s essentially the same tone as cadmium yellow hue from Georgian or Classico. It’s PY 74, Permanent Green Light is this yellow with PG 7, phthalo green, mixed in.
This is why phthalo’s still sneaky on my palette. You can add it to literally any mixture and make a green, usually a beautiful one. It’s a remarkable modifier. I use it a lot in grass areas, mixed with other colors, never straight. Look at what it does on its own, completely unnatural. But that’s the point. It’s a workhorse. Would I want to be without it? No. Desert island color? I could work around it if I had to, I could mix perylene black with hansa yellow and get similar results, but honestly, this color makes my life easier.
Dioxazine Purple
Another color sent to me by a channel supporter who’s been incredibly generous. It’s PV 23, and it looks almost black until you add white.
This is not a color you can mix, even keeping it dark. You have to add white.
Where do I use it? Everywhere, skies, shadows, trees, mixing into darks to create depth and richness. I’m not an impressionist yelling “the shadows are purple, bro!” But violet is incredibly useful. I’ll take grays and shift them with diox purple. Stunning effect.
Here’s the practical thing: it’s super strong and intense. If I know I’m going to be using it in mixtures, I’ll modify it with white first, make a little pile off to the side. Dark, pure diox purple doesn’t really work in mixtures, it just overwhelms. A little white changes everything.
The good news: it dries slowly on the palette. You can leave it there for weeks and still have workable paint. During a painting session, you want these intense colors handy, no digging in your box while you’re in the heat of the moment. Grab it. Make your move. Move on.
Prussian Blue
I’ve got a new tube here and an old, beat-up tube of phthalo blue that I haven’t touched in ages. Prussian blue is PB 15; phthalo blue is PB 27.
For me, one blue does the job: prussian. Ninety percent of the time, blue is for skies and water. Some painters use multiple blues, that’s their mentation, their philosophy. Not mine.
Phthalo and prussian are essentially the same color to my eye. Phthalo’s a bit more intense, a bit stronger. But do you need that extra brilliance? You don’t. Half the time with blue, you can’t even tell it’s blue until you add white anyway.
I like prussian for the history of it, but practically speaking: I can do everything I need to do with just prussian. So I do. One blue to rule them all.
Ivory Black
Ivory black stands alone on my palette, and it’s beautiful. Don’t mistake “black” for “ugly.”
I was taught early on to make my darkest darks the impressionist way, chromatic blacks, phthalo green mixed with alizarin crimson. That works, but it gets me further from the feeling I want in my paintings. I want ivory black instead.
Here’s the critical thing: ivory black is the slowest-drying color on my palette. If you underpainting with it, you have to finish that painting the same day. If you stop and come back the next day, that ivory black will delaminate when you paint over it. The solvents and oil will start removing your underpainting as you work.
That’s why I moved to burnt umber for underpaintings, or burnt umber juiced up with ivory black, they dry differently and even each other out.
But ivory black is better in every mixture. When I want something to be more natural and cool, when I want to kill a color, ivory black is there. It’s pretty. It’s worth the slowness.
Is it desert island? Yes. But if I had to choose between ivory and mars, I’d take ivory because it’s more beautiful, even though I have to work smarter with it.
Mars Black
Mars black is opaque and very, very black. But it’s not as pretty as ivory.
I got into mars black during that sepia series I was doing, struggling with transparency. When everything’s transparent, the earth pigments, the ivory black, the solvents, you’re drowning. You need opacity. That’s where mars black comes in.
Here’s what I use it for: shadow areas. You don’t want your darkest values to be thick with paint. You want transparency there. But ivory black is so transparent that adding more oil doesn’t give you the coverage you need. Mars black lets you add oil and still read as opaque. Juice it up, tint it with a little burnt sienna or burnt umber, make it pretty, and it does its job, dark without the thick paint.
It’s useful. I’ve used most of this tube. But if I had to choose, ivory takes it.
Mike’s Gray
I can’t claim I invented mixing white and black together, but I call it Mike’s gray because, well, I’m Mike.
I always have a pile of it on my palette. This idea came from Kevin McPherson, who said he didn’t like black, but then used Gamblin’s percentage grays, which are all black brought into your painting process in an invaluable way. You take a base color like this gray, tint it purple, red, green, make it lighter, darker, more umber, more warm. I do it all the time.
I got the idea from Kevin’s second book, and it’s brilliant. Always on my palette. If I use it up, I mix it before I start. If I had a full-time assistant, I’d tube it up ahead of time, already made, ready to go.
Both Mike’s gray and Mike’s green are made with ivory black. Ivory black has to be there. You can’t make them with mars black; I tried. It’s ugly and chalky.
Final Thoughts on the Palette
We’ve covered everything, and I still just breezed through. There’s a world of information here. The upcoming book chapters will have the full detail, all the codes, all the reasoning.
Every color here has earned its place. I need it. I know it’s there. I know what it can do. When I’m looking at a reference and thinking how am I going to get that color?, I have a plan. Everything I need to paint, I can do with this palette.
For beginning painters, start limited. You could adopt my whole palette, but that’s overwhelm. You don’t want overwhelm. You want struggle, the right kind. Five or ten paintings with a limited palette, and then add yellow ochre and burnt sienna. You’ll see how far you can get. As you add colors intelligently, you learn what resonates with you and what doesn’t.
This is my palette. It works for any landscape painter I know. But it’s specifically mine because I’ve earned the right to know it deeply.
Check out the book, Landscape Painting the Tonalist Way, for more detail on everything we’ve covered today. $65 USD, shipping included anywhere on the planet.
Mike’s New Site | Substack | Painting Website | Mailing List | Store | My Music | Support | Members Area
M Francis McCarthy, Your Painter in Residence
Take care of yourself. Stay out of trouble. And fight the power.