Color Panels
Oil paints eventually get old and if not used, need to be discarded and replaced. I have some Windsor-Newton tubes of oil paint that are 22 years old, colors I’ve used but not finished out of the tubes.
I’ve been painting with acrylic paint for 17 years, and then watercolor for a year, and my oil paint tubes were sitting idle until I picked through them a couple of months ago. I found most of them no longer usable.
I’ve used Gamblin brand oil paints along side Windsor-Newton oils in the past. My first experience with a professional artist brand in 1977 was Windsor-Newton, with their brushes and very small tubes of oil paint. Every Gamblin color I’ve tried so far has been outstanding. I resupplied with Gamblin oil paints, except for one Windsor-Newton color Gamblin doesn’t quite have a match for (Terra Rosa)
So time to make color panels for the basic colors, to find and explore what these paints can do, all over again.
I’ll paint a 5 x 11 grid of 1” squares. The first panel will be straight color them lightened with white through four values for each of the 11 colors.
Then for each basic color, a second panel exploring the same mixed with each of the others for a total of 12 separate panels.
Only 11 tubes of paint?
No. But for any other colors I can swap a red in, say Napoli Scarlet for Cadmium Red Medium, and try it against the rest of the basic palette and get a pretty sound idea of how it fits, where it advantages over the original color and from that bring it in.
These first 12 panels take about 2 weeks to work through and are well worth it to really understand what a particular paint will do, rather than mix until something is close.
The 11 colors are:
- Cadmium Lemon
- Cadmium Yellow Medium
- Cadmium Yellow Deep
- Yellow Ochre
- Cadmium Red Medium
- Terra Rosa (Windsor-Newton)
- Alizarin Crimson Permanent
- Transparent Earth Red
- Cobalt Blue
- Ultramarine Blue
- Viridian
—spence