Limited palettes for oil painting: Zorn, earth, split-primary and three-color
The three-color palette
One red, one yellow, one blue, plus white. Usually Cadmium Red (or Permanent Rose), Cadmium Yellow (or Lemon) and Ultramarine. It teaches mixing faster than anything else because every color has to be made. Limits: one primary of each bias means some secondaries will be greyed — choose your three for the subject (Rose + Lemon + Ultramarine for clean violets and greens; Cadmium Red + Cadmium Yellow + Ultramarine for warm, earthy pictures).
Burnt OrangeRecipe by paint setOlive GreenRecipe by paint setMauveRecipe by paint setBrownRecipe by paint set
The Zorn palette
Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Red (Vermilion originally), Ivory Black and Titanium (or Flake) White. Anders Zorn painted portraits and figures with little else. The black stands in for blue — black + yellow ochre makes an olive green, black + white a cool grey — and the range is warm, muted and perfect for skin. It cannot make a clear blue or a bright green, which is exactly why it works indoors.
Light Skin ToneRecipe by paint setMedium Skin ToneRecipe by paint setTerracottaRecipe by paint setSandRecipe by paint setNeutral Mid GreyRecipe by paint set
The earth palette
Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Raw Umber, a red earth (Light Red or Venetian), Ultramarine, black and white. Low-chroma, inexpensive, lightfast, and the palette behind most pre-Impressionist painting. Add one bright yellow and one bright red for accents and it will paint almost any subject that is not a flower garden.
BrownRecipe by paint setRustRecipe by paint setCreamRecipe by paint setCharcoal GreyRecipe by paint setSage GreenRecipe by paint set
The split-primary palette
Six tubes: warm and cool red, yellow and blue, plus white (see color bias). The most flexible limited palette: clean or greyed secondaries on demand, any temperature, any chroma. Add Burnt Sienna and Yellow Ochre and you have the modern standard palette of eight.
CoralRecipe by paint setTurquoiseRecipe by paint setLavenderRecipe by paint setMoss GreenRecipe by paint setDusty RoseRecipe by paint set
A landscape palette
Ultramarine, Cerulean or Phthalo Blue, Lemon Yellow, Cadmium Yellow, Cadmium Red, Alizarin, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Titanium White. Two blues and two yellows give every green without a tube green; the two reds and the earths give the warm notes. Viridian or Sap Green is optional.
Sky BlueRecipe by paint setForest GreenRecipe by paint setSage GreenRecipe by paint setMustard YellowRecipe by paint setTealRecipe by paint set
What a limited palette cannot do
Reach the full chroma of a single-pigment secondary. If a painting needs an electric violet or a neon orange, buy the tube (Dioxazine, Pyrrole Orange, Phthalo Green) and use it for that passage only. Everything else in the picture will look richer by contrast.
Limited palettes and recipes
Every recipe on this site is calculated for a specific box of paints, so the set pages double as limited palettes: the Magicfly 40, Winton and Gamblin 1980 pages list which tubes do most of the work in each range. In the app, “My Tubes” lets you tick exactly the tubes on your table and get recipes restricted to them.
Questions
What is the Zorn palette?
What is the best limited palette for beginners?
Can you mix every color from three primaries?
