The Oppositional Earth Palette – 9 colors plus Ivory Black and White.
For a while I've been using what is essentially a split-primary palette arranged with cools on top and warms on the bottom with some additional earthy colors down the side. This has worked out well, but it's tended to promote haphazard mixing where the entire empty area of the palette was fair game for warm and cool crossovers.
My old palette was (the warms) Cadmium Yellow Light (CYL), Cadmium Yellow Dark (CYD), Cadmium Red (CR), Permanent Rose (PR), (the cools) Phthalo Blue (PhB), Ultramarine Blue (UB), Viridian (Vir), (earths) Naples Yellow (NY), Indian Red (IR), Terra-Verte (TV), and Raw Umber (RU). I also used Ivory Black (IB) and Titanium White (TW).
What bothered me most about this was that I included a sidebar I called the 'earths.' I affectionately called them my yellow-earth, red-earth, green-earth, and blue-earth. I know Naples Yellow (NY) isn't all that earthy, and I could have had Yellow Ochre (YO) in there, but it's just such a useful color. Anyhow, I wanted to get these out of the side bar and properly integrate them into the rest of the palette.
After lots of testing, studying, and general investigation, I settled upon a new palette that is expandable, condensing, quick to layout, easy to use, and so efficient that I eventually stopping explicitly thinking about mixing and color placement.
I call the new palette the
Oppositional Earth Palette. The idea is simple. I wanted a palette that is as much about mixing as it is about proper arrangement and color range. While the palette may seem at first to be set up so that compliments are oppositional, it is useful to note that most of these aren't true compliments -- these mix to a brown, and not a neutralish gray. I prefer that. I find it far more useful to mix these 'compliments' that hit a unique earth, than compliments that all hit a similar gray or a black. So, bearing in mind that I am not going for true compliments, but rather I sought a way to integrate all of the earths into the palette.
Before I list off the colors, I should mention that this palette is expandable. This means that my official palette is reducible to 3 colors plus ivory black and white, expands to 9 colors plus b & w for normal use, and incorporates a host of other colors which have their place when needed. I say that I use an 11 color palette, but it’s 5 when going for the minimalist approach, and it’s more like 15 or so when I’m in studio, looking for specific paint properties, and pressed for time.
NOTE: Not all the colors shown here are tube colors that I consider part of the palette. These swatches represent mix spots. There are also mix spots that go in between the spokes, in the empty columns, but I didn’t bother including them to save time and clarity.
Only the colors highlighted in blue are part of my usual 11 colors (9 plus Ivory Black and White)
The following colors are the usual tube color set-up (these are the highlighted colors in the photo): Cadmium Yellow Light (CYL), Cadmium Orange (CO), Permanent Rose/Quin. (PR), Yellow Ochre (YO), Raw Sienna (RS), Raw Umber (RU), Indian Red (IR), Phthalo Blue (PhB), Permanent Green Light (PGL), and Ivory Black (IB). I usually use Titanium White (unless I need zinc for transparency) because I don’t mind the drying time -- I almost always use an alkyd medium of some sort.
Here’s the run down for the six columns. This includes the tube colors listed above and the colors I add on occasion. More importantly, these run-downs cover what goes where when I mix it up, or use an extra tube outside the usual 11.
Just because I list a color here, doesn’t mean I usually add it. I usually use the 11 tubes above, and I mix to fill the blanks, or leave them blank until required during painting. For example, I refer to one spot as Burnt Umber (BU), not because I place that tube color there, but because when I mix my own BU I refer to it as the conceptual equivalent of the tube color BU.
1st column. Cadmium Yellow Light (CYL) and whatever violet I eventually use to replace Cobalt Violet (CV) sit at the opposite ends. Between them lie Raw Sienna (RS). This doesn’t mean I consider RS to be the middle point. It is not. What is important is that for purposes of mixing and placement, that’s where raw sienna belongs -- that’s the earth which lies between them that I consider the most valuable. Towards the yellow side there is Yellow Ochre (YO). One more smidge (just a half-step) towards yellow I place Naples Yellow (NY). On the violet side of this column I have purple-earth. There are purple earth tubes out there, but I always just mix some CYL in with whatever violet equiv I am using at the time. This is a muddy color spot, but it’s useful. When I do place a tube color here, I use Diox Purple (DP). I do this not because it is the purple earth, but because it’s just earthy enough to belong there. This palette is about convenience and efficiency. When I add DP, I place it closer to the CV since that’s where it really belongs. It’s a half-step. Also, regarding ‘half-steps’ (a term I borrowed from musical scales) you might notice at the top of the column that to the left of CYL I reserve a spot for Hansa Yellow Light (HYL) or even Lemon Yellow (LY).
2nd column. This is in-between the first and third. I don’t bother filling it up during set-up, but I can and do when painting. At the top there is Cadmium Yellow (CY) and Cadmium Yellow Dark (CYD) fighting for property. I usually mix something up from CYL and CO to fulfill this niche. I almost always mix this before painting. At the bottom, I place the warmer Ultramarine Blue (UB) or a blue-violet. I mix the blue I place here (when not using a tube UB) by adding some PR to my PhB.
3rd column. I place CO at the top. A full step below it falls Burnt Sienna (BS). RU fits nicely in the middle. Below that, is the spot I refer to as blue-earth. It is a fantastic color I love mixing up for distant hills and all sorts of dull cool areas. I mix this using RU and some PhB. You may notice that I’ve wedged something above my PhB. That’s Cerulean (Cer) – I consider it an earthed out blue, and place it a half-step above PhB. PhB sits at the bottom of this layout.
4th column. At the top I was placing Vermillion (Ver) to fulfill the red-orange role, but I eventually realized that this is more of a half-step. Either way, I always just fill this spot with some CO mixed with some PR. At the bottom of the ‘empty’ column lies blue-green. It’s most convenient to place Viridian (Vir) here. When faced with the choice to demand a true blue-green, or conceptualize it using a more useful (but closer) tube color, I choose the conceptual tube color. So, Vir goes in this spot.
5th column. Cadmium Red (CR) or CR and Cadmium Red Dark (CRD) crown the top of this column. I usually mix this spot using PR and some CO. Below this lies my favored red-earth, IR. Burnt Umber (BU) falls in the middle of this column. Terra Verte (TV) is my choice for the green-earth below this. At the bottom of this column lies PGL, or Phthalo Green to the left a half-step. It’s usually not an expensive color, but when I need something darker I modify Vir or mix it from scratch using CYL and PhB.
6th column. PR sits at the top. In the yellow-green earth I choose to place Sap Green (SG), and below that falls Phthalo Yellow-Green (PhYG), or more likely, a yellow-green mix.
This palette is easy to use. Just by glancing at the palette, I know more or less what to mix to get what I want, and I'm constantly reminded of the color possibilities when I glance at an empty spot on the palette.
It's also easy to layout. I move along in a predictable pattern, mix a few in-betweens if I desire, and then I can paint.
The palette also pays attention to saturation costs. I've selected the base 9 tubes to fill useful niches along the mixing wheel. This keeps mixing costs low.
Another important feature is that I keep chroma and earthing fairly distinct. When I want to lower the chroma (gray-out or dull) a color, I use a gray of the same value (light/dark) from the saturation sidebar. When I want to dark or 'earth'-out a color, I use the color's oppositional. Some speak of graying out a color when they mean earthing, and vice-versa. I haven’t heard anyone use the term earthing like this, but I’m certainly going to start using it. I think it’s important to keep the earthing of a color distinct from the muddying of a color. Yes, sometimes it’s both, but not always.
Also, there are many who suggest mixing all your own earths (or just about everything). I'm not crazy-rich yet. Why use a couple of expensive series 3 or 4 colors to mix a series 1 earth color when you can just modify the series one to achieve the desired custom result? I'm not suggesting you leave burnt umber as is out of the tube, I'm just suggesting that you do your wallet a favor and don't waste an expensive cadmium red and a viridian (or some other mixture) on the initial mixing. By including some of the key earths, I save myself the dollars, and I save some time as well. That's why you see some earth tubes included on a palette that specializes in mixing earths. It seems like a contradiction, but it’s not. It’s efficient, and it’s less expensive.
And, getting back to the sidebar. I include black. It’s a pigment like any other, just a bit more dangerous. Properly used, it doesn’t have to poke a hole in the canvas or suck the life out of the other colors. It’s also invaluable for creating a quick sidebar of grays in several values that I can use to muddy up a color without altering the hue overly much.
The most obvious drawback I've seen is that my selected colors ignore transparent/opaque and staining/non-staining. I'm not always taking this into account when I paint. However, sometimes it matters. The neat thing about this palette is that when I need a specific transparent color, I already know where to fit it into the palette. This way, I always feel right at home with whatever colors I am using.
Another apparent drawback is mixing area. There isn’t that great neutral zone one normally finds in the center of a palette. That’s a small price to pay for having a place to easily find the usual suspects and 30 or more or their friends. What I often do, is reserve a separate area on the palette for additional mixing, or more likely, place the new mix wherever it is most appropriate on the palette. Instead of the layout disintegrating as I paint, it is strengthened.
Really, this palette isn’t so much about the tubes I selected. And, I can switch from PGL to V without causing any sort of upset. It’s really about the positioning, and I consider this element of versatility to be the best part about this palette.
By this point, you are probably wondering if I grid-up the palette area. I do. I use a glass palette, so this isn’t so tough. I place an underlay under the glass. When out of the studio in the field, I just visualize the grid. After working on the studio grid, this isn’t much of a problem.
As I mentioned, I can add extra colors for convenience without sacrificing ease or familiarity. Here’ the palette set-out with some extra colors in there. You can see the grid with swatches underneath showing color spots.
To recap:
Minimalist: CYL, PR, and PhB along with IB and TW
Usual Palette: CYL, CO, PR, YO, RS, RU, IR, PhB, PGL, IB, and TW
Occasionally Used Sidebar Colors: CR, NY, BS, Cer., BU, SG, DP, UB, and V
Feel free to ask questions, offer comments, or critique.
Thanks for looking!
Craig
Fine Art by Craig Houghton
The Oppositional Earth Palette
Pam 
But if it works it works.!
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