My day job is as a mild-mannered Department Head for an art supply store in Manhattan. I'm often asked about which colors are good for a basic palette and what I would choose. As a representational painter I don't really think of solid colors, but those which can be mixed to create a myriad of choices. Even on a flat white wall, the color and value will vary depending upon how much light a given area is receiving. Varying the color helps to create depth, movement and interest in your piece. You want to have a warm and cool version of each of the primary; mine being perm. yellow lt., perm. yellow med., cadmium red med. or vermillion, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, manganese blue or cobalt blue. I tend to like to mix my greens, but I do have a few that I've found particularly useful, Mir's cinnibar green and Williamsburg makes a great earthy green called Bohemian Green Earth. And I've been using a fair amount of mars violet these days and sometimes dioxazine purple. Aside from these you'll need some earth colors: yellow ochre, raw sienna, burnt sienna, burnt and/or raw umber. For white I tend to stick to the standby, titanium. I hardly ever use black.
The portrait of the cat above is one I did and notice how much color variation there is to the "green" couch. Where the sunlight streaks across it, it's pretty straight yellow, in the shadows there's so much red in there that to see the actual color I used you really wouldn't call it green. But you need to be able to mix all of these colors to create the illusion of a green couch being hit by sunlight. The piece to the right is by Frank Stella and his objective is totally different. He's putting one flat, solid color next to another and seeing how they effect each other.
'til next time.
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