Thinking about ditching ivory black

Since doing my last painting in Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre, Ivory Black, and Titanium White, I’ve been giving thought to the limitations of that palette – both good and bad.

First, I felt my colors were really low key. But that forced me to focus on values more than color, which I definitely need. But I wanted a little more variety, more options in what I’m mixing. So I started to dig.

I Googled my palette on Google Image Search and came up with several examples of people using this palette, but also some people using additional colors. So I peered down the rabbit hole and continued my search through the maze. Slowly, the maze started to simplify and I came to some conclusions.

Mostly, I need to switch blacks. Ivory black was good but very dull. “These Are Days” has a couple of dull spots where I came back in to fix the value with Ivory Black vs. my original mixture of Alizarin Crimson and Ultramarine (“colorful black”). The colorful black was nice and shiny and didn’t dry as purple as it looked when it was wet.

I discovered that Payne’s Gray is (essentially) Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine. And it has a slightly purplish tone to it when you mix in white. That would have done wonders for the girl’s sweater (which, you can see, was actually a light purple, not yellow, but I couldn’t mix purple without blue, and Ivory Black insisted on making a neutral gray).

Then I wondered to myself, “Self, what about green?” Hmm, without blue, it seemed I was in a pickle. Then my rabbit hole ended on a thread about copying Velasquez – a limited palette of Titanium White, Ultramarine Blue, and Burnt Sienna. That’s it. You mix your black from Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna. You mix your greens my washing blue over the underpainting – done in Yellow Ochre.

A ha! There’s that sneaky little devil. I knew I’d find you, green!

Seems that ditching black altogether and mixing Payne’s Gray for myself from Ultramarine and Sienna is the way to go. Very simple, very clean, and might do wonders for me. Still won’t do orange very well (Burnt Sienna and Yellow Ochre don’t mix to a very orangey orange), but that’s okay. I don’t need it right now. And I’ll be able to do some good stuff for my next painting, concentrating more on values and less on color.

So long, Ivory Black, and thanks for the fish.