Mixing guide
The Zorn palette
Yellow ochre, a red, black and white. Four tubes that cover skin, stone, cloth and weather with a harmony you get for free.
Anders Zorn's name is attached to a palette of four: yellow ochre, vermilion or cadmium red, ivory black and white. Whether he actually limited himself to it is argued over, but that hardly matters — what matters is that it works, and that working within it teaches more in a week than a full palette teaches in a month.
The reason it covers so much is that ivory black is not really black. Mixed with yellow ochre it behaves like a dull green, and mixed with white it gives a blue-leaning gray. So the four tubes quietly contain a cool as well as a warm, which is all a palette really needs.
What it cannot do is anything saturated on the cool side. There is no clean blue and no clean green in it, and a bright sky is out of reach. That limitation is the point: everything you mix is related to everything else, and the painting hangs together without your having to arrange it.
The mixtures
Each one worked out on a real palette with the spectral model. The number after the mixture is how far it lands from the target: under 2 you cannot see the difference, under 4 it does not matter in a painting.
Skin, lit plane #DDB292
What this palette was built for.
4× Titanium White +3× Yellow Ochre
This palette cannot quite reach that color with 3 pigments in one mixture. What you see is the closest it gets, which is worth knowing before you spend an afternoon trying.
4× Titanium White +3× Yellow Ochre
This palette cannot quite reach that color with 3 pigments in one mixture. What you see is the closest it gets, which is worth knowing before you spend an afternoon trying.
9× Titanium White +3× Burnt Sienna +1× Yellow Ochre
Cool gray from black and white #8E9299
The blue that is not a blue.
10× Titanium White +1× Ivory Black
10× Titanium White +9× Ultramarine +2× Yellow Ochre
This palette cannot quite reach that color with 3 pigments in one mixture. What you see is the closest it gets, which is worth knowing before you spend an afternoon trying.
10× Titanium White +6× Ultramarine +1× Burnt Umber
Muted green #6E6E45
Ivory black with yellow ochre. Surprisingly natural.
9× Yellow Ochre +5× Titanium White +1× Ivory Black
5× Yellow Ochre +2× Ultramarine
5× Titanium White +5× Cadmium Yellow Light +1× Ivory Black
Deep warm shadow #453227
The bottom of the range, still warm.
7× Yellow Ochre +1× Ivory Black
8× Ultramarine +7× Yellow Ochre
9× Burnt Sienna +2× Yellow Ochre +1× Ivory Black
Worth remembering
- Start by mixing the full value scale from white to black using only these four, and keep it where you can see it.
- Treat ivory black as a color, not as a way to darken. Its best work is in greens and grays.
- If you miss blue, the honest answer is that you are painting a subject this palette is not for. Choose another subject rather than adding a tube.
Your paints, your photo
These mixtures assume the palettes above. Tick off what you actually own and pick the color straight out of your reference instead.