In 1976, I purchased “The Artist’s Handbook of Materials and Techniques” by Ralph Mayer, recommended by a respected instructor who said it was “the only book of its kind you will ever need.”

Too many years later, I came to understand how naive I had been. Books on painting proliferate on my shelves, laden with texts on methods, history, biography, theory, quotations, aesthetics and yes, materials and techniques.

Paint is physical. Making color charts is a good way to see how paints look and interact. For a long time I worked with a wide random range of ten or twelve colors including cadmiums, earths, lights, darks, and the era’s strongest prohibition, no black.

An experienced painter introduced me to the concept of limited palettes in 2005. Since then, my go-to palette was three colors, varying hues and related earths or cadmiums: red, yellow, black, plus white, with black convincingly behaving as blue. Replacing black with ultramarine increases the color range.

After reading Tad Spurgeon’s website (discontinued in 2022) on all things color, oil, and paint, followed by his exceptional book ‘Living Craft: A Painter’s Process’, I incorporated a second triad in 2008, extending the limited palette concept to a warm and cool of each primary, made by Winsor & Newton, Rembrandt, Holbein, and Gamblin.

An excellent history and my favorite source on manufactured color is “Bright Earth” by Philip Ball, published by the University of Chicago Press, 2001. It is an exciting telling of the source, sequence, development, and chemistry of artists’ pigments.

ABOVE: Complementary Colors Chart: lemon yellow, cadmium yellow deep, quinacridone, vermilion, cerulean, ultramarine, flake white; oil on canvas panel, 10 x 10 in (25.4 x 25.4 cm), 5/3/2008

BELOW: Color Chart Mixes and Tints: lemon yellow, cadmium yellow pale, quinacridone, vermilion, cerulean, ultramarine, flake white; oil on canvas panel, 11 x 14 in (27.94 x 35.56 cm), 5/19/2008