Saturday, October 6, 2007

The Dead Palette


These figure paintings were done with the dead palette which was used by the dutch masters. It is the most ideal palette for the human form as is permits a wide range of values and flesh tones from just a few basic paints. A 10 value scale string is mixed for black&white, reds and yellows. Each string is lined up parellel to each other and the artist can mix only within a vertical range, i.e. yellow 1 cannot be mixed with red 2 or black 3, etc. The two most prominent paints used will be Yellow Ochre and English Red. There is quite a bit of intitial setup to mix the palette properly, but once the artist has it done, remixing at the proper value and color becomes second nature.

No comments: