San Quentin Beach

Oil on canvas panel, 9" by 12, plein air. Beautiful afternoon with a few scattered clouds, little haze and little wind. I was painting with my Saturday plein air group including Laura Xu. I have been using this palette from Frank Serrano now for about 8 months and really like it. On this primary pallete are Quick Dry White (pure titanium white), Cad Yellow Pale, Alizarin Crimson, Ultramarine Blue, and 3 mixing colors: Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre, and Thalo Green. I use Galkyd Lite and Refined Linseed Oil for my medium and Gamsol only to clean brushes and to thin the paint for my on canvas sketch. All products are from Gamblin, except the Cad Yellow Pale from Winsor Newton. I applied no touch ups in the studio.

21 members like this

View Full Size

Tags:

Add a Comment

You need to be a member of The Complete Artist to add comments!

Join The Complete Artist

Comment by Silvana M Albano on April 7, 2015 at 9:45: Beautiful painting!

Comment by Stuart J. Gourlay on April 7, 2015 at 2:32: Linda, let me know how it works out for you! Stu

Comment by Linda L. Kano on April 7, 2015 at 2:29: Appreciate your thorough response. I've been using split primary palette. I'll experiment with your palette although I use water soluble paint.

Comment by Stuart J. Gourlay on April 7, 2015 at 2:15: Thanks Linda. The biggest advantage to this palette is that it is very easy to get color harmony. The disadvantage is that you have to mix many of your colors. Since I mix as I go along, this is no problem for me and mixing as you go provides subtle shifts in hue to occur with ease and development of a real expertise in color mixing. I did have the advantage of two workshops with Frank Serrano, and this really helped. I do add a warm red for sunsets (Napthol red or Cad red light). This I got from Frank as well. This just makes everything easier for me: less tubes of color to buy and put out on my palette, much easier color mixing, ability to use a smaller mixing area on the palette, quicker set up and clean up. I'm sure you have noticed that Richard uses a very limited palette and mixes his grays. Before I switched to this palette, I was using what's called a split primary palette with warm and cool of each of the three primary colors. I was also using premixed grays. Now, I have more color, easier mixing and I think, better paintings. Also, my goal is to do everything on site with minimal work in the studio on my plein air paintings. I have found that the more I push myself to finish up outside, the oftener I accomplish it. It does take practice! Stu

Comment by Linda L. Kano on April 7, 2015 at 1:48: Stu, i appreciate you sharing your palette. What have you found to be its advantages? I keep using too many colors which is not helping me! Really like this painting...amazing that it was all painted on site. Thanks!