What Oil Paint Colors to Buy and Why?

If you have just starting oil painting and wondering which colors to buy or if you’ve been painting for a while and want to know how to mix a wide range of vibrant colors, this post is for you.

Getting straight to the point, below are the colors on my palette.

The Image shows the colors used along with the pigment code in brackets

For the Primaries Red, Yellow and Blue, I have two sets of colors one worm and another cool:

• Cadmium Red (PR108) and Permanent Rose (PV19)

• Winsor Yellow (PY74) and Winsor Lemon (PY74)

• French Ultramarine (PB29) and Winsor Blue (PB15)

• and Titanium White (PW4,PW6) to create tints of these colors.

This kind of pallet is called a full or extended palette, giving you the ability to mix almost any color.

Additionally for convenience I have:

• Winsor Orange: Great for warming up mixes or dulling blues.

• Earth Colors: Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, and Burnt Umber.

These traditional, inexpensive pigments are perfect for muted tones, generally observed in landscape paintings.

Now, why I choose these colors? If you notice the pigments used on tube, each color on my palette uses a single pigment, which means they are pure and have a very high tinting strength. This is key criteria while choosing my colors, as it makes a huge difference between vibrant and dull color mixes.

But, do you need exactly these tubes. Not at all, the key takeaway is to get a pair of cool and warm colors of the primaries, then it can be any brand or any other alternative pigment.

Example, Cadmium Red is the most expensive color on my palette, but if you’re on a budget, you can consider alternatives like Winsor Red or Pyrrole Red

or Substitute colors like Alizarin Crimson or Quinacridone Red instead of Permanent Rose

or Cadmium Lemon instead of Winsor Lemon.

Below mix of colors demonstrate the difference between warm and cool primaries. The color wheel on left is created using cool reds, yellows and blues. While the one on right is created with warm ones.

What you will notice is:

• Oranges are more vibrant with warm primaries.

• Violets are stronger with cool primaries.

• Greens vary significantly between the two sets.

  
  

If you rely on just one set of primaries, you’ll miss out on certain color ranges. That’s why I use a full palette with both warm and cool colors.

If you’re new to oil painting, I recommend starting with just one primary color for each group, preferably warm (yellow, red, and blue). This simplifies color mixing and saves money. As you progress, you can add more colors to your palette. For more experienced painters, I highly recommend investing in this full palette of warm and cool primaries to achieve a wide range of color mixtures.

Below is link to my goto shop, Artlounge.in where I purchase my colors from.

Use my code SHREYASFINEART for a 8.5% discount

Also, below is my Youtube video with demonstration of the color mixing.

Hope this post was helpful in deciding what colors to get for your painting journey.