Palettes

As points of reference (see Bruce MacEvoy's Handprint site (not blog) for a pigment color wheel - great idea  - really useful! Kevin MacPherson's palette is something like   

Cad yellow pale                                

Ult. blue                                           

Permanent alizarin crimson               

Phalo green (I'd prefer viridian)

Titanium white

Mark Carder's (method) palette is pretty much the same with something like burnt umber instead of the green (I'd agree with that - I'd rather have an earth brown than a green - but no problem - even with both, we only have 6 paints )

These are extremely limited palettes - but if you look at the paintings done with them - it's amazing - no problem. Lets see what a more extended palette would look like, Richard Schmid's is (colours not always used in brackets) something like

(Cad lemon yellow)

Cad yellow pale

Cad. yellow deep

(Cad. orange)

Cad. red 

Yellow ochre pale

Terra rosa

Venetian red

Transparent oxide red (same thing as burnt sienna really)

Permanent alizarin Crimson

 (Cobalt violet)

Cobalt blue light

Ult. blue dark

Viridian

Titanium white

And the more palettes I've read about on the net, the more you see these "classic"/standard colours coming up.  A number of people don't use black (you can mix it) and a number of people try and avoid the umbers - though raw umber can be useful for a number of things, it seems to me. There's a number of "systems" - e.g. a "split" palette with a "warm" and "cool" version of each  color - Gruppe talks about this sort of idea and uses phalo blue. Stape Kearns likes chromium oxide green, Roger Bansemer uses some other green (I forget which) too. But it seems to me that I use my colours in two ways - as mixing colours or as convenience (straight out the tube) colours, so my palette looks like this

Titianium white, naples yellow light, cad yellow pale, yellow ochre light, transparent oxide red (=burnt sienna), permanent alizarin crimson (this is a whole topic), ceruleum blue, ult. blue dark = 8 paints, I think

(plus for rare use - in my box in case I need them: cad. lemon yellow, cad yellow deep, cad. red, terra rosa, indian red (like terra rosa, but cooler), raw umber, phalo blue, viridian)