A first acrylic palette: which colours earn a slot
A large set is more fun to open and harder to paint with. Beginners given forty-eight colours tend to use them straight from the tube, and paintings made from unmixed tube colours look like paintings made from unmixed tube colours.
A limited palette forces mixing, and mixing is what makes a painting hang together, because every colour on the canvas shares parentage with every other one.
The short list
A workable first palette is six colours plus white:
- A warm red and a cool red
- A warm blue and a cool blue
- A warm yellow and a cool yellow
- Titanium white, in a larger tube than everything else
That is a split-primary palette, and it mixes a far wider range than three primaries alone. The reason is that no real pigment is a pure primary: each one leans warm or cool, and mixing two that lean the same way keeps a mix clean.
Why warm and cool matters
Mix a cool red with a cool blue and you get a clean violet. Mix a warm red with a warm blue and you get a muddy brown-violet, because each pigment carries a trace of the third primary and the mix ends up containing all three.
Knowing which of your reds is which turns a frustrating hour into a predictable one. It is the single most useful thing to learn early.
Black, and whether to have one
Black is optional and often better left out at the start. Shadows mixed from the complement of the local colour are livelier than shadows made by adding black, which mostly just darkens and dulls.
If a set includes black, a good exercise is to complete one painting without touching it.
Earth colours
Burnt sienna, raw umber and yellow ochre are not strictly necessary — they can be mixed — but they are so frequently used that having them saves time. If a palette expands beyond seven, the earths are the sensible next three.
White runs out first
Every acrylic painter uses more white than any other colour, by a wide margin. Sets almost always under-supply it. Buying a large tube of titanium white separately is the most useful single purchase alongside any starter set.
Laying out a palette
Keep colours in a consistent order around the edge with the mixing space in the middle. Consistency matters more than which order: reaching for a colour without looking is a small thing that adds up over an evening.
Squeeze small amounts. Acrylic skins over quickly, and a large blob squeezed at the start is mostly waste. A stay-wet palette, or a plate covered with cling film between sessions, extends working time considerably.
A mixing exercise worth doing once
Make a grid. Along the top, your two reds, two blues and two yellows. Down the side, the same. Fill every intersection with the mix of those two colours.
It takes half an hour and it produces a reference chart you will actually use — and it demonstrates the warm-and-cool point better than any amount of reading.
Practical checks before buying
- Prefer a small set you will mix over a large set you will not.
- Check the set contains a warm and cool of each primary.
- Buy a larger white separately whatever the set includes.
- Check tube or pan sizes, not just the colour count.
- Consider a stay-wet palette if you paint in short sessions.
Keeping acrylic workable
Acrylic’s biggest practical drawback is drying speed. A palette squeezed at the start of a session can be skinned over within half an hour in a warm room.
Three things help: squeeze small amounts and squeeze again as needed; mist the palette lightly with water every so often; and use a stay-wet palette, which is a shallow tray with a damp reservoir under a membrane. The last of these extends working time from under an hour to several days.
Retarder mediums slow drying chemically and are worth knowing about, though they change the paint’s handling slightly and are easy to overuse.
Where this sits in the shop
Everything discussed above comes back to one part of the shop: Acrylic Paint Sets, which currently holds 5 listings between $9.99 and $99.95. The whole of it is picked and packed at PaintBox SoHo, 105 Thompson St, New York, NY, during Mon–Sat 11am–8pm, Sun 12pm–6pm — so anything written here can be checked by phoning the counter on ((212) 226-1300.
From our shelves
- ESRICH 26 PCS Acrylic Paint Set with 12 Colors Acrylic Paints — $9.99
- ESRICH 4 Set Acrylic Painting Kits for Adults and Couples — $29.99
- 149Pcs Deluxe Artist Painting Set with Aluminum and Beech Wood Easel, 48 Colors Acrylic & — $99.95
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Read next
- Student and artist grade acrylics: what actually differs
- Setting up a paint night for six people
- Choosing canvas: panels, boards or stretched
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