/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

>>3302071
What range? What gamut specifically are you talking about? The full visible spectrum? 3 pigments can't cover it, CMY only covers a small portion. See graphic.

And don't start huffing and puffing about CMY, either, i think split palette is a great innovation, and one I've explored. Does it cover a wider range? Yes, obviously. The old thinking on color palettes leaned heavily towards muted colors, when it came to oil paint, the more earthy, muted palette, which is generated from a specific set of primaries, that are muted to begin with. It's what was pleasing to the eye, in most cases, and a good place for beginners to start from - and add to as they grow as painters. Take my basic watercolor pallette -I was taught to start with yellow ochre, cadmium red, and ivory black, with cerulean and ultramarine for blues. You can cover most subjects with that - basic portraits, basic landcapes, still life. Can I paint the wider gamut of color in say the Grand Canyon? No. So I need to add different colors to do that. My palette has grown to include alizarin crimson, several shades of yellow, Payne's Grey, umbers, ochres, and some of the more bright colors, for specific paintings. By learning to mix to paint what I see, and learning what is out of the gamut of the basic palette was an important lesson. Some colors, you have to supplement. Some colors are just lazy - I can mix a sap green, but it's easier to just have a tube of it.

The whole point of limited palettes isn't to stay there forever. it's to force the student to THINK about color, and learn how to mix. Yes, the Zorn palette is a limited gamut, but that's okay, it's not trying to reproduce the entire spectrum.