oil color choices

I've recently started oil painting (most of my experience up to now has been in pastel), and I'm curious about people's color choices. Actually, I know the standard advice on colors to use; what I'm looking for is any arguments people want to make in favor of specific pigments. I started out with some borrowed paints - the 6-color Michael Wilcox set - and generally like the palette, but as I start buiying my own tubes, I'm thinking about alternatives.

For example, cadmium colors are expensive, yet virtually every book I've seen recommends two or three of them. Are these colors that much better than the alternatives? How so?

I bought a tube of Bright Red from Winsor & Newton, which is naphthol, and have been using it instead of cadmium. It's not exactly the same color, of course, but I don't feel like I'm actually missing anything in terms of what I can do with it. Anyone else have experience with this? I note W&N's brochure says they have now replaced naphthol with another pigment, pyrrol, that is supposedly slightly yellower, which strikes me as bringring it even closer to cadmium. Any experiences?

I also just bought a tube of Winsor Yellow, which is arylide yellow, to replace my cadmium yellow. I've only done one painting with it, so I can't really say yet how I like it, but that one painting went well enough.

Cobalt blue is another color I wonder about. Actually, this isn't recommended as often as the cadmiums - many seem content with ultramarine and either cerulean or phthalo. I have found I don't particular care for cerulean - too light to be versatile enough to jusitfy inclusion on a limited palette, though. I am a little concerned about phthalo, since keeping color mixtures clean is hard enough as it is, and I'm told that phthalo exacerbates this. Is phthalo that hard to control in this respect? How about prussian blue or indigo?

Real cadmiums are worth it because their substitutes are often organic dyes which are too transparent for many painters. But, naphthol red is a good substitute for cad red. Utrecht mades a good one. There is also Winsor red which I think is a naphthol. I can't remember exactly as I haven't use it in years. If you can stand it, you can also substitute cadmium yellow light with a hansa yellow. Many painters find hansa yellow too transparent. I find Utrecht's Hansa Yellow better than Winsor yellow. For cadmium orange, you might be stuck with real cadmium. If all of you yellows and oranges and reds are dyes, it will be hard to use. I have seen beginners doing this to save money. But it is frustrating to not be able to cover the previous layer with just one coat of paint. My advice is to use the cheapest cadmiums rather than dyes.

Real cobalt and cerulean blue are great colors but expensive. Ultramarine and Pthalo will suffice for most painters. If you worry that Pthalo is hard to control, just get a cheap Pthalo which has less tinting strength. Prussian blue is hard to use; but some painters love it. Real indigo is not lightfast.

What you're asking is such a personal matter that you're going to get as many answers as there are legitimate artists in this forum.

Have you ever snow skied? As a novice or beginner it matters little whether you spend money for top of the line skis or buy a pair of used ones to learn on. And then you are bitten by the ski bug and spend more time than you should skiing, and you just know that you won't improve until you spend the money for the best skis you can afford. Same applies to painting - IMO. Once you gain experience handling various pigments, you'll learn there is no real substitute for certain ones - cadmiums being in that category.

I'm an old Prussioan blue fan, but it's wierd sometimes. It leaves a 'oil slick' effect, like behind your outboard motor on a quite lake somewhere. Of course I was over indulging. Cobalt never was an exciting color to me, but it is nice in its own way. The phthalo pigments are wild, very domineering. But of course they can be controlled. Try mixing them with neutral greys for some really exquisit colors. Indigo is really beautiful, in my opinion. So much, in fact, that I don't remember how it mixes. I think I always took it straight.

The thing is, each pigment has its own virtues and vices. That's an open invitation to experiement with all of them, according to the restrants of your wallet, of course. Of course issues of permanence and fugativity are separate issues.

And I think Ultramarine gets a bad rap sometimes. It's really an exquisite color. Looking at your landscapes, I think you would have a lot of fun with this. I did a painting several years back using ultramarine because it was all I had at the time. It was a couple of guys in a Panga pulling out a hammerhead shark from the Gulf of California. As I started using this blue, it seemed wrong, unnatural, just not the right color. But I kept it up, and it really came together well. In fact, once completed, the Ultramarine seemed to be the perfect dominant color, because it gave the atmosphere a 'weight' that I felt was just like the air in Baja. Ultramarine seems to like it's fellow colors too.

that I don't remember how it mixes. I think I always took it straight.<

Real Indigo is so dark and mysterious - it's darker than a bat's bottom on a moonless night. Winsor and Newton makes a fake Indigo that, straight from the tube, is a dead ringer for the real thing. But they behave very differently in mixtures.

Prussian Blue. Yes, it is weird. It mixes very beautiful greens but it's too neurotic for me. Very beautiful color, however, so seductive. When I was a student, for a few months this was my only blue. But ultimately I can't live with just this blue. In time, I couldn't live with it at all.

Ultramarine is a good, workhorse blue. If I can only have one blue, this would be it. Cobalt blue is great; but it can't hit the dark notes as convincingly as Ultramarine can.

What about the neutral greys, Dik? I played with colors for years before it ever occured to me to try the greys out. I was really amazed at the results, especially when mixed with colors with high tinting strength like the thalos. I'd be interested in reading your opinion on this. I'm just assuming you use them, of course, in looking at your colors as displayed on my monitor. Outstanding painting, to my taste, btw. It passes my basic 'good art' test...'good enough to eat.' The flowers are really interesting - the reductionism works well with me.

Wow, this discussion is making me horney for painting, which I haven't done since the early nineties. Cyber has taken over my life. It's remarkable, in retrospect, how radically different the color experience is between cyber and paint. It's only remotely comparable.

I have never found another pigment that mixes as well with the umbers, both raw and burnt, for making blacks. That is my first choice in a black. In fact some of the Payne's Gray formulations are just that - ultramarine and umber.

A recently adopted favorite of mine is Utrecht's Ultramarine Violet, and their Manganese Violet does marvelous things in glazes. Both are found in their acrylic line of colors.

I suppose you can quantify it, but I've never done so. I know of no way to quantify the painting experience beyond actually experiencing it. Putting it into words is not my forte. I just know that there are certain times when no other red will do other than a cadmium. Trying to compare 'this paint' to 'that paint' is a futile excercise, IMO. There are far too many variables between manufacturers, paint types, colorant origins and how they are blended to allow anything more than generalizations - 'student grade is not as good as professional grade is not as good as artist grade.' If student grade works for YOU, then I'd say it's 'good enough' and why waste your money on better - except that you will never know for sure if you never try the better stuff.

I have always kept cadmium red in 'dark, medium and light' plus a cadmium orange in my collection of colorants - in all mediums I work in - watercolor, acrylic and oils.

As for the 'opaqueness' of different colors, I don't know why one can't make any pigment as 'transparent' as one wishes by the 'dispersion method' of using ample medium to 'disperse' the grains of colorant. Even the dye-based colors are often nothing more than an inert 'carrier' that has been stained by the dye - in other words the carrier is itself opaque under magnification.

To each his own. I find ultramarine much to 'red' for many uses. And I find it impossible to use for mixing a 'clean' green. For that you need the cobalts and ceruleans, IME. If I were to have but one blue in my box of colors, it would be cobalt - which can then be tinted with alizarin crimson to create a mixed ultramarine.

Winsor Newton has a 'green shade' ultramarine. I have both on my palette and a cobalt and in special cases a Grumbacher PreTest