A good oil palette is not defined by how many tubes it contains, nor by whether it follows a famous artist’s list. It is defined by whether its oil colours give you reliable answers in the painting at hand: a clean grey, a convincing shadow, a luminous light, a green that belongs to the landscape rather than sitting on its surface. Those answers begin with pigment.
A tube labelled with an appealing colour name may be useful, but the name alone cannot tell you how it will behave. The pigment or pigments inside determine its tinting strength, transparency, undertone, lightfastness, drying character and mixing possibilities. Once you learn to read those properties, choosing paint becomes less about collecting colours and more about building a working system.
Oil colours begin with pigment
Oil paint is, at its simplest, pigment held in a drying oil. Yet this simple structure leaves considerable room for difference. Pigments vary greatly in particle size, refractive quality and chemical nature. These differences affect not only the colour you see in the tube, but also what happens when the paint is spread thinly, mixed with white, layered over another passage or allowed to dry.
For this reason, a colour index name is often more useful than a descriptive label. A single-pigment colour offers a particularly clear starting point. It lets you understand the character of one pigment without the additional variables of a mixture. This does not make mixed-pigment colours inferior. Some are extremely useful, especially where a specific handling quality or a convenient neutral is wanted. But a palette built largely from single pigments is easier to learn, replenish and adapt.
Take two paints that appear broadly similar: Ultramarine Blue and Phthalo Blue. Ultramarine is warmer, granulating in feeling and often produces restrained, naturalistic greys with earth colours. Phthalo Blue is cooler, exceptionally strong and capable of intense greens and deep, transparent darks. Neither is the universally better blue. They solve different problems. The useful question is not, “Which blue should I buy?” but, “What do I need this blue to do?”
Opacity changes how a painting is constructed
Oil colours are commonly described as transparent, semi-transparent, semi-opaque or opaque. These terms are not decorative technicalities. They influence the order in which you paint and the effects available to you.
Transparent colours are especially valuable for glazing, optical depth and mixtures that retain a sense of light. Transparent Oxide Red, for example, can lend warmth and depth to a shadow without the dense surface cover of an opaque earth. Transparent colours can also make dark mixtures feel more alive, provided they are not overworked with too many opposing pigments.
Opaque colours are often indispensable when you need decisive coverage, solid lights or direct corrections. Cadmium colours, many earth pigments and titanium white generally have a stronger covering presence. In a portrait, an opaque warm may establish the turning plane of a cheek with economy; in a still life, it may give a painted ceramic or cloth its physical weight.
A palette of entirely transparent paint can make direct painting laborious. A palette of entirely opaque paint can make subtle layering harder to achieve. Most painters benefit from having both available, then selecting according to the stage and intention of the work. A lean, transparent underpainting may suit one subject, while a largely opaque alla prima approach may suit another.
Build a palette around relationships, not a colour wheel
The temptation when choosing oil colours is to fill every apparent gap: another violet, a brighter green, a second orange. In practice, a smaller palette with clear internal relationships often teaches more and mixes better than an extensive collection of near-duplicates.
Begin with a white, a warm and cool yellow, a warm and cool red, and a warm and cool blue. Add one or two earth colours and a dark only if it earns its place. From there, test the actual gaps in your work. If your landscape greens are persistently dull, you may need a stronger cool yellow or a clearer blue, not a ready-made green. If your portraits lack the right muted warmth, an earth red or yellow oxide may be more useful than another brilliant red.
The familiar warm-cool model is a practical guide, not a fixed law. Individual pigments do not always behave as neat positions on a colour wheel suggest. A yellow that looks cool beside one red may seem warm next to another. Your own tests matter more than a theoretical label.
Make a mixing chart before committing to a new palette. Mix each yellow with each blue, each red with each blue, then make tints with white. Record not only the hue, but whether the mixture is clean or subdued, strong or weak, transparent or covering. This small exercise reveals what a paint can do far more clearly than a swatch on a screen.
Consider tinting strength before adding more paint
Some pigments dominate mixtures in very small quantities. Phthalo Green and Phthalo Blue are familiar examples; certain modern organic reds and yellows are also remarkably strong. This can be an advantage when brilliance is required, but it asks for restraint. A trace may be sufficient to shift a mixture, while an excess can quickly overwhelm an earth colour or make a neutral appear artificial.
Other colours invite broader use. Yellow Ochre, Raw Umber and Ultramarine Blue can be forgiving partners because their strength and chromatic character often allow gradual adjustment. Again, this is not a hierarchy. Strong colours extend the palette’s range; quieter colours make it easier to negotiate delicate passages. A considered palette has room for both.
If a mixture repeatedly becomes muddy, the cause is not always the number of pigments. Mud can arise from overmixing, from combining complements too completely, from working wet paint into a partially set layer, or from using too much white too early. Better paint selection helps, but deliberate handling remains essential.
Drying behaviour matters in layered work
Oil colours do not all dry at the same rate. Earth colours often dry relatively quickly, while colours made with certain organic pigments may dry more slowly. The oil vehicle, the thickness of the layer, the absorbency of the ground and the addition of medium all affect the result.
This matters particularly when building layers. A painter working wet into wet may welcome variations in drying time differently from a painter who plans a sequence of glazes. The established principle of fat over lean remains a useful guide: later layers should generally be at least as flexible and oil-rich as those beneath them. It helps the paint film accommodate movement as it dries and ages.
Do not treat medium as a remedy for every issue. Adding it indiscriminately can alter gloss, transparency, drying time and handling in ways that obscure rather than improve the paint’s natural character. First learn how the oil colours perform straight from the tube. Then use a medium for a specific purpose: increasing flow, extending transparency, accelerating drying or changing surface quality.
Choose whites with the same care as colour
White is not merely a lightener. It is often the most-used paint on the palette and has profound influence over mixtures. Titanium White offers high opacity and strong tinting power, making it effective for decisive lights and covering mixtures. Zinc White is more transparent and less forceful, though its use in oil painting requires an informed understanding of its structural limitations. Flake White Hue offers a useful handling alternative for painters seeking a ropey, traditional body without lead pigment.
The choice depends on your method. If you tend to mix large areas of pale colour, a highly opaque white may save time but can cool or flatten delicate mixtures if overused. If you rely on veils, scumbles and gradual shifts, a less forceful white or more sparing use of titanium may preserve more colour character. Test your chosen white with every major palette colour, not only with the brightest ones.
Let your subject refine the palette
There is no virtue in pursuing a permanent, universal palette if your subjects continually ask for different materials. A painter of northern coastal weather may depend on restrained earths, Ultramarine and carefully moderated greens. A painter of flowers, theatrical interiors or high-chroma abstraction may need modern pigments with greater saturation and tinting strength.
The best way to make informed changes is to identify a recurring limitation. Perhaps your darks feel blackened, your violets collapse in tints, or your greens cannot move from acidic sunlight to deep shade. Use that observation to test one new pigment at a time. Tools such as a Colour Compare or Mixing Studio can help clarify likely relationships, but your own painted samples remain the final authority.
Michael Harding oil colours are formulated to place pigment character at the centre of this process, allowing painters to make choices based on material performance rather than vague colour names alone. A well-chosen tube should expand what you can see and say with paint, not simply add another option to the shelf.
Keep a small record beside your palette: which mixtures surprised you, which colours were used most often, and which were left untouched. Over time, that record becomes more valuable than any standard palette diagram. It describes the materials your own practice genuinely needs.