Struggling with deciding which colors to include in your palette? Let Anders Zorn from the late 1800s guide you with his unique suggestion.
Anders Zorn, a renowned Swedish artist born in 1860, was a painter, sculptor, and etcher who gained international recognition during his lifetime. Living in Paris for years with his wife, he was highly respected in artistic circles and sought after by American high society for his exceptional portrait work, often compared to the renowned Singer Sargent. Zorn is particularly famous for his use of a limited palette, opting to use only four colors in his work.
It is his paintings that first testify to the skilful use of a limited palette, but we also find some specific references in artists of his time. Birge Harrison's book (1854-1929), Landscape Painting, talks about it.
“The illustrious Swedish artist Zorn uses only two colors: vermilion and yellow ochre; the other two pigments, white and black, are the negation of color. With this palette, simple to the point of poverty, he still manages to paint an immense variety of landscape and figurative subjects."
Gliding over those who emphasize that he has sometimes integrated other pigments into his color choice - which is true, by the way - let's get straight to the point by talking about this palette and why it is not only very interesting even for beginners, but has roots much further and more refined than one might expect.
Lead white, ivory black, vermilion, and ochre.
That's all you need.
Four colors that, when mixed together, can offer an extraordinarily rich palette. Warm and bright tones on one hand, balanced by a range of neutral browns and grays on the other, very useful for creating portraits.
But why did Zorn come to synthesize a palette of this type?
It is easy to think that his stylistic choices were influenced by the travels he undertook through Europe and its museums.
And perhaps one must go back about two hundred years and to the chromatic choice of the great Baroque masters of the 1600s.
Zorn, like all painters until at least the 20th century, had learned painting following precise aesthetic, chromatic, and compositional rules, looking to Caravaggio and Velázquez as models to be inspired by.
Nothing unusual after all, in an era where learning to paint was still strictly academic and the language studied was that of past painters.
So while Caravaggio seemed to form his paintings using lead white, Naples yellow, yellow ochre, vermilion, red ochre, burnt sienna, and carbon black.
Velazquez, on the other hand, responded with a variation made of lead white, burnt sienna, yellow ochre, and ultramarine blue.
The Zorn palette is a kind of simplified evolution.
And before that?
There is a more primitive and earthy palette that resonates with the writings up until now, consisting of blacks from fire charcoals, whites from chalk and lime, and yellowish-red ochres of clay.
These ancient colors have been used in human expression since the beginning of time, also present in the Greek world as mentioned by Pliny in the 1st century AD when discussing the painter Apelles of Kos and his use of thin veils in painting.
According to Naturalis historia, it appears that painters in ancient Greece primarily utilized only these four colors, with no blue being present in that region at the time.
On this note, for those who are interested in a deep read, I recommend M. Brusantin's essay, "Storia del colore" (History of Color).
And for those who are not familiar with it, check out the contemporary art group Cave of Apelles.ave of Apelles.
But today there are the same colors?
Not exactly, but we do have some fantastic alternatives. Today, when we refer to white, we mean titanium white. As for black, ivory black remains the go-to choice. Among the numerous options available, ochre is represented by yellow, and with vermillion, you can opt for either cadmium or a red color made with diisopropylidene.
(Don't panic, to learn more about reds click QUI - Technical article alert -)
But what can be the benefit of using few colors?
The Zorn palette is not perfect, but it has a series of undeniable merits.
First of all, simplicity.
Sometimes, having too many colors available, very intense and fully saturated, can lead to doubts or difficulties in their use, or to have little agreement between the parts. Using only 4 colors also means making it easier for mixtures to share at least one common ingredient, making the painting more harmonious.
A limited palette not only forces you to think more carefully about mixtures, but also makes it easier to think in tonal gradations.
In portraits, it helps you study with relative ease, variations in the tone of the skin.
And above all, the painter is used to considering colors always in dialogue with each other: in a painting with warm tones, the cool tones of grays obtained only from white and black are enhanced, becoming precious for their bluish hues. This is the theory of color applied.
It is no coincidence that the Zorn palette is an exercise used in many schools to teach the basic principles of painting, without confusing students with a palette that is sometimes unnecessarily too rich.
If you are curious to know more and are not afraid of painting techniques, more articles will soon follow.
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