The Palette - Color, Intuition, and the Spaces In Between

“Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it.” —Epictetus

That line from Epictetus has been living with me lately. In the studio, in the way I work, and especially in how I choose my palette.

There’s no shortage of advice out there about which colors you “should” be using. What’s more archival. What’s more efficient. What the masters did. But the truth is, your choices on the palette say more about your inner world than any checklist ever could. You don’t need to justify them—you just need to mean them.

I’ve built my palette not to impress anyone, but to serve the kind of work I want to make. Some of the colors are traditional. Some aren’t. But all of them earned their place through experience, not pressure.

Take green, for example.

I don’t keep a tube green on my palette. I mix it from other colors when I need it. To me, green feels like a luxury—something nice to have, but not essential. It’s not a warm or cool primary. It’s not foundational. In fact, when I do have green, I tend to get lazy with it. I stop thinking about relationships between colors and just default to what’s already there.

That’s not a rule for everyone—it’s just what I’ve found works for me.

Of course, I made a video about this and it lit up the comments section. Everyone had a green they loved, a green I should be using. And that’s great—it just proves how personal palettes really are.

If I were to use a green from a tube (as many have suggested), I would lean into “PG36” or Phthalo Green Yellow Shade. And truth is, I do sometimes add it to a palette if I feel like I need it. I have a similar case with Raw Sienna.

A few other “Greens” you might consider:

• Veridian

• Cobalt Green

• Phthalo Green - Blue Shade “PG7”

If you want to hear more about that take on green, you can watch the video [HERE]. But the short version? You don’t need permission to choose your own colors. You just need a reason.

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My wooden palette is stained with stories. Not just paint—memories. Choices. Abandoned ideas. I’ve scraped it clean a thousand times, and still the grain carries the ghost of every session before it. That’s probably why I’ve stuck with wood all these years. It feels like an extension of the work, not just a surface for mixing color.

I’ve used glass palettes, disposable pads, cheap wood palettes, expensive ones—even full tabletops. They’re fine. But this one—the curved wood, the tone I covered it in and sealed with layers of linseed oil, the worn-in thumb hole—it feels like it belongs in a painting itself.

Lately, I’ve been using a pretty steady set of colors. It’s not a traditional primary wheel, not quite an academic palette either. It’s something I’ve built slowly, the way a carpenter adds favorite tools to his belt.

The Whites…

There’s Flake White, which I love for its warmth and transparency—it’s my go-to white. I also keep Titanium White on hand when I need more opacity and slower drying time.

The Yellows, Reds, & Blues…

I use Cadmium Lemon and Cadmium Yellow Pale—one cool, one warm—and Yellow Ochre Pale for grounding. Raw Umber keeps me honest. It gives me that yellow-brown hue I need to neutralize colors or shift them just a little.

Light Red adds a little grit. And Quinacridone Magenta—well, that one snuck up on me. I wasn’t sure at first, but now I’d miss it if it were gone. For more punch and a lot of chroma, Cadmium Red finishes up my spicy trio.

Cobalt Teal, Ultramarine Blue, and Ivory Black round it out and make a blues trio worthy of a Stevie Ray Vaughan tribute. That last one, Ivory Black? Yes, I treat it like it’s blue. Mix it with Cad Yellow and you get an olive drab that’s perfect for underpainting or field tones. It doesn’t always behave like black. It’s more mysterious than that.

And yeah, I think about permanence too. Not obsessively, but enough to know the colors I’ve chosen are rated high for lightfastness based on the American Society for Testing Materials (ASTM International) rating. I want the work to last—not just for my collectors, but for myself. There’s something about making a painting that could outlive you that makes the choice of color feel even more personal. I don’t need every pigment to be perfect. But I need to trust that it’ll hold up to time, just like the ideas behind the work.

My working palette with a few tubes of paint ready for a day of painting - © Michael Warth

But here’s the thing: you can read every book, study every master, and still end up with something that’s just not you. That’s why I think it’s worth talking about a few famous palettes—not to simply copy them, but to understand how personal a palette really is.

Anders Zorn is probably the most famous for a limited palette: White, Yellow Ochre, Vermilion, and Ivory Black. That’s it. Four colors—and he painted everything from portraits to full scenes with it. It teaches discipline. Harmony. How far a few colors can go if you know what you’re doing.

John Singer Sargent, on the other hand, used more. He had Cadmiums, Viridian, Vermilion, Cobalt, Rose Madder—it wasn’t overly complex, but it was robust. And he painted fast, so having the right color ready mattered.

As for Rembrandt… we don’t know exactly. But we know he loved earth colors—Ochres, Umbers, maybe some Lead Tin Yellow. He made magic with mud. The glow of his portraits wasn’t in the color itself, but in how he handled light.

And that’s the thing. Palettes aren’t sacred relics. They’re personal. They reflect how you see the world.

I’ll probably keep experimenting until the end. That’s part of the joy. But every time I mix a color, I’m mixing something I’ve learned. Something I’ve seen. Something I’ve felt.

Moreover, I’m always willing to grab a tube of whatever I want if I think it is needed for a painting. As previously mentioned Raw Sienna and Phthalo Green Yellow Shade are great examples here. In fact, when used they live on my palette just after Ivory Black on the far left from time to time.

The palette isn’t just paint. It’s a diary.

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One more thing…

I didn’t set out to build a balanced palette. I didn’t study with a master or follow a strict color wheel. I just painted. Experimented. Swapped one color for another. And somewhere along the way, I ended up with this palette—not because it was perfect, but because it felt right.

But looking at it now, there’s something interesting hiding in plain sight.

This palette has a kind of hidden logic. It’s not traditional. It’s not a textbook split-primary setup. But it mirrors something I’ve carried with me from years of photography and video work: the RGB color model. Not literally—but spiritually.

• Quinacridone Magenta anchors the red-violet edge and gives me that “tint slider” tool like we are all familiar with.

• Cadmium Lemon and Cad Yellow Pale give me the yellow-green axis.

• Ultramarine Blue, Cobalt Teal, and even Ivory Black (which I treat like a blue) fill in the cools.

It’s not pure RGB—but the logic is there. I’ve got warmth and coolness in each range. I can push toward vibrancy or pull back into earthy subtlety using Raw Umber, Light Red, and Yellow Ochre Pale. Just like the tint and temperature sliders in every digital photography and video editor application available today.

I also noticed that I’ve unconsciously balanced chroma and control. I’ve got powerful colors—Cad Red, Cobalt Teal—but I’ve paired them with anchors that keep everything grounded. It lets the paintings breathe. The work feels natural.

And here’s the thing that matters most:

I didn’t choose these colors because someone told me to. I chose them because I used them. Because they worked.

That’s what a palette should be—personal. Evolving. Reflective of how you see.

So yeah, that’s why I use these colors. They weren’t chosen simply for theory. They were chosen for trust.

None of this is to say my palette is the best, or the one you need to use. I’m also not trying to convince anyone that I’m right about color theory or that my palette is for everyone.

I’m simply sharing my palette to give you insight into how I see. My most-used colors in oil painting are closely tied to how I think about color. It was an evolution, not a shopping list.

And look—I understand the opinions about green. I’ve purchased so many tubes over the years I probably should have a favorite. And I do. But I’d rather not give up the real estate on my palette just to watch it go to waste.

If I’m painting a lime, sure—I might grab a green. But with the yellows and blues already on my palette, I can mix the kind of green that belongs in my painting. The kind that feels like it came from me.

This post isn’t really about why I don’t use green. That part speaks for itself.

This post is about asking you to reflect on what you choose—and why.

There’s more to a palette than pigment. There’s memory, instinct, and voice in every swipe of color.

Got strong opinions about color? Let me hear it. I geek out over palettes and love to chat about it.