Most versatile colors?

Are the red and blue violets ready mixed?, and are these uses to darken and/or add shadows to your skin tones? If your skin tone is too dark how would you personally lighten it?

And just to show how ignorant I am, would I be correct in assuming based on Dru's colour buffering you are also using white along with the bottom 5 to achieve your skin tones?

And in answer to the original question, I too would and usually do only keep the primaries plus black, white, umber and a shed load of trans base:thumbsup:

If I was allowed more than 10 bottles I would probably also add all the ochers and possibly even the secondaries, not to mention the colours Paul mentioned as his bottom 5:) makes think 20 bottles is more realistico_O my head is spinning now, who's idea was this stupid gamelol

Being too dark is painful, if I can't erase it away then I would use straight white then deal with whatever shift happens. I really try to go lighter when I make my colours, even when I get this right I still mess it up later on by adding transparent layers making it darker....,

Top 3 and white gets you there fine :)
I see paint/colours from the angle of how it will kill its complimentary colour - this is how use paint mostly. :)
 
Being too dark is painful, if I can't erase it away then I would use straight white then deal with whatever shift happens. I really try to go lighter when I make my colours, even when I get this right I still mess it up later on by adding transparent layers making it darker....,

Top 3 and white gets you there fine :)
I see paint/colours from the angle of how it will kill its complimentary colour - this is how use paint mostly. :)

As unlikely as it might sound, I'm starting to get a grip on it, I should have understood this long ago, I've tried (and failed) in the past to make flesh tones just using the primaries, although they looked fine in the cup, they gave horrifying results on the substrate, it never occurred to me at the time to add white to the mix, I would imagine the method allows us to cap each tone to prevent going to dark.

I am very very close to getting restarted and since I now have nothing but time and there is nothing around me to prevent me doing whatever I like I intend to make use of what I have learned so far, I've been watching your threads closely and keeping mental notes, I plan to revisit some stuff that beat me and have a feeling they might just get licked, the baby in my avatar is a good example, I think you'll remember how hard a time it gave meo_O
 
I find it depends on the color system I am using. With Createx Illustration I have to go with what musicmacd said.

For E’tac EFX I use the primary colors plus

Golden Ocher
Red Ocher
Sepia Smoke
Payne’s Grey
And once in a while Magenta


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They are great Etac colours! I just think tigers!!!
Bit more work on the skin and hair, mixed up a deeper shadow colour of Violet Sepia and Veridian and some white.IMG_1929.JPG

Sorry this shouldn't be here!!!
 
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Being too dark is painful, if I can't erase it away then I would use straight white then deal with whatever shift happens. I really try to go lighter when I make my colours, even when I get this right I still mess it up later on by adding transparent layers making it darker....,

Top 3 and white gets you there fine :)
I see paint/colours from the angle of how it will kill its complimentary colour - this is how use paint mostly. :)

You are using the impressionists palette and method for realism. It's no wonder you get unique tone
 
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I had an art director once who wanted to micromanage and was checking out my paint job on a bunch of "rocks"
He was checking it out in the middle of the job and telling me it didn't look right (which was dumb as can be)
We got into sort of an an argument and he wanted me to get rid of the black and use an impressionist pallette and throw the airbrush in the trash and only use sponges or regular brushes
not sprayguns or bottles
and he wanted them to look just like "those rocks right over there" pointing to the ones I had painted the week before.

Which I promptly pointed out that I did those, the same way I'm doing these

Sorry just everytime I hear someone say " theres no black in nature" I think of this
Nothing against an impressionist palette but for scenic, you often have to use black to create depth that isn't there and of course for rocks, the paints you're using are often just ground up from rocks in the first place so it's hard to go wrong
 
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And just for clarity, you don't need the black in a flat painting to make depth, you are in complete control of the "lighting"
It's just in scenic you're dealing with partly 3d objects, in actual lighting that you often dont control if that makes sense.
 
I had an art director once who wanted to micromanage and was checking out my paint job on a bunch of "rocks"
He was checking it out in the middle of the job and telling me it didn't look right (which was dumb as can be)
We got into sort of an an argument and he wanted me to get rid of the black and use an impressionist pallette and throw the airbrush in the trash and only use sponges or regular brushes
not sprayguns or bottles
and he wanted them to look just like "those rocks right over there" pointing to the ones I had painted the week before.

Which I promptly pointed out that I did those, the same way I'm doing these

Sorry just everytime I hear someone say " theres no black in nature" I think of this
Nothing against an impressionist palette but for scenic, you often have to use black to create depth that isn't there and of course for rocks, the paints you're using are often just ground up from rocks in the first place so it's hard to go wrong

Just to be clear though - I use all the colours of the Colour wheel set :) and love Black :)
 
I really like it however it is you do it. You've definitely got a recognizable style, I think it even works it's way in to your classroom directed paintings a little
 
Well, thats the whole reason primaries and black and white are THE essentials. It's possible to do almost everything with them. Everything else is basically convenience. Unless you're doing automotive surfaces, which candies and metallics and pearls become more important.
Or for an automotive kit someone like @wickedartstudio who I think is one of the more experienced here for doing automotive style on a daily basis.

I cannot fathom limiting my choices to 10 in the custom automotive arena. Generally, everything I do in the automotive world (whether it's a simple graphic, portrait or a mural) involves metallics, pearls, candies, etc. More often than not, the vehicles are shown outside under the sun and I like the extra pop.

For illustrative purposes I'd choose the following:
Scarlet
Cobalt
Yellow
Violet
Burnt Umber
Black Magenta (I use this far more often than black)
Magenta
Driscoll Flesh (I normally use far less paint adjusting the Driscoll tone where I want it verses mixing a flesh tone from scratch)
Black
White
 
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