There are tons of references, one I like that covers portrait palettes is here:

How to Choose a Basic Portrait Painting Palette for Oils

It lists the basics of:

• Titanium white,
• Yellow Ochre,
• Light red,
• English red,
• Raw umber,
• Ivory black

And even better:

• Titanium white
• Yellow ochre pale
• Yellow ochre
• Persian red
• Cadmium red
• Red umber
• Green Umber
• Burnt Umber
• Raw Umber
• Ivory black

Here are the color charts I am starting to collect, first the portrait one.

This post will likely get split into may different ones covering the various paint manufacturers I use.

Old Holland -Artist Oil colours

Winsor & Newton – Artist oil colours

Winsor & Newton – Student quality Griffin quick drying oils

Winsor & Newton – Student quality Griffin quick drying oils

Daler Rowney – Student Quality Georgia oils

And now onto actual Palettes from Manufacturers, first up, Windsor Newton ARTIST’S OIL COLOR:

In the line of videos I have been watching I have found one guy who’s videos I like and who displays a good sense of touch, using different hand angles.

Also his approach is very simplified, just using a very standard palette board and a limited selection of colors.  Yet he makes the most of it.

I don’t paint in this style and I generally don’t like brush strokes to show, but the point for me here is his overall composition, and how he has sped up the video to cover the whole process from start to end.

He starts with this.

And he finishes as follows.

He does another small one of Cairo.

Goes here like this for all the brightly lit areas…

And then this for the start of the shadows…

The edits many of the surfaces to be lighter mostly via thicker paint. Again, not a style I paint in but I respect that this version of “painterly” “brush-strokey” work is what the medium was most suited to for so many years.

It’s good to keep in mind this limit of sorts, as once one gets into less brush strokes showing, and more intensity by way of glazes, you are entering a world where physics of light, chemistry of color, and spatial rendering end up better done in an electronic or photographic medium.

I skip forward to where he has also added more features, and then added light upon the whole scene via white.

Then he’s onto adding the rest of the detailed features such as figures, and a tunes into a general sense of where the sunlight is coming from.

More figures, more details, more light correction… I will always like the depth and tone of oil for this reason, -even at this small scale the umber, reds, ochre, create a lot of foundation for the textile colors / inks such as are in the clothing and green building features. It would be hard to know without further checking what a realistic palette of such a scene would be, -but this isn’t realism. It’s definitely the next best thing.

He finishes with a wave of light across the whole work and signs it.

This is a good example of light and shadow, earth tones, and something a bit less boring than landscapes.

Many lessons can be learned on the basics of rendering a “tall” “portrait” with all 3 dimensional aspects touched upon.