Begin your permanent palette paints. These are the paints you cannot live without, and will mix the barebone painting, should you have nothing else. In other words, you should be able to mix a wide range of colors with just those paints. Usually it consists of some sort of yellow, blue, red, brown, white and black.

These auxiliary colors you can live without and they change as you do or as your painting dictates. These paints for the most part can be mixed easily by your basic palette, but sometimes, mixing takes up too much time, or too much paint, and thus resorting to purchasing a tube of the color needed.

Warning: all of the following pigments are toxic. Which is my main reason for not using them as much. My auxiliary colors are:

Cerulean Blue Deep PB36. This is a deep green blue made of oxides of cobalt and chromium, which has a very low coverage for pigment. Many people use this color instead of the high coverage Phthalocyanine Blue. I prefer phthalo blue to Cerulean because it is greener, and works much better with Phthalocyanine green and Ultramarine blue.

Burnt Umber Light, PBr7 made of calcined natural iron oxide containing manganese. This is a pretty brown, and even though you can mix it with Red Oxide and Ultramarine Blue, sometimes, it’s nice to have around when mixing a lot of it. Plus, it makes for a nice black when mixed with Ultramarine blue.

Burnt Sienna PBr7 made of calcined natural iron oxide is a lovely deep orange, at least the true Burnt Sienna. Winsor & Newton’s brand uses PR101, which is Red Oxide, thus it is important to know the numbers more than the names of the pigment.

Yellow Ochre PY43 made of natural hydrated iron oxide is a deep yellow. If you use a lot of Yellow Ochre or another form called Yellow Oxide PY42, then perhaps you should get a tube. However, if you don’t, and want your ochres with variety, mix Hansa Yellow Opaque and Quinacridone Violet, they make very bright clean ochres.

Chromium Oxide Green PG17, best for last. This pigment is made of anhydrous chromium sesquioxide and it is a beautiful dark green. It is one of my favorite colors. I would add it to my permanent palette, but the color can be mixed with the permanent palette. So beautiful, works and looks very well with Red Oxide in it’s pure form. I don’t use it very often and it is toxic, so it has been demoted to my auxiliary palette.