Master Your Palette

Josefina Leyendo (Josephine Reading)
Antonio López García, 1953
(Unable to find size and media)

Master Your Palette with a little help from Spain's most revered living realist painter, Antonio López García

Going to paint a dancer? Get inspired by Degas or Sargent; Want to push the work further into the realm of abstraction, perhaps Klee or Kandinsky might be able to help. These stimuli of subject matter and style are pretty obvious, but what do the palettes of the greats have to teach us? 

Earlier in the week, I was having one of those so-so moments with the latest in my 'Grow Wings and Fly' series. Having assembled the collage pieces and laid down some texture on the canvas, I started to feel stuck. I knew I wanted some kind of blues for the ground but I wasn't sure exactly what shade; nor did I want the ground to look completely 'flat'. I stared at the canvas and waited for my muse to speak; she must have laryngitis for there wasn't so much as a peep.

Making colour swatches in the studio

Collage-painting ground based on the palette of García's painting

So I opened the Pinterest app on my phone. Not, as you might suspiciously imagine, to forget about my painting and drown myself in an orgy of pinning, but to look at the boards where I intentionally collate anything that seems to relate to my artwork.

After a minute or so my attention was grabbed by the painting (above) by Spanish artist, Antonio López García. As I've mentioned before, I've increasingly become a fan of his work and when I looked at this piece in detail, I was amazed by the range of shades he had used in his 'blue' and green background.

I immediately made a quick colour chart based on García's painting using oil pastels and began mixing the colours. Then I created swatches using splodges of the mixes along with scribbles about the ratio of component colours. (I keep cut offs from heavy papers trimmed on the guillotine for use as swatches.) This is one of the few really methodical aspects of my studio practice which  I find saves me heaps of time it comes to reproducing a particular shade I've used before – whether in the same painting or a later one. 

The next time I came to the studio the paint was ready and waiting for me and all I had to do was let it speak to the canvas. Pretty soon the ground was laid down and I was able to focus on the next stage of the process.

I have already toned down the colours on the background from what you see here so who knows how much of the original shades will remain by the time the piece is finished, but García's palette served as a bridge from that stuck place to the next stage of my work. And I have a record of that rather delicious palette for anytime I want it.

The range of colours we use in our painting is one of the key components of our signature style yet one which we are often oblivious to. Looking at the palettes used by our favourite artists gives us insight into the components of our own palettes as well as clues as to how to expand our colour vocabulary.

• Watch: This excerpt from Victor Erice's documentary El Sol del Membrillo about García's struggle to portray the sun's rays filtering between the leaves of a quince tree. 
  
• Fun Quiz: Can you recognise these famous artworks by their palettes?
• Ask yourself: What signature colours do you use in your work? Get out a bunch of your paintings – or flick through a digital photo album containing your art – you might be surprised at what you find. If you are not a painter, what would be an analogous example of the palette within your own discipline – a source of inspiration within the work of others that is easily overlooked?
• Comment: What kind of studio or other records related to your creative practice do you keep?