My Essential 13-Colour Oil Painting Palette: Pigment Choices, Colour Logic, and Why This Limited Palette Works

As artists, we often believe we need every colour on the shelf to create expressive, vibrant, or realistic paintings. But in professional practice, the opposite is often true: the most versatile palettes are the most focused ones. After years of experimenting with dozens of pigments, I finally refined my working setup into a cohesive, efficient, and powerful 13-colour oil painting palette.

This set is designed for portraits, cityscapes, landscapes, and mixed subjects, and it’s built from carefully chosen pigments that prioritise mixing strength, chromatic range, temperature control, and clean colour harmony.

In this post, I’ll break down why I chose each colour, what role it plays, and how this palette gives me complete control without the overwhelm of a massive paint collection.

Why a Limited Palette Works Better Than an Overloaded One

A tightly curated palette encourages:

1. Colour Harmony

Because all mixes come from the same family of pigments, the result is natural cohesion.

2. Cleaner Mixtures

Fewer pigments = less mud.A limited palette forces intentional mixing, which produces richer, cleaner colour.

3. Faster Decision-Making

With only 13 colours, you remember where everything lives on the palette. This speeds up both plein-air and studio workflow.

4. Maximum Versatility

This palette can handle:

• glowing skin tones

• moody evening cityscapes

• naturalistic landscapes

• vibrant accents and deep shadows

The key is balance: warm and cool colours, high and low chroma pigments, opaques and transparents, and earths alongside primaries.

The 13-Colour Palette (Overview)

Yellows

1. Lemon Yellow

2. Yellow Ochre

3. Indian Yellow

Reds & Earth Reds

4. Venetian Red

5. Burnt Sienna

6. Alizarin Crimson

7. Perylene Maroon

Blues

8. French Ultramarine Blue

9. Prussian Blue

Earth Neutral

10. Raw Umber

Greens

11. Viridian

12. Chromium Oxide Green

White

13. Titanium White

Now let’s explore the purpose behind each of these pigments.

Yellows: Building Light, Warmth, and Natural Skin Tones

1. Lemon Yellow

A cool, high-chroma yellow ideal for mixing fresh greens, bright highlights, and clear light. It’s essential for sunny city reflections, vivid skies, and the clean top notes of skin tones.

Why I include it:It gives me access to cool greens and keeps mixtures lively without turning muddy.

2. Yellow Ochre

A foundational pigment in portrait and landscape painting. Yellow Ochre offers a warm, muted yellow that naturally fits human skin, historic architecture, and earth tones.

Perfect for:

• Skin undertones

• Sandstone buildings

• Grounded neutrals

• Warm glows without excessive chroma

3. Indian Yellow

A transparent, golden yellow with exceptional glow. It creates beautiful warm light effects and is perfect for glazing.

I rely on Indian Yellow for:

• Sunset tones

• Warm skin lights

• Glowing foliage

• Rich golden colour fields

It bridges the gap between Lemon Yellow and Burnt Sienna, giving me deep warmth without muddiness.

Reds & Earth Reds: The Heart of Skin Tones and Urban Colour

4. Venetian Red

An opaque, muted red earth pigment. Venetian Red gives structure to mid-tones in skin, brickwork, and classical architectural details.

Why it’s essential:It creates believable colour without overpowering chroma—perfect for portraits.

5. Burnt Sienna

A transparent warm earth that mixes beautifully with blues to form natural greys and shadows. It’s more versatile than people realise.

Useful for:

• Warm shadows

• Rust tones

• Brickwork

• Hair

• Skin warmth

Burnt Sienna is one of the most hard-working pigments on the palette.

6. Alizarin Crimson

A deep, cool red that delivers rich shadows, purples, and atmospheric distance. It offsets the earth reds with a chromatic cool red option.

Why I keep it:It’s irreplaceable for cool lips, deep skin shadows, sunsets, and distant buildings.

7. Perylene Maroon

This pigment functions like a dark red-black. Perylene Maroon allows me to create deep, transparent darks without resorting to black paint.

Perfect for:

• Night scenes

• Hair

• Deep fabric shadows

• Eye sockets

• City night windows

• Rich maroons

It gives depth without deadening colour.

Blues: Structure, Depth, Atmosphere

8. French Ultramarine Blue

Warm, flexible, and beautiful in shadows. Ultramarine is a classic for a reason.

I use it for:

• Skin shadows

• Sky graduations

• Stonework

• Violet mixes with Alizarin

• Soft atmospheric effects

9. Prussian Blue

A cool, extremely powerful dark blue. It’s the backbone of modern cityscapes—giving night scenes, bicycles, windows, glass, and shadows that cinematic edge.

Why I love it:Where Ultramarine is soft, Prussian is bold. The two together cover the complete blue spectrum I need.

Earth Neutral

10. Raw Umber

This is my temperature control pigment, neutraliser, and shadow builder.

With Raw Umber, I can:

• soften high-chroma colours

• build greys without black

• control portrait shadows

• establish underpaintings

• create architectural neutrals

No limited palette is complete without a solid umber.

Greens: From Modern Glass to Natural Foliage

11. Viridian

A cool, transparent green ideal for mixing vibrant, fresh greens and glassy turquoise shades.

Best for:

• Urban greenery

• Modern architecture

• Reflected water light

• Mixing bright greens with Lemon Yellow

It’s a stabilizing green that doesn’t overpower like Phthalo.

12. Chromium Oxide Green

This is the secret weapon of the palette.

Chromium Oxide Green is an opaque, muted, naturalistic green that solves a major problem: overly bright greens.

Why it was the perfect addition:

• It creates realistic foliage

• It mixes into soft greys with reds

• It sits mid-value and mid-chroma right out of the tube

• It works for oxidised metal, moss, aged stone

• It’s essential for both portraits and cityscapes

No other green you own behaves like it.

White

13. Titanium White

A strong, opaque white that handles the majority of mixing work. Its power keeps mixtures clean and allows me to push highlights effectively.

How This 13-Colour Palette Performs Across Subjects

Portraits

This palette offers:

• subtle temperature shifts

• natural skin tones

• controlled chroma

• luminous shadows

• excellent desaturation tools

Venetian Red, Yellow Ochre, Raw Umber, and Ultramarine are the pillars of my portrait mixing.

Cityscapes

Here is where the palette shines even brighter.

The combination of:

• Prussian Blue

• Ultramarine

• Perylene Maroon

• Burnt Sienna

• Chromium Oxide Green

…gives me:

• strong urban neutrals

• realistic concretes and stones

• glowing windows

• atmospheric perspective

• deep shadows without black

Few limited palettes can balance warmth and coolness in cityscapes. This one does.

Why These 13 Pigments Work Together

✔ Warm + Cool options for every primary

✔ Earth tones for natural realism

✔ Opaque + transparent balance

✔ High-chroma + low-chroma greens

✔ Deep darks without black

✔ Perfect for portraits AND architecture

This palette is the result of removing redundancies and leaving only the pigments that actually do the work.

Final Thoughts: A Palette That Simplifies and Strengthens Artistic Expression

The best palettes are built with intention, not impulse. My 13-colour oil painting palette reflects years of refinement and a genuine need for versatility across genres.

It gives me:✨ Clean mixes✨ Cohesive colour harmony✨ Fast, efficient painting decisions✨ Enough chroma for bold scenes✨ Enough earth control for realism

If you're looking to refine your own palette or move toward a more minimalist, professional setup, this 13-colour structure is a powerful place to start.