Every artist has a set of colours that is perfectly working for him/her. Here a short overview of the colours that I use in painting.

I am a great fan of colour mixing, but nevertheless I actually have a quite broad palette of colours (I know artists, that are doing great with only four colours). I would divide my colour pigments in three groups: basic colours, frequently used colours, exotic colours.
The basic colours are yellow, red and blue. An artist can mix every possible colour shade and value from this three. And surely there is also white, one actually needs this pigment most of all. I use two kinds of yellow, two kinds of blue and one kind of red as basic colours:
yellow ochre
bismuth vanade yellow
ultramarine blue
prussian blue
alizarin crimson
and titanium white
I buy extra tubes of colours, that I use most frequently. I could do without them, but it's a way to save a lot of time as I don't need to mix them separately every moment. I don't use most of the premixed pigments purely, but they allow me to achieve the necessary hue in quick and few steps. So, those are my helpers:
permanent yellow deep
cyprus umber medium
raw umber
burnt umber
indigo
sap green
french terre verte
natural black oxide
cerulean blue or sevres blue (they are not identical, but similar in their function for me)
Some colours are extremely difficult to mix from the basic set. And they result often not as bright and luminous as I wish. I use them quite rarely but they allow me to achieve some special effects, for example glowing (and I need this effect it in every second painting). I admit, some of them I just bought because I find them beautiful. This is my collection of exotic colours:
persian rose
pyrrole orange
cinnabar green light
pthalo turqoise
cobalt teal bluish
That's pretty much it I wanted to tell you. Thanks for reading - and you are most welcome to share your palette. Maybe I'll find there some inspiration ;)
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