Barbara J Carter

There’s one oddball color that I use on my palette: cadmium orange.

I call it “oddball” because I generally use a very limited palette of just a few primary colors plus white. I don’t even use black! (Not using black is another old trick of the Impressionists.) So why do I allow a lowly secondary color like orange onto the precious real estate of my palette?

I wish I could show you cadmium orange paint straight from the tube in person. (Well, I can if you come to one of my shows!) The photo just doesn’t do it justice. It is an amazingly saturated color. I can certainly make orange by mixing cadmium red and cadmium yellow, but it will be less saturated (duller). Granted, I don’t always want to use the brightest colors, but when I do want something really bright I like having cadmium orange to really pump up the volume.

It’s just too luscious not to use!