Barbara J Carter

We’ve reached the final stop on the tour of my palette: White. It is possible to paint quite successfully without black (and I do), but white is indispensable.

There are two kinds of white paint available: zinc white and titanium white. The main difference between the two is opacity: titanium white is very opaque and zinc white is more transparent. Zinc white is sometimes called tinting white or blending white.

My “neo-pointillist” style requires opaque paint colors, so I use titanium white. My style is a layered technique and I only want the top layer to show. When I paint a dot that overlaps other dots, I don’t want the ones underneath to show through.

Oh, and that photo above? Well, that’s what my palette really looks like when I’m painting. Big blobs of colors all over the place. I figured you might enjoy a peek at the real thing, and anyway white paint doesn’t show up against a white background very well!