Nelson Shanks' Palette

Colors include Gamblin, Winsor-Newton, Old Holland, and Grumbacher, unless noted.

Burnt Umber
Burnt Sienna
Venetian Red
Crimson Lake Deep Extra (Old Holland)
Permanent Rose (W-N)
Cadmium Red Deep
Camium Scarlet
Perinone Red (Gamblin)
Perylene Red (Gamblin)
Cadmium Orange
Raw Sienna
Indian Yellow (W-N)
Yellow Ochre
Cadmium Yellow
Cadmium Yellow Pale
Cadmium Green Pale
Cadmium Green
Viridian (W-N)
Pthalo Green
Cerulean Blue
Cobalt Blue
Manganese Blue
Ultramarine Blue
Dioxazine Purple
Ivory Black
Flake White #2

Source: extracted from Nelson Shanks's website, 12/01, Workshop Supplies. See this site for extaordinary, exquisite work, if you have not already: www.nelson-shanks.com

Now I see why Nelson Shanks charges so much. He's just trying to pay for his 26 colors.

Steve

How much does he charge?

According to an article on his website he has received $200,000 for a full length portrait. I don't know if that is his normal price, but it gives you an idea of his price range.

Steve

Data from a few years ago said he was getting $60,000 for a head and shoulders.

I'm delighted to hear it, thanks to you both.

I have always enjoyed Shanks' work and had the occasion to see a demo by him in Allentown, PA last fall (01). The demo was fair and he offered virtually no comment. All was forgiven however, by the fantastic display of his work on hand. The richness, sublety, and creativity are extraordinary. You see things not evident in reproductions such as an understated suggestion of viens running just below warm skin tones. And he doesn't work by formula. It's special. He is not afraid to attempt the unusual and difficult in order to produce very "original" work.

He also conducted a workshop which I was unable to attend but you can see in his paintings a variety and richness that would not be found using most traditional palettes.

I also think his palette could be a disaster in the hands of the inexperienced. Or should we learn on a larger keyboard?

I wonder if he needs a manager or something?

Slightly simplified Shanks palette
 

I have attended three workshops with Nelson and/or his instructors over the past year. For the record, as of January 2002 he cut the number of colors down to 23. He now omits Venetian Red, Perylene red, and yellow ochre.

Peggy Baumgaertner's palette is also 23 colors, though not the same ones. What the two of them have in common is experience studying at the Cape School, in the Hawthorne/Hensche tradition.

Although he, as you say, puts 23-26 pigments on his palette, what I would like to know is which pigments he actually uses the most. Which colours form the base of his method of painting. My guess is that he probably uses 7 or 8 pigments to do 90% of a painting and uses other pigments for specials flavours in the colouring.

I personally like a limited palette best. I don't think someone like Rembrandt or Vermeer used more than 8 or 10 pigments or so. My guess is that Shanks doesn't use more pigments for the most part. The working method would be too difficult and complex to control.

Peter

New presective on old topic
 

From a interview with Nelson himself about colors of paint he uses.

Carol: Do you enjoy playing with new colors that become available on the market?

Nelson: Oh, I love it. I'm going berserk now with all kinds of thing as long as I feel there's a great permanency. But I don't think anything will ever replace the strong body of colors you can get with good earth colors. A dye color cannot do what a body color can do and vice-versa. The pigment may be of a little less importance than the knowledge you have. That's where the key is that unlocks it all: knowing in your mind what you want. And that takes a lot of experimentation. It also takes a freedom in painting. You can't just sit there and dabble in miniscule amounts, carefully, because you are accomplishing so little in doing so. Paint broadly and powerfully and sink yourself into it and you'll learn so much more.

One thing that seems to characterize Nelson Shanks' complex official portraits is the use of intense color in the clothing that he has his subjects wear and in the background items he includes. I imagine that's where most of his wide range of intense pigments are used.

Peter, I have watched Nelson paint just two demos. He is not one of the many accomplished artists who can paint and talk at the same time, so what I say is based on my observation and explanation that his teaching assistants made later.

Nelson uses all the colors on his palette. I watched him touch every red available in the course of mixing the wide variety of tones he painted into the flesh of his paintings. He doesn't work by set formulas, but by looking, mixing, and adjusting: making color statements and playing with the relationships.

When I painted in his class, we were urged to "swim color in," making our paintings reflect what we saw: orange into a blue drape, green into a shadow. It's radically different from painting with a limited palette. The basic idea is to start brighter than you'd ever dream, because you can never make a painting brighter than tube colors.

I hope you will have an opportunity to see Nelson painting. I have seen a couple masters with limited palettes paint; David Leffel, Albert Handell, Sherrie McGraw. Theirs is a very different process than Nelson's. Watching him paint will undoubtedly be more revealing than my description!

Does anyone know why he has those little mountains of paint around his palette? Does he put the whole palette into a box to try and keep some of the paint on it wet for the next session? Is that how he transports the palette with those paint piles, in a box?

Michele,

I don't know why Nelson Shanks has paint mountains, but you can read why I do here...

http://www.williamwhitaker.com/B_HTM...tes/studio.HTM

Bill

Thanks for that link. Now, how do you keep those "mountains" so clean and not contaminated with adjacent colors?

Ahh Michele,

This is where photography on the web fails us all. Those piles are seriously contaminated with thoughtless and garish colors, many of them buried away.

I am forever mindlessly sticking my black brush in my white paint.

Bill

Sargent
 

Bill, your remark about your studio sounds like something one of Sargent's sitters said once about his London studio. She said, "It's not large and cluttered with all kinds of stuff like an amateur's studio."

That is the key to a clean studio - throwing away all of the junk you accumulated as an amateur. I am still struggling with this. I purchased a 125 set of Marvy Markers back in 1984 that I still cannot let go of, even though I now have almost no chance of ever using them again. At the time however, they were fiendishly expensive for my budget and I was so proud to have them and use them, and there they sit, even today. In the end, it comes down to an easel, a drawing table, some pencils, charcoal, brushes, mediums and oil paints. All of that other stuff is no longer necessary but hard to get rid of as most of it was hard won! :)

Nelson Shanks moves mountains
 

Michele,

Nelson has a box that resembles an oversize attache case in which his palette travels. He relies on a brush washer and rags to clean his brushes frequently as he paints. Haven't seen the paint piles too close though.

26 colors? 23 colors? Why?

What does it proofit the artist besides laziness....

People! You don't need this many colors.

Different Styles, Different Palettes
 

Hi Tony -

Shanks and Zorn evidence very different styles, so to me it seems logical that their approach to their palettes differ. Zorn has a lot of movement and high expressiveness. If he had added many colors on top of that, it might have been too much, so I think he chose wisely in limiting his colors.

Personally, as an artist in the process of learning the basics, Shank's palette would be too much f or me to deal with at the moment.

Respectfully,
Julie