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Van Goug started painting with dark colours; greenish-brown colors. Until a French
painter convinced him to use a more colorful palette.
yellow ocher,
chrome yellow and cadmium yellow,
chrome orange,
vermilion,
Prussian blue,
ultramarine,
lead white and zinc white,
emerald green,
red lake,
red ocher,
raw sienna,
black.
(Both chrome yellow and cadmium yellow are toxic, so some modern artists
tend to use versions that have hue at the end of the name, which indicates
that it's made from alternative pigments.)
Van Gogh painted very rapidly, with a sense of urgency, using the paint
straight from the tube in thick, graphic brush strokes (impasto). In his last 70
days, he is said to have averaged one a day.
Influenced by prints from Japan, he painted dark outlines around objects,
filling these in with areas of thick color. He knew that using complementary
colors make each seem brighter, using yellows and oranges with blues and
reds with greens. His choice of colors varied with his moods and occasionally
he deliberately restricted his palette, such as with the sunflowers which are
almost entirely yellows.
"To exaggerate the fairness of hair, I come even to orange tones, chromes and
pale yellow ... I make a plain background of the richest, intensest blue that I
can contrive, and by this simple combination of the bright head against the rich
blue background, I get a mysterious effect, like a star in the depths of an azure
sky."