White is the one colour you can’t mix: every pigment absorbs some light, and white has to reflect nearly all of it. So every light colour starts from a tube. Titanium White is opaque and the strongest; Zinc White is transparent and gentler, better for glazes. Every white, cream and pastel in the library is Titanium White with a little colour in it.
Colour into white, never white into colour
Start with a pile of white and add the colour on the tip of a palette knife. Going the other way, you need a huge amount of white to lighten a strong colour, and you end up with far more paint than you need. That’s why pastel recipes show ratios like 40 parts white to 1 part colour. It is normal: strong pigments only need a trace.
Not every colour survives white
Some paints keep their colour as you tint them; others wash out fast. It’s worth knowing which, because it decides which blue makes your sky and which red makes your pink.
Off-whites are harder than they look
A cream or an antique white looks like the simplest colour on the page, but the library’s whites average almost four paints per recipe, more than any colour family except skin tones and metallics. The colour is tiny but it has to be exactly balanced: a speck of yellow for warmth, a speck of red so it isn’t lemony, and a trace of blue so it reads as aged rather than yellow.
Using pastels well
- Pastels need value contrast. A painting that is all pastel looks washed out, so anchor it with a few mid or dark tones.
- If a pastel looks cold or chalky, add a tiny amount of warm yellow or red to bring it back.
- Titanium White is opaque, so pastels cover well, which makes them good for highlights and corrections.
- Cool whites need only the smallest touch of blue. Too much and they read as pale blue.