Yael Scalia palette

http://paintingperceptions.com/landscape-painting/interview-with-yael-scalia

LG: Your paintings have a remarkable feeling of light and air, clarity and restraint of tone that make for rich color harmonies. Can you tell us something about your approach to finding the right colors in your paintings. Do you use a particular palette of colors?

YS: My painting teacher was a demanding tyrant when it came to color mixing, and that was helpful! I still use pretty much the same palette I used when I first started painting, with a few additions over the years:
Cremnitz white,
raw umber,
ultramarine blue,
cobalt blue,
quinacridone blue, [???]
burnt sienna,
lemon yellow,
cadmium yellow,
Indian yellow,
cadmium orange,
cadmium or other warm green,
Veronese green,
vert Aubusson or pthalo green,
a purple,
cadmium red,
alizarin crimson.

sargent's painting notes

JOHN SINGER SARGENT'S PAINTING NOTES

Painting is an interpretation of tone.

...Keep the planes free and simple, drawing a full brush down the whole contour of a cheek.

...Always paint one thing into another and not side by side until they touch.

...The thicker your paint—the more your color flows.

...Simplify, omit all but the most essential elements—values, especially the values. You must clarify the values.

...The secret of painting is in the half tone of each plane, in economizing the accents and in the handling of the lights.

...You begin with the middle tones and work up from it .... so that you deal last with your lightest lights and darkest darks, you avoid false accents.

...Paint in all the half tones and the generalized passages quite thick.

...It is impossible for a painter to try to repaint a head where the understructure was wrong.

SARGENT'S PALETTE

Flake White
Naples Yellow
Yellow Ochre
English Red
Vermilion
Ivory Black
Prussian Blue

Hudson River School Palettes

Frederic Church's Twilight in the Wilderness was painted with:


Lead White
Vermilion
Red Lead
Strontium Yellow (one of 3 lemon yellows--most opaque, most lightfast)
Chrome Yellow
Cadmium Yellow
Chrome Green
     [In the late 19th century and early 20th century United States, chrome green often referred to either a mixture of Prussian blue with chrome yellow, which was known as Brunswick or royal green to English and Continental painters. Chrome green to European painters was the designation for chromium oxide green.]
Green Earth
Earth Colors
Umber
Ultramarine-artificial
Prussian Blue 


Thomas Cole wrote a letter to Durand asking for supplies for a sketching trip. In addition to copal varnish and oil, he asked for:
White(Lead)
Roman Ochre
     [Roman Ocher is a mixture of natural iron oxide pigments that has marigold tint and the strong and dark French ocher, J. F. L. E. S., and according to one author is made by 65 parts by weight of yellow ocher and two parts by weight of Italian burnt sienna mixed with 32 parts of poppyseed or nut oil.]
Lena Siena Raw and Burnt
Burnt Umber
Chrome Yellow
Naples Yellow
Antwerp Blue
     [A light shade of Prussian blue, or sometimes a mixture of Prussian blue that lacks the bronze cast and blanc fixe and sometimes further brightened with zinc white.]
Madder Lake
Vandyck Brown
Light Red
     [Light red refers to a red ocher or burnt yellow ocher similar to English red. It has been described as a red ocher with cool tints or undertones.]
Vermilion
Ultramarine

Dos Santos on Bouguereau

[...] This is Bouguereau's palette as best experts can tell from x-rays, chemical analysis, and notes.
Of course, some colors changed over the course of his career, but this is a good approximation of those he used most frequently.

Bouguereau's Palette:
• Naples Yellow (lead antimoniate)
• Yellow-Ochre
• Chrome Yellow, dark
• Viridian
• Cobalt Blue
• White Lead
• Light Vermilion
• Chinese Vermilion
• Mars Brown (iron oxide); this available from Lefranc & Bourgeois
• Van Dyck Brown
• Burnt Sienna
• Ivory Black
• Bitumen
• Genuine Rose Madder, dark

As for your chalkiness issue...
try thinking of white as a cool color.
Thus, you need to use it sparingly in the highlight.
try to favor more yellow, or at the very least surround the white with warm colors so it takes on their appearance.
The highlights in the face you mentioned are very similar to a color I use called Nickel Titanium Yellow Light by Rembrandt.
Try it.
I use it as a substitute for white in the warm areas so as to keep them warm.
Then if I need it, I bump it up to white.

* [Elwell: That Rembrandt color Dan mentioned is just zinc white with a touch of bismuth yellow (PW4, PY184). It's convenient, but you could mix your own with any white and high chroma yellow, like a cad or hansa lt. When people talk about using higher chroma pigments in the lights, that's exactly what they mean. The thing to remember is that it just takes a smidge to tint the white.]

Painters and their Palettes

Some painters were invited to describe their palettes and the way they organize them, as well as their preferences regarding brushes, paint brands and medium formulas...

Paul Cezanne

The colors on Cezanne's palette, according to Emile Bernard:

Yellows:

brilliant yellow

naples yellow

chrome yellow

yellow ochre

raw sienna

Reds:

Vermilion

red ochre

burnt sienna

rose madder

carmine lake

burnt lake

Greens:

emerald green

viridian

green earth

Blues:

cobalt blue

ultramarine

prussian blue

peach black

lead white



And many others...