Home › Forums › Explore Media › Oil Painting › The Technical Forum › Genuine Naples yellow light
- This topic has 29 replies, 14 voices, and was last updated 6 years, 11 months ago by dingenskirchen.
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April 20, 2017 at 3:51 pm #995036
Hi,
I’d love to hear peoples experience with Genuine Naples yellow light. i’ve heard it almost has an inner glow. Its quite an expense so I was wondering if it is special, and unmixable?
I’m looking to use it for mixing skin tones. I usually use flake white (for its beautiful pearly quality) with yellow ochre and crimson. Would naples yellow add anything interesting to the mix, either it’s look or handling?
I only ask as it is quite an expense. I would however be prepared to pay if it offers something new and interesting. I’d love to know about your experiences with it.Thanks
April 20, 2017 at 4:38 pm #1268522I have not used it, but this one does not look so expensive:
April 20, 2017 at 4:42 pm #1268507I’m sure that my opinion on Naples Yellow will be met with much opposition by Naples Yellow enthusiasts, but here goes, anyway.:)
Personally, I find Naples Yellow to be one of the most unremarkable colors with which I’ve ever worked. I’ve always had a difficult time even trying to invent some actual use for it.
For the few occasions for which that specific “color” might be desired, it can easily be mixed from White, some Yellow, and a tad of some other color that would gray it down (dirty it up) a bit. Naples Yellow is basically a very light, slightly grayed Yellow, which is easy to duplicate with any number of combinations of paint colors.
I haven’t put Naples Yellow on my palette for perhaps 10 years, and I’ve not missed it. Once in awhile I will put some on my palette for the sole reason of using it up. In fact, this reply to you has inspired me to place some Naples Yellow on my palette, once again.:lol:
In terms of portraiture, I’ve found that Yellow Ochre, mixed with white to be a very useful color. Yellow Ochre, with Venetian Red (Terra Rosa), and a quantity of White creates a very nice skin color.
wfmartin. My Blog "Creative Realism"...
https://williamfmartin.blogspot.comApril 20, 2017 at 5:47 pm #1268524“Original” Naples Yellow is Lead Antimonate, an historical colour, pretty toxic. I’ve never used anything but a “Hue” of Naples Yellow, which was simply an easily copied mix of white and yellow and red oxides, as Mr. Martin has noted. I’m guessing it does not have a special glow, and was replaced because better and cheaper pigments replaced it…
Lead antimonate yellow has been made in various periods as early as the sixteenth to fourteenth century B.C.E. at Thebes. Lead antimonate yellow reached its highest popularity in European art between about 1750 and 1850 after which it was gradually replaced by chrome yellow (lead chromate) and later cadmium yellow (cadmium sulfide)
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April 20, 2017 at 6:07 pm #1268523I have used the French Pebeo Naples Yellow with excellent results. The label states that it is composed of:
PY74LF
PY42
PW6April 21, 2017 at 1:45 am #1268531Rublev has a line of lead paints. Orange, yellow, and red, as well as several whites.
hobbyist in oil.
April 21, 2017 at 1:51 am #1268530Naples Yellow Light Italian from Williamsburg (I like this one best)
Naples Yellow Reddish from Old Holland (I like this 2nd best)I have original Naples Yellow Light, my color sample seems dull and lifeless.
Angel
Website Makeover Coming! This is available now.
http://www.artist-bythesea.com/April 21, 2017 at 3:22 am #1268510The various Naples yellow colours are mixable from other pigments but I don’t myself because I desire those shades more often than say an unmixed cadmium yellow. I wouldn’t say it glows as such but I do like it sometimes for the glowing effects of nature. It’s not irreplaceable .
insert pithy comment here.
April 21, 2017 at 8:49 am #1268516I second W. F. Martin’s comment. It is easily mixed and seldom used. Remember the “KISS” . . . Keep It Simple, Stupid. I’m not calling you stupid. This is just a saying the highlights a good thought. The more simple your palette, the better, stronger and more harmonious your art, and the more you will learn about mixing color.
April 21, 2017 at 8:51 am #1268527This question may have been addressed before. Why is genuine Naples yellow (lead antimonate) a true yellow — the kind of yellow you might use to paint a banana or the Gorton’s fisherman or Curious George’s keeper’s hat — while all of the Naples Yellow hues are more beige-like?
Compare this…
https://www.naturalpigments.com/naples-yellow-lead-antimonate.html
…to, for example, this:
http://www.dickblick.com/items/00416-4143/%5B/URL%5D
The latter depicts the WN “Naples Yellow” which is really a hue whipped up from yellow ochre, titanium white, and some hansa. The Utrecht Naples Yellow is a complex concoction involving some Mars Orange and even a little PO43. The Grumbacher version…
http://www.dickblick.com/items/00448-4243/#colorswatch
…is an out-and-out brown made (in part) with burnt umber and even a little cad red.
Compare to the Michael Harding version of the genuine article, which is very bright, albeit somewhat paler than the Rublev…
http://www.dickblick.com/items/01597-4783/%5B/URL%5D
Seems to me that if paintmakers wanted to make an accurate Naples Yellow hue, they would simply mix a little white in with their Hansa yellow and call it a day.
So how did the beige-ificiation of Naples Yellow hue begin?
April 21, 2017 at 3:57 pm #1268511Winsor & Newton was one of the first companies (if not the first) to make a Naples Yellow hue, and their versions were more beige. One of the probable reasons their Naples was beige was because you can find beige versions of the genuine Naples (PY 41). Some varieties of the deep version are more ochre in tone, just like low-quality versions of Vermillion (PR 106) are almost identical to synthetic red iron oxides. Maybe some manufacturers don’t even know Naples Yellow is a genuine color, and that’s why they keep imitating the beige hue – and sometimes they go completely off and make a pinkish flesh tone instead!
By the way, a great hue for Naples Yellow is the duo Nickel Titanate (PY 53) and Chrome Titanate (PBr 24). Combined in different proportions, they are almost identical to genuine Naples – the only major difference is that they are a bit earthier, lacking the “inner glow” Naples has (inherent from it being a lead pigment). If you feel they are too earthy to your taste, then adding a bit of a primary yellow to the mix solves the problem.
April 22, 2017 at 1:30 am #1268517I haven’t any reason to buy ten times more expensive but dull yellow color. I can mix it without any troubles from my monopigment paints. A mixture of Gold ochre + Titanium White (with inner glow ) + Cadmium Orange is superb quality in color and lightfastness. 3-4 seconds needs to make this color from proper ingredients. If you like “Naples yellow light”, try Cadmium yellow instead of Cadmium orange in this mix.
One of the best ready-made imitation I have is made from PR108 + PY35 + PW6.
I have no reason to buy any exotic pigments to mix this color.
Artist must MIX COLOR, NOT PIGMENT!April 22, 2017 at 4:42 am #1268533For all those folk who say Naples Yellow can be copied forget it. Your having a laugh. PY41 is unique.
Michael Harding makes a good one and agrees with me.
Lead Antimoniate, in genuine versions, appears to have been used as a pigment since the 5th century B.C. and has been manufactured since the 1400’s. Being one of the most relied-upon colours and in constant demand. I am now one of a few artists colourman left making the genuine article, as opposed to the modern alternate. I continue to do so because its vivid, dense, almost primrose yellow cannot be mimicked, as portraitists and figure painters will attest. It is more powerful and yet more muted than its equivalents among the Cadmium range. Its handling characteristics are incomparable. Because it tends to react when parsed with steel rollers, to this day I still grind it with stone. Just incredible one of our best sellers.
Just because you ‘dont like it’ or ‘cant afford’ it is not a good enough reason to rubbish it. Move on.
April 22, 2017 at 7:41 am #1268509“Just incredible one of our best sellers.”
Who is this?April 22, 2017 at 7:59 am #1268528An interesting conundrum. I can’t find anyone other than Michael Harding who makes Naples Yellow in the UK. (The “colourman” in question is obviously British.)
With all due respect to Gigalot, we mix “color, not pigment” only when we turn to the realm of digital art. Personally, I would love to have some genuine NY, but for now my days of collecting rare and expensive tubes must cease.
Added note: Does Roberson’s Oil Colour make genuine Naples Yellow?
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