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I’ve been thinking about paint transparency lately, and so I took a look at the tubes I have on hand, and a good percentage of them are transparent paints. ( I use mostly Winsor & Newton artists oil colours, and they have a little square graphic on the back that indicates the degree of transparency. )This high percentage of transparent paints somewhat surprised me, and I’m wondering how much people pay attention to this, especially beginners. I didn’t know about it when I first started, and I think this lack of knowledge led to confusion about certain things. I think there might be a tendency for beginners to think that paints should be more opaque then they really are. Without the knowledge that some paints are suppose to be transparent, beginners may dismiss certain paints as weak, or ineffective, due to their lack of covering power. I know I thought this way in the beginning, and was frustrated because some paints I was using didn’t cover the canvas like I wanted them to. Some of this was due in part to using student grade paints early on, but I suspect that it was mostly because I was unaware of the transparency factor. I still prefer using artist’s grade paints, but maybe some of those student grade paints I used in the past weren’t so bad after all.
"A bold failure is better than a timid semi-success." John Howard Sanden
Bill, thank you, I will give that a try!
I felt that when I used Titanium White or Soft Mixing White, colors lost some of the ‘glow’ I wanted them to have. Reading more, I found this on WN’s homepages:
[B]2. How do the whites in Artists’ Oil Colour differ?[/B]
[I]The nine whites in Artists’ Oil Colour ensure that artists have the widest possible array of choices, as in every other part of the spectrum. Because of its paler colour and lessened tendency toward yellowing, most of our whites are milled with Safflower oil. [/I]
[I]Safflower Whites [/I]
[I]The following whites are made with Safflower oil. [/I][I]Titanium White[/I]
[I]The most popular modern white. It is the whitest, most opaque white, softer than Flake White No. 1. [/I][I]*Flake White No. 1[/I]
[I]The traditional lead white in oil colour, Flake White is excellent for painting as a result of its flexibility, durability and speed of drying. The inclusion of zinc pigment improves its consistency. This is the stiffest white in the range. [/I][I]Flake White Hue [/I]
[I]A titanium based formulation which avoids the hazardous lead based Flake White No.1. It has a lower tinting strength than Titanium White to match [/I]
[I]Flake White and a similar drying rate to the original. [/I][I]Zinc White[/I]
[I]This is a less opaque white, making it ideal for tints and glazing. It also has the shortest consistency. [/I][I]Transparent White [/I]
[I]A titanium based white with extremely low tinting strength, providing the palest white glazes. [/I][I]*Cremnitz White[/I]
[I]Also made from Lead, the absence of zinc gives a stringy consistency. Some artists may prefer a pure lead colour in principle. [/I][I]Iridescent White[/I]
[I]A mica based pigment which makes a pearlescent white. It is effective mixed with transparent colours. [/I][I]*Lead white in tins: For reasons of toxicity these colours are only available in tins in the EU.[/I]
I want to try some of these to see if they give the result I am looking for. I may not know much about how to oil paint, but I do know what I like.
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