Yes, excellent advice. Each tube of paint you have has its own tinting strength, both much stronger than Cerulean, I think.

I would add that my approach would be the following:

Lay out a daub of your Prussian Blue, and tint it with white in a series:

10X Prussian to 1X White…. so, adding one tenth as much white.

From your pile, take a wee bit and paint out a sample swatch (1×1 inch).

10X Prussian to 2 x White… however much white you added in the previous step, say “one drop” add the same amount again, another “drop”.

Again, take a wee bit and paint out a sample swatch beside the first swatch.

To the mix pile, add TWO “drops” of white. Mix, and take a wee bit and paint out your sample swatch beside the first two.

To the mix pile, add FOUR “drops” of white. Mix, and take a wee bit and paint out your sample swatch beside the first two.

and so on… the logic being each swatch has double the white content of the previous swatch. Do this until the swatch sample series is a very pale blue.

For the Phthalo Blue, it is a VERY powerful paint, and will easily tint the white, so I would recommend starting with a white pile of paint. To this add a pencil dot of phthalo blue. Mix it up and see how that looks. Paint out a sample swatch.

Add another pencil dot… mix, paint swatch.
Next, add two pencil dots worth of Phthalo blue, mix, paint out swatch.

And so on…. doubling the amount of Phthalo Blue each time.

Now, I would assess my swatches about how they look to you. Do they look too reddish? You can try with the remainder of the two mix piles to do the following:

To the mix pile, add just a pencil dot of Phthalo green… assuming there is still a blob of paint in the mix pile – the Phthalo Green would be about 1/50th or less to start. Mix, paint a swatch, assess a comparison. Adjust as you would wish.

You will be developing excellent mixing skills, learning about the paints, “seeing” what is really going on, and be able to assess how your mixes look in comparison to Mr. Ross’s skies.

Believe me when I say there isn’t a fixed answer – each of the three blues in question have different look and more importantly, different handling characteristics. So, tinting with white, and possible adjusting with Phthalo Green if you like it, should be the path to a solution. And, you will be developing your painterly skills.

Good Luck!

Cheers

…. yes, as Patrick posts, adjusting your mixes – if too colourful – as he recommends…

One factor that must be addressed when mixing your “own version” of ANY color is that of the possible overtone of that mixed version, compared to the real thing.

An overtone of any color is the hue to which the color shifts when White is added to it. For example, A tubed, Cadmium Orange becomes Redder, when white it mixed into it. (In other words, it becomes “Pink”, instead of “Light Orange”.) This hue shift is called an overtone. The overtone of a hand-mixed Orange usually exhibits a decided Yellow shift, by comparison. While the two may appear exactly the same color when freshly mixed, they may behave vastly differently when white is mixed with them. This effect may also bias your color in which that mixed color is used as an “ingredient color” with other colors, just as it creates a hue bias when White is mixed with it.

So, be aware that there actually may be a difference in the “mixing characteristics” of your mixed version of Cerulean Blue compared to the real Cerulean Blue.

Whether or not there will be a noticeable overtone hue shift of your mix can only be determined after you have mixed it, and have compared the shift with a real, Cerulean Blue, after having mixed white with each of them.

Most paint makers use phthalos, maybe another cobalt or ultra, and white to mix their cerulean blue hue.
My Charvin cerulean blue hue is beautiful and it is phthalo, cobalt, white.

By now, you may have already taken the advice of others who have replied above me in this thread.

If not, I would suggest that you try mixing a small amount of phthalo blue with titanium white. Phthalo blues are strongly pigmented, so you will need only a little bit. If you can match cerulaean blue with phthalo blue, then fine! Otherwise, you will just have to try your other colors.

The pigment known as phthalo blue actually comes in several chemical variants, which result in somewhat different hues. The phthalo blue that is most commonly used is phthalo blue (green shade) – sometimes just phthalo blue (gs) – and this is the variant that will produce a cerulean-like color when mixed with white.

A titanium white and Prussian blue (or phthalo blue) mix will yield mixing properties completely unlike cerulean blue, even if you do get a dead ringer for the color out of the tube.

Absolutely true. If you are going to use this color more than just a few times, it is absolutely recommended that you obtain the real thing.

IMHO Whether you need Cerulean or not depends on how you’re gonna use it. I think everybody has a point about the hazzards of using alternative pigments in color mixes. If the mix requires Cerulean, there may be a reason. Once you get more familiar with characteristics of various pigments, you will be in a better position to decide if an alternative one will work in a particular mix.

However if you are using it as a nice sky, ocean or some other greenish blue subject color, the difference between Cerulean and an alternative, may not matter.

As far as cost goes, I find that using single pigments like Cerulean save me money in the long run. I get warm and cool versions of the three primaries; red, yellow and blue. It’s called a Split Primary Palette. Put the term in this forum’s search box or on google to find out more about it.

Cerulean is my cool blue and Ultramarine is my warm one. Since I can get just about any blue I want out of those two, I don’t have to buy a bunch of additional paint if I don’t want or can’t afford to. So when I add up the cost of the 6 (w/white 7), it ends up being less than buying 10-20 more tubes of less expensive paint.

So that’s my 2 cents. Happy painting 🎨

-wendy

so the first one is my own mix of phthalo and titanium white, it is the most saturated blue color there, then WN Artisan Cerulean Blue Hue, which is a quasi , dull substitute for real cerulean, then an old Perm Pigment genuine Cerulean, then Charvin Cerulean Hue, then Blue Ridge genuine Cerulean.