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  • #989625

    When you select paint, how conerend are you whether a tube of paint contains a single pigment, or a “mix” (not necessarily a “hue”) of several pigments?

    Just curious…

    Forcing the waveform to collapse for two decades...
    http://www.syntheticskystudios.com
    Hilliard Gallery, Kansas City, "Small Works", December 2019

    #1161010
    mame
    Default

        I’m confused Keith. What’s a good example – like a Violet or a chromium oxide green sold pre-mixed in a tube?
        I never paint “straight out of the tube” but mix everything, – whether it’s a violet or a green or an orange or any shade of any color I buy in the tube including black. The only color I don’t mix is cad red when I want Red-red.

        #1161157
        lovin art
        Default

            mostly I dont use hues in my mixing of paints in general ….nasty stuff …lol oh I better duck for cover now …..

            did someone mention Violet ~Love those types of colors and single colors are hot as in Great ..!!

            #1161181
            Trond
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                I mostly buy one-pigment colors, but no it’s not terribly important to me. If a mix looks like just the color I would like, then so be it.

                #1161122
                frazzled
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                    I prefer single pigment colors. All of my staple palette colors are single pigment with one exception – Old Holland Bright Violet (PV19+PV23).

                    'The written word is a powerful medium, dare I say, rivaling that of the Visual Arts; though, I will not say that, as I am making absolute magic in that realm, and the visual component, when done right – is the more effective weapon' - frazzled

                    'Creating art feels like jumping off a cliff; you're plummeting to a sure death at first - full of terror and anxiety.... until things begin to take form.. and a parachute of wonder opens up, allowing you to glide into something grand' - frazzled

                    #1161190
                    mariposa-art
                    Default

                        If I’m trying to decide between two different tubes of color and one is single pigment, and the other has a lot of different pigments in there (and all other things are equal, like lightfastness, etc) then yes, I’ll choose the single pigment. I try to avoid “hues,” except when the original (like Alizarin Crimson) has downsides (like being fugitive). But I don’t get too freaked out by the thought of mixtures and yes, I do have some convenience mixes as well.

                        #1161158
                        lovin art
                        Default

                            IMO, they call them ‘convenience’ mixtures for a reason. The whole
                            ‘but you could mix it yourself’ logic doesn’t appeal to me, as [B]I COULD
                            mix the paint myself too, but would rather not.[/B]

                            Im just curious to wonder why you would think that ? :D as mixing from single colors from scratch teaches us to understand color better and how it behaves ..

                            #1161199
                            Carcharhinus
                            Default

                                I’m a rank amateur but every colour I use regularly has a single pigment except my white which I believe is a zinc-titanium blend.

                                I have a MH Sap Green which I’m not sure about (But I don’t use), but I can’t imagine that it would bother me if I found a colour I liked that blended well. I do try to keep the minimum amount of colours on my palette though. I’m in the middle of a painting that only uses White, Yellow Ochre, Venetian Red, Raw Sienna and Ultramarine.

                                #1161011
                                WFMartin
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                                    Color is color is color. If it works, and is convenient, it makes little difference to me how many pigments are represented in it. The true evaluation is what sort of COLOR is represented by it.

                                    Multi-pigment tubes of paint are convenience colors, and are quite useful for most practical purposes.

                                    At present, I’m trying out a palette of portrait colors composed of the most whackiest colors I’ve ever seen, each of which is a combination of at least two other pigments. Gamblin’s Gold Ochre, Asphaltum, and, of all things….
                                    Brown Pink.

                                    These are proving to be quite useful for portraiture, and they are quite controllable, in terms of mixing.

                                    I usually shop for my colors in terms of their use to me for creating those final, target colors I wish to have incorporated in my painting. I truly could not care any less about how many pigments each paint color contains. For one thing, they get all “smooshed around” with other pigments on my palette, anyway, so logically, what’s the real difference in the long run? Once one understands the the importance of being able to estimate the relative contribution by each tubed color of paint of the only primary colors in the world, Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow, the choice becomes extremely simple. For me, it’s primarily about the ratio of the color primaries being contributed by a tube of paint, rather than the number of pigments.

                                    I tend to be a result-oriented painter, being more concerned with the appearance of my final painting, rather than the colors of paint that were required to get it that way.

                                    wfmartin. My Blog "Creative Realism"...
                                    https://williamfmartin.blogspot.com

                                    #1161004

                                    I’m confused Keith. What’s a good example – like a Violet or a chromium oxide green sold pre-mixed in a tube?
                                    I never paint “straight out of the tube” but mix everything, – whether it’s a violet or a green or an orange or any shade of any color I buy in the tube including black. The only color I don’t mix is cad red when I want Red-red.


                                    Sorry for the confusion. I don’t paint “straight out of the tube”, either–and that’s why I hate to read on the back of a tube of paint that what’s inside isn’t a single pigment (like PR101, for exampe) but a mixture of (say) PR101, and PBr7. Or, worse, that it’s (as Art Spectrum’s Brown Pink is) a mixture of PR101, PY42, PBr7, and PBk7!

                                    Williamsburg recently altered their forumula for Bohemian Green Earth. Instead of being a single-pigment colour, it is now made from at least two pigments. (I bought the last of the PG23-only BGE from the local art-supply store…)

                                    Because I mix colours regularly, I don’t want to think I’m mixing three colours together, only to discover that each of those three colours is also mixed from two, three, four–or even five–other pigments.

                                    That’s a recipe for some seriously confusing mud!

                                    Forcing the waveform to collapse for two decades...
                                    http://www.syntheticskystudios.com
                                    Hilliard Gallery, Kansas City, "Small Works", December 2019

                                    #1161090
                                    Anonymous

                                        Premixed paints are often called convenience colors, of which I heartily agree, there are a number that I don’t want to have to mix up myself time and again. Some of them are Utrecht permanent green and Rembrandt permanent red, titanium/zinc white, Gamblin permanent aliz crimson, etc. No doubt about it, they are pretty darn convenient.
                                        Hey wait a minute, maybe we should start calling single pigment colors inconvenient colors! :D

                                        #1161012
                                        WFMartin
                                        Default

                                            Hey wait a minute, maybe we should start calling single pigment colors inconvenient colors!

                                            Well……sometimes that’s almost what they are, merely because they require so doggone much mixing. Using the true primaries of color require the absolute most amount of mixing of any palette of colors you could employ. Certainly nothing wrong with doing that, but why bother?

                                            Better to gain the ability to closely estimate the contribution of each of the primary colors by each tubed paint, and then use those paints whose ratios of contribution most closely represents the colors that you want to employ as what I call “ingredient colors” for your mix. The convenience colors are mighty handy for that use.;)

                                            wfmartin. My Blog "Creative Realism"...
                                            https://williamfmartin.blogspot.com

                                            #1161089
                                            Lana537
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                                                I buy/use only single pigment paint. Strictly speaking, some of my whites are two pigments.

                                                Lana

                                                #1161022
                                                Ribera
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                                                    Most colors which are a combination of pig-
                                                    ments (“convenience colors”) are phonies;
                                                    i.e. they might, in fact, work in themselves
                                                    for some applications, but they’re not the
                                                    real thing: An example, if a producer
                                                    makes a rose madder as well as an ultra-
                                                    marine blue, both finely made in them-
                                                    selves, they can then produce a paint lab-
                                                    eled “Dioxazine Violet,” combining the two
                                                    (or even more colors), however, real dioxa-
                                                    zine violet’s PV23, not that combination,
                                                    so the paintmaker essentially does it to
                                                    sell paint and save dough with less ex-
                                                    pensive pigment they already have.
                                                    4/27/12, Quote from Alexandria:
                                                    mixing from single colors from scratch
                                                    teaches us to understand color better

                                                    While this concept’s clear if ya meant
                                                    matching colors on a chart, instead
                                                    you’re actually painting with this paint,
                                                    which means you’re concerned with the
                                                    real paint’s opacity/transparency, etc., so
                                                    this idea of what a great exercise it is in
                                                    practice, is actually an impediment to
                                                    effective painting.
                                                    r

                                                    #1161023
                                                    Ribera
                                                    Default

                                                        4/27/12, Quote from Lana:
                                                        I buy/use only single pigment paint. Strict-
                                                        ly speaking, some of my whites are two
                                                        pigments.

                                                        I believe real flake white is, in fact, lead
                                                        (PW1) with just a touch of zinc oxide
                                                        (PW4); elsewise, pure lead should be
                                                        “Cremnitz White.”
                                                        I think that small addition of zinc actually
                                                        improves flake white (lead and zinc are
                                                        the proper ingredients of a flake white, so
                                                        that’s not a convenience mixture)
                                                        r

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