tints with Zinc White vs. Titanium White

[Patrick1]

You always hear that Zinc White is cooler, or makes cooler (bluer) tints, than Titanium White. So I played around and lightened a few colors with my Titanium White (Grumbacher Academy acrylic, PW6) and Zinc White (Amsterdam Standard acrylic, PW7) for side-by-side comparison.

I found the tints with Zinc White were no cooler than with Titanium White. If anything, tints of Ivory Black, Burnt Sienna, and Cadmium Red Light looked slightly 'warmer' with Zinc (note that some color subtlety is lost in the scan). In the others I can't see much difference. It's only fair to compare areas of the exact same value...which wasn't easy to achieve for a couple of reasons. So this is not meant to be a definitive test.

I'm wondering if anyone else has done side-by-side tint comparisons of Zinc vs. Titanium White, or even other whites. Since Amsterdam uses the PW7 form of Zinc White, I wonder if PW4 would give cooler tints. It's too early to call this one 'Myth Busted' yet.

[Gigalot]

They used Zinc Sulphide ZnS pigment instead of alkaline sensitive Zinc Oxide with the name "Zinc White"? Surprise! And I'm puzzled how can they added Zinc oxide in alkaline medium
Real paint name must be "Zinc sulphide white"

However, Zinc Sulphide PW7 pigment is warm white since it was invented.

[Patrick1]

Looking at the paint itself right out of the tube, my PW7 is less bright than my Titanium White. But in terms of hue, I don't see any difference...no easily discernable hue. Is PW7 supposed to look a bit 'warm' or yellowish out of the tube?

Is PW4 the 'standard' Zinc White?

I'm still hoping someone else has done some tint comparison tests between PW7 or PW 4 and Titanium White. I would like to see for myself if it's really worth it (as some claim) to have Zinc for tints and mixing, and whether or not it's true that tints with Zinc are less 'chalky'.

[Gigalot]

I guess, there are no any logical reason to use Zinc White in acrylic because acrylic binder is much more transparent than oil and thus Titanium white must be the best in acrylic.

Modern methods of titanium oxide treatment can obtain 97% of light reflection. Much more than good Flake White.

To get the right tone in the oil it must be taken 10 times less titanium than zinc. It's not always convenient.

If you wash the titanium white oil paint from surface with a thinner, white color still remains.

[yellow_oxide]

I made this just now with oil paint, photographed in late afternoon outdoor sunlight. The image should be mostly self explanatory. As the image says, I mixed each row to be about the same amount of lightness/darkness, and it did take far more of the zinc white to get the same result. Unfortunately I don't have both titanium and zinc whites from the same brand, and so I can't rule out brand being a factor here.

I averaged the color samples in Photoshop over a 31x31px area of each swatch and showed the results in Lab color space.

As you can see, the "cooling" effect of zinc white was extremely minimal, being only really noticeable in the middle and dark values of grey. I chose the charcoal black for that one because I personally find it to be a very close to neutral black, so I thought if anything would show a slight blue shift then that would be it.

The blue showed almost no difference between the two in the photo, although in real life I can see a slight difference with the lighter value being a little duller on the titanium side.

The red was easily the biggest difference, with the lighter value being very noticeably duller on the titanium side. It's interesting that the green/red results had almost no difference, but blue/yellow is where the big difference was.

[Gigalot]

I am very interested to see these color samples after the paint dries. Many people think that zinc greatly alter it`s density.

Unfortunately, I have`t PW7 in my paint collection. Only Schmincke use it in oil and this brand is not available here But interesting to try it Patrick! The only thing I know about Zinc sulphide white PW7 is that it can`t make a brittle film and also is safe to mix with Prussian blue and some other colors.

Industrial and housepaint zinc white pigments today were totally replaced with more economy and stable titanium white.

[Patrick1]

Originally Posted by yellow_oxide

As you can see, the "cooling" effect of zinc white was extremely minimal, being only really noticeable in the middle and dark values of grey. I chose the charcoal black for that one because I personally find it to be a very close to neutral black, so I thought if anything would show a slight blue shift then that would be it.

The blue showed almost no difference between the two in the photo, although in real life I can see a slight difference with the lighter value being a little duller on the titanium side.

The red was easily the biggest difference, with the lighter value being very noticeably duller on the titanium side. It's interesting that the green/red results had almost no difference, but blue/yellow is where the big difference was.

Thanks for taking the time to do your samples...and much more carefully and methodically than mine Good job on value-matching.

I too see your Charcoal Black to be very slightly 'cooler' with zinc...but so slight as to be insignificant in practice IMO. I have a hard time seeing difference with Ultramarine Blue. But with Cadmium Vermilion/Red, tints with Zinc are slightly but noticeably 'warmer' (more yellowish) and more saturated (less greyed). Your results are quite similar to what I got with PW7.

I think it's still too early to come to conclusions yet (especially since so few colors have been tested), but we're starting to see where the chips are falling. I hope others can post any mixing test results of Zinc White vs. Titanium White tints, especially with other colors...the more datapoints the better.

[yellow_oxide]

I took this photo in about the same lighting at the same time of day as the previous one. I thought there'd be a difference in the greens or yellow, but they're almost 100% exactly the same. I got most rows to be nearly the same value, except the last couple on blue. The reason I used 11x11 samples for some of the swatches this time is that there were some small ridges of paint across a few samples that might throw off the sample a little and I wanted a smaller sample size to get a completely smooth patch of paint.

The conclusion that I'm coming to includes three things-

• The idea that zinc white "cools" colors in mixes doesn't seem to be true, at least not with the one zinc white that I have.

• The idea that titanium white produces "chalky" tints also seems to be false, given that most of these tints from this round and the previous one are nearly the exact same whether it was made with titanium or zinc. Maybe the people who say it's chalky are comparing it to a lead white, but I don't use that and so can't do a proper comparison with it.

• Either of the above conclusions may have specific exceptions, and those alone may be the origin of these ideas. The lightest cadmium vermilion tint was much duller with the titanium than zinc, and the charcoal black showed a very slight bluishness with zinc.

Of course, as I mentioned before brand might play a role here, and I don't have both titanium and zinc whites from the same brand. My camera itself and the lighting may also play a role as well.

[Patrick1]

I did some more tints with my Amsterdam acrylic Zinc White (PW7) and Grumbacher Academy acrylic Titanium White (PW6). These are both considered to be student-grade acrylics, but it's what I have to work with at the moment. Since PW7 seems to be the much less commonly-used (?) form of Zinc White, I think this will be it for my tint tests...I don't see much need in spending more time on a pigment that few people use. If I had PW4 instead, that might be another story. Note that my pics/scans generally don't show color nuances as well as seeing it 'in the flesh'. So here's a summary of the results of all 12 of my tests...the original ones from a few days ago plus today's new ones:

Ivory Black: Zinc is slightly less 'cool' (more neutral)
Burnt Sienna: Zinc is slightly more saturated and orangy
Cadmium Red Light: Zinc seems slightly more saturated and orangy
Quinacridone Violet PV19: don't see much difference
Ultramarine Blue: don't see much difference
Carbon Black: Zinc is slightly less 'cool' (more neutral)
Phthalo Green (Blue Shade) : Zinc is slightly more yellowish in hue
Cadmium Yellow Light: Zinc is slightly less saturated, doesn't quite have the flourescent glow as with PW6
Cerulean Blue PB36:1 : don't see much difference
Dioxazine Violet: Zinc is slightly more reddish and perhaps a bit more saturated
Raw Umber: Zinc is noticably more orangish
Yellow Ochre: Zinc is a tiny bit more saturated

The larger color differences are slight but easily noticeable in real-life side-by-side comparison under daylight. Yet in the grand scheme of things, the differences are still usually small enough that I don't see much benefit in choosing one white over the other based solely on how they tint...the difference is usually small, if at all. But the huge difference in opacity and tinting strength would be a good reason to choose one over the other. Speaking of opacity, I would like to see how different the results would be if the swatches were not just painted over white, but also over a dark color (could include a wide black stripe underneath each swatch). I think Zinc tints would incur a large loss of saturation & chroma anywhere it is unable to completely cover the dark color underneath. And isn't it ironic that (my) Zinc White doesn't tint 'cooler' than Titanium White does? If anything, it tints warmer!

[Mike1947]

I'm so glad that some have the patience to do this. I don't! I really appreciate the information -- thank you all very much!!

Mike

[Gigalot]

PW7 tints looks better for me than PW6!

[Patrick1]

Originally Posted by Gigalot

PW7 tints looks better for me than PW6!

I agree! Although the color differences are usually small, if at all (and perhaps insignificant in the final result), I find the ever-so-slightly 'warmer' hues of some PW7 tints to simply be more visually pleasant. Perhaps this is the grain of truth behind the 'less chalky' assertion?

Since the subtle nuances didn't show up well in my scan, I encourage others to do mixing swatches to see for yourself if the tiny difference is worth using PW7 or PW4. But not 'in place of' Titanium White, but rather 'in addition to'. Because Zinc (at least the acrylic one I tried) is so incredibly transparent, you can't use it in place of Titanium. And this is not even taking into account that it's slightly but noticeably less bright. The only use I can think for it would be glazing, or to use much like a blending medium.

[timelady]

Speaking of opacity, I would like to see how different the results would be if the swatches were not just painted over white, but also over a dark color (could include a wide black stripe underneath each swatch). I think Zinc tints would incur a large loss of saturation & chroma anywhere it is unable to completely cover the dark color underneath.

This is entirely how I paint, and almost exclusively with zinc white. Yes, you lose saturation just as you would laying any transparent colour or mixture over another colour - there will be a visual mixing then. I always paint dark (or bright) to light.

To Gigalot: Not sure why zinc would be pointless in acrylic - I use acrylics (Golden's zinc white, I'm not at studio so not sure which pigment they use). The purpose of white is to lighten, but some of us glaze and scumble with very transparent layers of white mixtures. Titanium white is so opaque as to make this difficult the way I paint in acrylics - I did use it for years! Then a fellow WCer (Einion) finally persuaded me to the benefits of zinc, given my technique of overlaying a zillion transparent layers to build up a colour field, so I tried it. Oil or acrylic, it's much more about the opacity of the paint and less about the binder. In fact if anything, I'd argue that zinc is less necessary in oil because you can move paint around for so long with very thin layers that you can spread and scumble to achieve a transparency even with titanium in a way that's very difficult to do in acrylics due to drying time. (I did train and work in oils for some time before switching to acrylics, still dabble with it.)

Purely anecdotal: Working with zinc 99% of the time I actually see more of a cool shift with Titanium, but really it's negligible in my experience. I see effects very much like Patrick's last swatches!

Tina.

[ItsaWonder]

If you go to dailypaintworks.com and click on the tutorials tab at the top, you can find a free tutorial by Brian Burt called "My Studio Materials." Some of the tutorials on Daily Paintworks have a charge, but this one is free. He has a page of the tutorial devoted to the different properties of four different whites. The discussion includes a short video in which he demos how four different whites affect color and paint properties. The four whites are titanium-white, zinc white, titanium-zinc white, and cremnitz white. Very helpful demo and info. Again, free, but you do need to register at the site.

Seeing this tutorial awhile ago made me wonder if there is a titanium-zinc (TZ) white. I wasn't able to find one. I didn't know until reading this thread that Golden has a zinc white. Now I'll be able to experiment with mixes of titanium and zinc, so I thank you. Unless anyone knows of a ready-made acrylic TZ white.....??

Thanks!

[Yellow Ogre]

Originally Posted by ItsaWonder

If you go to dailypaintworks.com and click on the tutorials tab at the top, you can find a free tutorial by Brian Burt called "My Studio Materials." Some of the tutorials on Daily Paintworks have a charge, but this one is free. He has a page of the tutorial devoted to the different properties of four different whites. The discussion includes a short video in which he demos how four different whites affect color and paint properties. The four whites are titanium-white, zinc white, titanium-zinc white, and cremnitz white. Very helpful demo and info. Again, free, but you do need to register at the site.

Seeing this tutorial awhile ago made me wonder if there is a titanium-zinc (TZ) white. I wasn't able to find one. I didn't know until reading this thread that Golden has a zinc white. Now I'll be able to experiment with mixes of titanium and zinc, so I thank you. Unless anyone knows of a ready-made acrylic TZ white.....??

Thanks!

For acrylic "Warm" White and "Mixing White" (several manufacturers) are usually TZ mixes. Sorry I am not where I can put my hands on my paints right now (9000 KM away) and tell you brand names, but I think Galeria, Golden and Sennelier all offer this.

There is also another white option for acrylics - liquid gesso! I use this often and sometimes I get a slightly different tint then with the other whites for some pigments. I posted on this several months back)