{"id":151,"date":"2018-07-01T10:58:00","date_gmt":"2018-07-01T09:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/?p=151"},"modified":"2022-01-29T11:00:15","modified_gmt":"2022-01-29T11:00:15","slug":"concerning-colour-and-pigments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/2018\/07\/01\/concerning-colour-and-pigments\/","title":{"rendered":"Concerning Colour and Pigments"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I generally pride myself in working with a very limited palette of only six colours, but there are the odd few occasions when I need to expand on that collection. One example of this is when it comes to painting bluebells; the combination of colours that I have found works best for me is Cobalt Blue and Cobalt Violet (neither of which are part of my core six).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagine my surprise then, when, on a recent workshop, I found myself experimenting with a few different combinations in order to come up with a colour for heather moorland. What happened that surprised me so, was that I mixed Permanent Rose and Intense Violet together, and made… Alizarin Crimson (one of my limited palette colours). It surprised me because I’ve always thought of Alizarin Crimson as a relatively unique colour. In a similar vein, I was quite surprised to discover that Paynes Grey is mixed from Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colour mixing is something that fascinates and frustrates me in equal measure. I get frustrated with what should be the same colour, varying so much between manufacturers; should there not be a British Standard kitemark guarantee for such things? One would think it is either that colour, or it isn’t… and don’t get me started on manufacturers who (allegedly) add stuff to Ultramarine in order to reduce its granulation – might that be so that they can then sell you a bottle of ‘Granulating Medium’?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My curiosity is further piqued by the thought that there must be a minimum set of pigments that enable the artist to create the widest possible range of colours…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in the day, artists obtained their own raw pigments and binder and made their own paints; a pigment grinding mill would be as normal a piece of equipment in an artist’s studio as an easel, for example. These days, pigments and binding agents can be purchased online, and as far as I can tell, it is possible to make up huge amounts of colour at a very competitive cost. Unfortunately, the downside is that you need lots of time to practice and perfect the art of pigment mixing in order to arrive at the colours you need with any degree of precision; time that most artists would prefer to spend putting paint to paper and creating fresh new artworks. I would never suggest, therefore, that it is even remotely practical for us all to revert back to being DIY paint manufacturers en masse, but I can’t help wondering how many artists are out there who do just that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I generally pride myself in working with a very limited palette of only six colours, but there are the odd few occasions when I need to expand on that collection. One example of this is when it comes to painting bluebells; the combination of colours that I have found works best for me is Cobalt Blue and Cobalt Violet (neither...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":152,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colours","category-watercolour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":153,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions\/153"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}