Color Notes - French Ultramarine Blue

I catagorize French Ultramarine Blue as an Almost Transparent color.  It can make wonderful glazes when oily enough or can cover in an opaque manner straight from the tube if not so oily.  I relied heavily on this color in my early years of portrait painting for cooling colors in the shadows of the face and I would place a pure dot of it into the iris of the eye instead of using black, which would go flat and lifeless in the eye.  I have now added Phthalo Green (WHO COMES UP WITH THESE NAMES?) to my color box and use it almost exclusively for portrait work in place of French Ultramarine Blue.  (But not in the eye!)  Thank you to Portrait Artist Edward Reed (Ted) for showing me this wonderful green.
Back to Blue now.....French Ultramarine Blue is a must have for landscape painting.  An infinite number of greens can be made with it and no northern plains sky would be complete without it.  Remember I said that mixing Cadmium Red with Blue would not produce a good purple....well it will make a great muddy purple or lavendar if mixed with French Ultramarine Blue and this color mix would look just fine in a landscape painting, especially a nocturnal scene.   NOW, LETS GO PAINT!

Color Notes - Indian Yellow

Again, a transparent color.  I had never used Indian Yellow until I took a portrait class at the Art League school a few years back.  To mix flesh tones, I had always used Cadmium Yellow and white with a touch of red.  The results were just ok.  I then learned to take a touch of Indian Yellow and mix it with white, place this on the canvas and then to come back and use a bit of Permanent Rose mixed into white, and lay that color on the canvas next to the yellow mix.  Blend gently and WOW, the flesh dances and is not muddied. 
FACT OR MYTH.  I don't recall where I heard this or who told me, but I am sure you have heard this same thing.  Indian Yellow is made from the urine of cows in India....thus the name Indian Yellow.  Then a year or so ago, I read that this could not be proven by a colorist researching colors for a book.  Can anyone out there definitely prove or disprove this bit of Myth?  Send me info if you have it.

Color Notes - Transparent Underpainting Today

I am at the Leesburg studio today.  Spent yesterday getting some pet portraits ready for clients who intend them as gifts for Christmas.  After a full day of concentrating on getting a likeness and doing fine details, I felt I needed a day just to play with color.  So today I have set up two gessoed panels side by side and started a dyptic of an autumn scene.  The photo reference is one I took down at Natural Bridge.  Since I have been extolling the virtues of transparent colors, I did an underpainting on each panel using the transparent colors, Alizarin Crimson, Sap Green, and Indian Yellow.  Unfortunately, I could not accomplish a reasonable sky without using some white and French Ultramarine Blue.  I will photograph this underpainting when I return to this studio, since (as usual) I forgot the *^%+#@  camera. 

Alizarin Crimson

Another of my favorite transparent colors, is Alizarin Crimson.  When learning about colors, color temperature is an important property to understand about each color.  Cool or Hot?  Alizarin is a cool red.  It is what we refer to as a bluish red.  Actually, I think of it as a purple.  Unlike Cadmium Red, which is a hot red, you can mix Alizarin with blues for some mighty beautiful purple results.  Add a touch of white and you make pinks.  Alizarin makes some very good glazes and can tone (grey) down greens.  Yellow Ochre with some Alizarin and a touch of white will give you some good warm flesh color.   Play around with this color, you will grow to love it as much as I do.......OH and it is also a fugitive color.

Color Notes - Sap Green

Most academic color discussions will start with the primary colors, red, blue, and yellow.   Aha!  I am no scholar and what I know about color, came from sitting down and getting dirty.  I want to talk about Sap Green today, because it is the one color that I would choose to have with me if I were stranded on a desert island. 
No colors give me more trouble than the greens.  I simply don't have an eye for green.  I have no trouble when using reds or yellows, but greens never look natural in my works, no matter how hard I try.  When I see plein air paintings by some of my contemporaries, I always marvel at how realistic or natural their greens are. ( MENTAL NOTE.....I will conquer green this year.)
OK, Sap Green.  This green is usually nice and juicy,straight from the tube  It is a transparent  color and makes wonderful glazes.  It is one of the few greens that I find looks natural straight from the tube.  Now, mix a little Indian Yellow to it and you have a super natural looking green.  I have started using this green in most of all my green mixes.  Now, take some Alizarin Crimson (another transparent color) and add that to Sap Green and you will have a wonderful rich brown to put into your landscapes. If you have a bright red and need to reduce it's intensity, just add a bit of Sap Green to grey it down.  The downside to Sap Green is that it is a fugitive color, or so I am told by the scholars.  I doubt I will live long enough to prove or disprove this, so I still want my Sap Green.

Brand Name Snobbery

The very first thing I tell students taking my beginners class is, "Buy one brand and stick to it until you know what you are doing."  I explain to them that each manufacturer has different formulas for their colors.  So a Cadmium Red for one brand will be very different from another brand.  In the early days, I once started a landscape sky with Grumbacher's cerulean blue, but ran short of it and had to run out and purchase more.  OOOPS, no Grumbacher available, so I purcased some Brand X cerulean blue and home I went.  Those two blues were nothing alike, even though they had the same name and there was no way they were gonna match up.  Guess who had to repaint that entire sky?
As for workability, one was nice and oily and the other so dry and stiff, I wanted to make pottery with it. 
Now I am no snob  when it comes to buying art supplies, but I do have definite likes and dislikes.  I won't give anyone an endorsement in this blog, since they aren't paying me for an endorsement, but if you would like to know my favorites list, send me an e-mail and I will be happy to give you my list of faves.......also, the brands I won't touch.
OK, GO PAINT ALREADY!

Color Notes

I think that you are ready for some posts that are more art related, rather than personal.  OK!  In my next few blog posts, I will give you some observations I have about oil colors and how I use them.  I am by no stretch of the imagination, an expert, but I do have some basic knowledge I would like to pass on for you beginners out there.
Lets start with my latest color discovery.....Sepia.  I heard about this color at the Illustration Master Class that I attended the last two years.  It was on our supply list, so I bought it.  Never used it at the class, but when I returned home, I played around with it.  WOW!, a great color for painting the ocean.  I recently did a stormy sea with a huge wave rising.  I used Titanium White, Sepia and Cerulean Blue.  Blending and mixing various amounts gave me a wide range of color for the ocean and wave.  I even took a bit of Cadmium Scarlet and made a pale pink to add to the tops of the foam on the waves.(This pink trick I learned by studying the painting of Niagara Falls, by Frederick Church at the Corcoran in DC).    Sepia is a bit transparent, which I love.  I really lean towards the transparent colors and glazing.  Sepia also works wonderfully to tone down my brighter colors and works well in my dark backgrounds, with Sap Green and Alizarin Crimson.  I am going to try doing an entire under painting (grisielle) for my next painting and then glaze color over it.  I will report back in a future blog post.