Page 5 - Pigments
Pigments are the colorants used in paints, inks, plastics, fabrics, cosmetics, and food. By mixing pigments with a binder you can create your own acrylic, oil, tempera, watercolor, and other paints and inks.
In the 17th century, Roger de Piles described in precise detail the flesh tone palette used by nearly every artist of that time in his seminal treatise, Les Élémens de Peinture Pratique. This painting manual influenced artists for several hundred years and established the current practice of setting a limited palette and a rational approach to painting portraits among the greatest artists of that period. In this article, we translate chapter four from the original 1684 French manual and explain how contemporary artists can set the limited 17th-century palette for flesh tones using Rublev Colours® Artists’ Oils...
Ochers are natural iron oxide earths found in many parts of the world. They are among the most lightfast and stable pigments used in the arts. Iron oxide pigments produce a wide range of colors, from black through shades of purple and red in the anhydrous oxides to yellow, orange, and brown in the oxide hydroxides. While iron oxide produces the color in ochers, other minerals—such as quartz and clays, for example—are also present...
Chrome yellow enjoyed a brief history of widespread use among nineteenth-century artists, such as Turner, Manet, Cézanne, Monet, and Pissarro. Cézanne, like Pissarro and Monet, used the neutralizing effect of combining three primary colors—ultramarine, vermilion, and chrome yellow—to make colored grays. Its popularity soon faded because a more stable opaque pigment, cadmium yellow, was introduced in the middle of the century...
Artists are sometimes surprised to see one application of paint barely hide the drawing or underpainting below and another color completely mask all that was underneath. Some wonder why sometime after they complete a painting, they begin to see pencil lines of the sketch that before were completely unnoticed. (This effect is called pentimento.) Other artists wishing to apply a beautiful glaze are frustrated when the glaze kills the color below. These are common problems experienced by all painters at one time or another, but they little understand the reasons...
Rublev Colours Violet Hematite is a deep reddish purple hue that tints toward subtle violets when mixed with white. It is useful in flesh tints and shadows, and its purple bias makes good grays. Rublev Colours Violet Hematite is formulated using pure natural ground hematite (Colour Index Name Pigment Red 102 or PR 102) that is absolutely lightfast and very opaque. This beautiful earthy red violet is cooler than other red iron oxide earths, such as Venetian red or Sartorius red...
This is the second part of the introduction to the underpainting of faces and flesh—sankir in Russian and proplasmos—in Greek medieval icon painting. During the Tour of Russian Icons, the editors of Iconofile and other tour group members visited the Grabar All-Russia Art Scientific Restoration Center workshop, where we met Adolph N. Ovchinnikov, director of ancient Russian painting. There he introduced us to his book, Symbolism of Christian Art, containing an extensive review of the symbolism found in Christian art based on his 50 years of experience restoring and researching sacred art. Presently available only in Russian, Iconofile obtained permission to translate portions of his book into English. The entire chapter, "On Sankir," is published in the second issue of the Iconofile Journal....
During the Tour of Russian Icons, the editors of Iconofile and tour group members met Adolph N. Ovchinnikov, director of ancient Russian painting. He introduced us to his book, Symbolism of Christian Art, containing an extensive review of the symbolism found in Christian art. This is an excerpt from the chapter, "On Sankir," published in the second issue of the Iconofile Journal....
Gilbert Charles Stuart (born Stewart) (December 3, 1755–July 9, 1828) was an American painter from Rhode Island. According to evidence from various sources, his palette mainly consisted of the colors described in this article. All of the pigments on Stuart’s palette have been identified in literature and studies of his paintings. Unfortunately, “Antwerp blue” is an imprecise term, and we cannot determine precisely what it meant in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries...
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669) was a Dutch painter and etcher. He is considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art history and the most important in Dutch history. The range of colors Rembrandt employed falls firmly within the mainstream of painting practice in Holland in the seventeenth century. His palette is entirely made up of widely available pigments and, by that time, well understood in their qualities and drawbacks. Seventeenth-century Holland was a center for manufacturing pigments on an industrial scale. The technologies required had evolved enough to remove the uncertainties in preparing standard products...
Ultramarine is a blue pigment consisting primarily of a zeolite-based mineral containing small amounts of sulfur. Ultramarine is one of the most complex of the mineral pigments, composed of the blue mineral lazurite, which is the major component of the rare and semi-precious stone lapis lazuli. The mineral occurs in nature as a product of limestone metamorphism. It is typically associated with calcite, pyrite, diopside, humite, forsterite, hauyne, and muscovite minerals, sometimes found in lava as a by-product of volcanic eruptions...
Rublev Colours Ultramarine Blue (Greenish Shade) artist oil color is an intense deep greenish-shade blue oil paint made from an inorganic pigment (ultramarine) of sodium aluminum silicate composition. It is a transparent, small-particle color with high tinting strength...
The palette of Velázquez was smaller than the range of colors available to artists of his period. However, it was typical of artists of the seventeenth century, the palette described by Roger de Piles in his famous treatise on painting of 1684. Velázquez included calcite and smalt in his paint, not only to alter the colors but also for specific technical purposes. Smalt was used as a drying agent. Calcite increases the transparency of the colors and alters the consistency of the paint, especially when making it more fluid. The addition of calcite also reduces the quantity of lead white needed in mixtures...
