WHICH?Pigment Characteristics Bless consciousness, for making blue different to me than it is to you.Maria Popova It was meant to be a quick one here to explain what last week’s PBk7 business was all about, but there’s so much noise out there regarding naming colour that I thought I’d expand on this confusing issue just…
I had picked black… (Part I)
WHICH?Pigment Characteristics “What, you haven’t any ivory-black on your palette? If you think you are going to make black with blue and red, I can’t have you in my class. You might stir up trouble with such ideas.” Fernand Cormon I had picked black. Both because there are only a few black pigments available to…
Some pigments are natural, some are synthetic
WHICH?Pigment Characteristics In my hippy-happy store in Byron Bay, Australia, I regularly get a request for “natural” pigments, to which I sometimes reply cheekily: do you mean natural as in made from arsenic? mercury? copper? lead? or perhaps sulphur? These have all been used to make pigments and are found naturally on the planet! But that’s generally…
Some pigments are organic, some are inorganic
WHICH?Pigment Characteristics In the elitist Art Pigment Club, all members, whether pigments or lake pigments, belong to two categories. The idea being, probably, that you don’t mix with the wrong crowd, as these refer specifically to the pigment’s origin, regardless of its structure or chemistry.You are either Organic or Inorganic and either Synthetic or Natural….
This said… there’s indigo!
WHICH?Pigment Characteristics This being said… there’s indigo! As you might know, indigo is a plant, but there are more than 750 species of indigofera shrubs, herbs, and even trees, so it might be just a little challenging to identify, although, of course, if you crush a few leaves in your hands, these will turn… blue!…
Secondly, some pigments are pigments, and some pigments are dyes
WHICH?Pigment Characteristics Did I mention that pigments are small particles (practically) insoluble in either oils, resins or water? Of course, I know I’ve just said this, but as you’ll now hear—and although that’s virtually their only common denominator—even that is not always accurate. Because some artists’ pigments are not pigments, they are dyes… in disguise….
Firstly, some pigments are pigments we can use and some are pigments we cannot…
WHICH?Pigment Characteristics Firstly some pigments are pigments we can use, and some pigments are pigments we cannot use (to make paint.) This being said, I am not here to restrict your creativity or imagination. If, in the steps of artist Amikam Toren, you wanted to make a statement, pulverise your teapot to shards, mix the…
Pigment Characteristics (an intro)
WHICH?Pigment Characteristics I think it’s now time to introduce you in-depth to some of the kids in this class. Because, when you see them neatly stacked in similar little jars on shelves, it is hard at first to comprehend, besides their variety of hues of course, what powerful and different chemistry is sitting there looking…
6) Post-Modern pigments… from the 1950s till now
WHEN?Pigments in HistoryThe sixth circle Some pigments are coined Historical, some Modern, and some should be (in my humble opinion) called Contemporary or Post-Modern. Historical is a term that is definitely given to pigments known before 1704—when perhaps the first ‘modern’ synthetic mineral pigment, Prussian Blue, was created entirely in a lab (and entirely by…
5) Pigments from the industrial colour revolution of “The Long Nineteenth Century” (1798-1914) and beyond
WHEN?Pigments in HistoryThe fifth circle “Nothing is perhaps more peculiar than the process by which one obtains Prussian Blue, and it must be owned that, if chance had not taken a hand, a profound theory would be necessary to invent it” humbly admitted in 1762, the chemist Jean Hellot. If we discard then the discovery…
in bed with mona lisa 