Page 7 - Artist Materials Advisor

Italy is a land of painters and popes, pasta and polenta, and medieval castles and alpine mountains. Most importantly, it is the land of romance. Italy is also a land rich in minerals from which many different colored pigments have historically been used in some of the world’s most important works of art. This article examines a few of the many earth colors available from Italy by Natural Pigments.

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, known as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired worldwide for its form, composition, and visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of the human form. This article discusses his painting materials, such as supports, grounds, imprimatura, binders, pigments, and his use of glass powder.

Pearlescent pigments are usually mica platelets, synthetic or natural that have been coated with titanium dioxide, iron oxide, or another metal oxide. Platelets of coated mica can vary in size, shape, and thickness. The degree of these characteristics and the thickness of the coating determine the color and appearance of the pigment. Additionally, thickness and the coarseness of the particles determine the sparkle.

Maintaining studio safety is paramount to keeping you, your loved ones, and your pets safe from harm. There are simple yet effective steps you can take to keep yourself healthy regardless of the medium you use. These suggestions may seem obvious, but it’s surprising how easy it is to become forgetful. Here are a few tips to keep your studio safe.

To start painting in Ceracolors colors, you only need paint and water. It handles basically like watercolors or gouache. But for nearly endless possibilities in texture, transparency, viscosity, and sheen, take a look at the wide world of mediums. Think of Ceracolors mediums like paint without the pigment. They're made of the same waxy stuff and can be added to any color in any quantity.

While we do not know why oil painting on copper enjoyed popularity from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, we may be able to provide some reasons based on historical evidence linked to artistic tradition in both the cultural and economic context of the period. This article details the reasons why copper enjoyed brief popularity and may provide the initiative for today’s art renewal and the second renaissance of copper painting.

When we think of Mars, we think of the red planet angrily growling at us in the night sky. Its earthy red color is linked to blood and the Greek god of wars. The planet appears distant and non-threatening to us. But Mars is closer than you think. And it is in more colors than red. Mars is a group of synthetic iron oxide colors in a range from orange-red to violet, yellow, brown, and black. The variations of the iron oxide pigments are distinguished by a color descriptor, i.e., ‘Mars red’. Read the article for the complete story of Mars colors.

As a realist painter of long-standing, I’m very happy to now be able to add Mars Brown, Transparent Red Iron Oxide, Transparent Yellow Iron Oxide, and Chromium Oxide Green from Rublev Colours to my Number One Paintbox and my palette. My preference is for oil paints with no stabilizers in them, just linseed oil and pigment, and I know of no other brand that meets those criteria. As Natural Pigments adds more of the colors I need to their Rublev Colours line of oil paints, I will retire those colors I have from other brands and replace them with Rublev Colours.

When making paint, we sometimes encounter surprises. Some are disappointing. Others offer exciting possibilities. This is the latter. Recently a large shipment of lead white pigment arrived at Natural Pigments. We inspected the pigment and accompanying documentation and placed the entire lot in production. That evening production prepared a small batch of lead white number two—our lead white ground in walnut oil. However, the pigment’s color was not white when ground in oil; it was very pale pink.

When purchasing supplies for the winter, I decided to try Rublev Colours’ Zorn Palette, which is composed of only four colors: Lead White, Yellow Ocher, Vermillion, and Bone Black. Named after the Swedish alla prima virtuoso Anders Zorn, this simple selection of colors yields a surprising variety of tones, making it a versatile and practical choice for painters who study from life. This article provides recommendations on using the Zorn palette in painting to work simply within its limitations.