- Introduce yourself to your peers and instructor. Discuss your educational background in art and career goals?
- What is Expression?
As I said, my last semester here, then I start the grueling process of finding a teaching position. I want to teach painting at college. I'm currently the organizer of RVA Drink 'n' Draw. I host events at local bars where we play drawing games and chat about art over drinks. I've been collecting exquisite corpse drawings all summer and have pushing 300 and I'm working on orchestrating an exhibition soon. This semester I also plan to show my own work, build my resume, etc.
I think expression happens anytime you take what is inside of you and make it available outside of you. There really aren't any other necessary and sufficient criteria. We can hone it's effect, but it's as simple as that.
Now, here comes the part where some of you groan and some of you thank your lucky stars that I'm in this class.
I started the reading (again, as I've already taken this course) and as per usual the list of "colors" tweaks my "oh no they didn't" nerve. This list on m1s5 is archaic and incomplete and therefore slightly misleading. This is not by any means the worst intro list, but it leaves quite a bit unsaid. My research is in acrylic so I’ll be referring to acrylic brands. I am aware that the following information may not apply to all oil paint and watercolor brands as those mediums are considerably more tied to tradition and generally the product lines are more extensive. Acrylic brands seems to be more convoluted and mercurial. I will now elaborate:
First of all, color names are completely irrelevant and misleading on their own. You also need the pigment number and the brand of paint to rely on a consistent color. The pigment number has a P for pigment, and another letter or two representing the hue family, R=red, O=orange, Y=yellow, G=green, B=blue, V=violet, W=white, Br=Brown, and Bk=black Different brands assign different names to different pigments, and a lot of times those names represent colors that are "traditional" but no longer on the market. I'll get into that in a minute. This pigment number can be found on the front or back of the tube label. If your brand of paint doesn't list the pigments it's probably a low quality paint. This means there is less pigment to binder, and means that as your paint dries it will darken significantly, as the white dries clear. All acrylic paint dries darker, but the lower the quality the more dramatic the change. Also, bear in mind that many mixed pigments may look pretty out of the tube but you may already have their parents in your paintbox. So always check your pigments before you buy!!!
Now, the list:
Titanium White: bright opaque white, with high tinting strength (PW6)
The "other white" is Zinc White (PW4) it's a transparent white (Liquitex calls it transparent mixing white) There is also buff/unbleached titanium. It has the strong tinting properties of regular bleached titanium, but it's much warmer. Golden calls it titan buff. Something to note is that Liquitex "unbleached titanium" is actually a mixed pigment of bleached titanium and yellow ochre (it used to have black and red in it too, but they recently changed it) Lead white/flake white (PW1) is highly toxic. Avoid using it, zinc works just fine!
Ultramarine Blue: warm blue, transparent (PB29) This pigment was developed because the main blue people had back in the day was made from the rare and expensive mineral lapis lazuli. Today's ultramarine is a petrolium byproduct (as most of today's pigments are). It's smooth, medium tinter, medium opacity. good greens, great purples.
Cobalt Blue: transparent, good for glazing (PB28) This is a little grittier, than PB29 and never have I felt like my palette needed it. I own it, but it's not really that much more bang for your buck (very untrue in red land, where a hue just doesn't cut it) though I can't say I ever do any glazing, so I can't really comment on that. But as far as mixing goes, I find the greens to be a little cleaner with ultramarine. Cobalt is a mineral so there is an inherent dirtiness to it. There's also cobalt teal (PG50), cobalt turquoise (PB36), and cobalt green (PG26). I find them to be considerably less expendable on my palette than cobalt blue, especially the teal! I'm madly in love with it.
Yellow Ochre: dark yellow, good for toning down color PY43, there's also yellow oxide, PY42 that is a little duller and darker but behaves quite similarly. And Liquitex makes a "transparent raw sienna" that is also PY42.
Raw Sienna: warm hue, very good for glazing (PBr7) all the siennas and umbers have this same pigment number though they cover a wide variety of values and temperatures of brown. I guess this is because they are all made of dirt. It begs the question, how many do we need? Personally I have 5 different PBr7s in my collection.
Mars Black: (PBk11) This is the one I use, made from iron oxide. Carbon/lamp black (PBk7) is nice out of the tube, but a little wimpy for my taste. Be aware, ivory/bone black( PW9) really is made of charred animal bones, still to this day...
Permanent Rose: very transparent, high tinting strength OK, now, "permanent rose" is PR122, which in this day and age is usually referred to as quinacridone magenta. The quinacridone family gets tricky because Liquitex quinacridone red is PR209, Golden quinacridone red is PV19, then Golden Primary Magenta, Golden quinacridone violet, Liquitex quinacridone blue violet, Liquitex quinacridone crimson are all PV19. So you see, the name, brand and pigment are all essential to knowing what you've got.
Viridian: deep green, add white for cool green Actualy veridian green is called PG18 but this rare and i have never seen it in acrylic. This color has all but been usurped by the green monster, Phthalocyanine green (PG7) Though it may look similar, this color is a million times harder to use that actual veridian. It's soooooooo strong and therefor very difficult to get used to. Phthalocanine blue (PB15) is the same, extremely strong and hard to use, and it seems that they get more intense over time, even after a painting has dried. I try to avoid using both at all cost, save perhaps a nice rich black or a very intense green. Try indanthrene/anthraquinone (PB60) blue for a dark transparent blue that is a lot easier to deal with than phthalo, greens get a little dull with it though, amazing purples! Also try cobalt green for a nice cool green and chromium oxide green (PG17) for a little duller green.
Cadmium Red (medium): opaque, warm, bright red PR108 Come in light, medium, and dark/deep. Here is where cutting corners financially will not help you. Cadmiums are amazing for coverage as they are so opaque, I think it's wise to have all the cadmium shades, but they are expensive so use them wisely. I mix them into other more transparent reds for coverage. I don't really like the way they mix across hue lines other than with each other. They developed the pyrrole line as a synthetic alternative, the mixes are brighter, but they've got nothing on the coverage. Just like the cobalt family, cadmiums are usually a little grittier than synthetic pigments.
Cadmium Yellow (medium): opaque, warm yellow Cadmium yellow (PY35) comes in lemon/primrose, light, medium and dark.
Lemon Yellow: cool This is a cadmium pigment, unless they mean PY3 which is now considered Hansa Yellow Light.
Burnt Sienna: rich reddish brown raw sienna is yellowish, burnt sienna is reddish, raw umber is darker and cooler than the sienna but lighter and warmer than burnt umber. Raw Umber is best for making awesome blacks with ultramarine blue!
Dioxazine Violet: makes good grays with yellow, brown and greens PV23. I think if you have PV19, and a nice array of blues, you don't really NEED PV23, but it's a quick fix, dark purple, Bam, you got it! Makes lovely lavenders! It makes good browns, but you will definitely need a blue to get a grey out of it.
So I hope you have all enjoyed your pigment lesson. I just couldn't let it go. It kills me that people are so unaware of what they are buying. It kills me that neither my undergrad or graduate programs even mentioned the actual pigments. It was a community college continuing ed class where someone mentioned it and i became thoroughly obsessed. So if you have any questions, please feel free to ask! I’m happy to be your pigment guide through the semester (and next year I'll be eligible to teach 1-on-1 DS if any of you end up interested or know anyone is). I just took a grant-writing course over the summer and one of the main things I want to get funded is my pigment research and endeavors to dispel the myth that you only need 4 tubes of paint in order to mix every color. Color theory is like algebra. r+b=v but every r and every b will make a different v.
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