From Behind the Camera: Choosing the right pigments
Integral to becoming who you are as a painter is finding the paints that help you achieve the look you want. The search can take years. It might help to know why some of the CCP artists have chosen the pigments they use.
Carla O’Connor is a shape painter. As part of her process, she continually alters shapes and edges. She can do so because she uses gouache on a coated surface. To her, transparency and color is secondary. She is able to adjust colors by adding any brand of watercolor to the gouache base.
In contrast, Jan Kunz is a value painter. Transparency and delicate transitions of value and color are important to her portraits. Jan prefers Winsor & Newton professional grade watercolors. After years of painting she knows exactly what to expect using these materials. Even with W&N she avoids the more opaque colors, such as cerulean, and is very judicious with ultramarine blue and the cobalt colors. Click here to download Jan’s pigment list.
John Salminen likes the gritty look of coarsely ground sedimentary colors for his urban landscapes. He has recently discovered that Stephen Quiller watercolors provide him the look he wants.
Robbie Laird uses M. Graham paints. They are honey based and explode into solution quickly. The high pigment content is perfect for Robbie’s intense wet into wet florals. Art Grahm has a selection of colors that are evenly distributed around the color wheel and make for logical mixing.
Judy Morris has made a study of pigments and their reaction to a variety of salts for her salt texturing techniques. She uses a combination of heavily ground and transparent pigments. Additionally she has developed several triad color schemes that require specific colors available through, among others, Daniel Smith.
Ratindra Das uses a lot of quinacridones which mix well with many colors yet maintain transparency. This quality is important to Das because he mixes most colors directly on paper. Chemical composition is less importance, but he does say that he has eliminated all cadmium from his palette for environmental reasons.
The list goes on and on but I think you get the point. And even though I’ve only addressed watercolor, the same is true with other media. Decide what you like then make it a point to find the materials and techniques that suit your needs.
Cheers,
Lynn