A Lightfast Alizarin

I finally decided to replace my Alizarin Crimson, which is only moderately lightfast (not that I ever really use it by itself in thin layers). I love the Alizarin by Williamsburg (dihydroxyanthraquinone, PR 83) and wanted to give their substitute a chance as I now go with them for all but one of my palette colors, so I tried their Permanent Crimson (anthraquinone, PR 177), which is described as an "absolutely permanent, lightfast substitute for Alizarin Crimson." Very disappointingly, Gamblin's Alizarin Permanent is made from a mixture of quinacridone red b (PV 19), perylene red (PR 149), and ultramarine (PB 29), so I'm not bothering with that. I read recently in at least three places that a truer substitute for the traditional Alizarin or madder hue is pyrrole ruby pigment (PR 264), which can be found in Rembrandt's Permanent Madder Deep (among others), so I got a tube to check it out.

Here I mixed a tint of each one with titanium white. I was afraid a photo would flatten any hue difference between the pigments, but except for the Permanent Crimson which seemed the tiniest bit warmer (this would create slightly less purple purples if you know what I mean), there was little hue difference for the camera to flatten. And all three pigments are strong-staining and have that lovely pinkish undertone. In masstone, however, the substitutes clearly don't match the Alizarin, in center, which is beautifully deep and dark as a thick pile (it almost resembles here a bleeding scab). The substitute Williamsburg, at left, feels flat, with little difference between its masstone and undertone. The Rembrandt pigment, while not an exact match, shows at least some of that Alizarin-like deepening as it gets thicker. Such deepness might not factor much in my normal painting work but it was something I was happy to see, so for this along with its excellent berry-juice-like quality overall, I'm going to try using the Permanent Madder Deep as my Alizarin substitute.

Palette variation

I mentioned the other day a simplified palette that Jeff Markowsky was using in Italy. The following shows an attempt to incorporate such a palette, the result of my own peculiar thought processes.

Robert Gamblin puts palettes in three categories. I find a combination Impressionist/Renaissance palette, or at least my particular variation, appealing. Since learning from Jeff how to use a wide Impressionist spectrum, I've thought a palette should be able to approximate most other colors, hence the idea of a standard palette - I'd rather rely on the same tubed colors every time than get out different tubes for different paintings (and maybe save some money). That's just me.

I kept versatility in mind as my standard colors evolved over the past year. Most recently I added two more to the lineup that are just mixes of existing ones, so that it looked like this:



1. white
2. cad. yellow light
3. ochre
4. Indian yellow
5. cad. red medium
6. alizarin
7. transp. red oxide
8. (transp. red oxide + ultramarine) = blue-brown
9. ultramarine
10. (transp. red oxide + Prussian blue) = blue-green
11. Prussian blue
12. black

The two mixes (8) and (10) are ones I found myself using a lot, so one day I finally made big batches and tubed them. At first I disliked the idea of having a total of 12 colors again, but I came to find here a simple pattern where the odd numbered ones are dominant. And though they're no longer all pure hues, the two mixes seem pure enough (being made of strong-tinting transparent or semi-transparent hues) - and they act as variations of traditional burnt umber and viridian, perhaps.

Within each group of primaries there is a cool and a warm (one opaque and the other transparent or semi-transparent); except in the blues, both of which I suppose are considered warm, Prussian however being cooler. There are also an earth yellow (ochre), an earth red, and a cool dark earth. There's something of a system in it.

The odd-number pattern I thought would help me to simplify a little - e.g. in the very beginning stages of a painting use just (1), (3), (7) and maybe (9), and simple mixes resulting from them (with (8) being one such mix already) - except I tend to get ahead of myself when painting and haven't been able to stick to that plan. Still, the idea was an interesting one.

* * *

Jeff told me of the Florence palette consisting of: white, Naples yellow, ochre, raw sienna, vermillion, cobalt blue, and black - useful for figure painting, but not a color scheme I ever used. I knew I couldn't stick to such a limited palette, but I wondered if I could make it work with my own - that is, not simply add new colors from tubes (only three here are new), but create those colors out of my colors; the new additions would automatically mesh with the larger group this way. So really it wouldn't be about making a different color palette, but an exercise in exploiting the original palette better.

I thought if a paint manufacturer can simulate colors like Naples yellow, then so could I:

Here the numbers are the same as above with emphasis now on the seven-color scheme just mentioned, the only actual new kids on the block being (2a), (4a) and (11a). No great changes took place, except obviously the new colors share space with their counterparts in the original lineup. I used the little space between cad. yellow light(2) and Indian yellow(4) to show how a range of bright middle yellows might exist there (the transparency of Indian yellow makes it so versatile).

A Naples yellow "hue" might be manufactured with white plus some yellow and/or reddish iron oxides, and is easy for me to replicate using ochre (a natural iron oxide) and a touch of transparent red oxide (a synthetic). Raw sienna, another natural iron oxide, can also be approximated with the red oxide and ochre, here with a tiny bit of ultramarine - this is incidentally a mix I occasionally used to use, which could be made to lean slightly towards towards green or red.

Of course these are just my versions and some people might mix them differently. And one might feel there is a sort of blasphemy going on, as you can't really get close to the "true blue" of cobalt using Prussian blue and ultramarine. I remembered the cheap student-grade tubes of cobalt blue "hue" I learned to paint with and how they contain, along with the wax fillers, a mix of white, ultramarine and phthalo blue pigments. My justification for using the slightly weaker Prussian blue for phthalo was in knowing that they are otherwise nearly interchangeable (phthalo having been invented to replace Prussian). And despite the less-than-true-blue quality, this mix (like my "raw sienna") is good because of its strong transparent components. (I'd prefer anyway not to have the bite of true cobalt on my palette, just as I wouldn't want something like a cadmium orange, as beautiful as they are.)

So what did this little exercise show? Just that I could combine two color palettes into one without a great deal of reorganization. I'm not sure yet how much better this will help me to see but it was worth doing.

Mango

2/6. Mango, oil on linen panel, 5x5 in. SOLD

According to the Golden Artist Colors website,

The story of Indian Yellow pigment seems more like myth than fact. In the Bengali province of India, farmers raised herds of cattle fed only on mango leaves and water. The urine from these cows – bright yellow in color – was collected and dried to produce the pigment for Indian Yellow. Unfortunately, the cows were extremely undernourished, as mango leaves did not supply the cattle with sufficient nutrients, and they lived for only a very short time. The process was considered inhumane and, since 1908, Indian Yellow pigment has been prohibited from the market.

Wikipedia says, "In Girl with a Pearl Earring, Vermeer's patron remarks that Vermeer used 'cow piss' to paint his wife." Actually, if true, the practice described above would have been inadvisable to begin with, as mango leaves are toxic and cattle in India are sacred. Also from Wikipedia,

In her 2004 book Color: A Natural History of the Palette, Victoria Finlay examined whether Indian yellow was really made from cow urine. The only printed source mentioning this practice is a single letter written by a Mr. T.N. Mukharji of Calcutta, who claimed to have seen the color being made. Aside from this letter, there appear to be no written sources from the time period mentioning the production of Indian yellow. Finlay searched for legal records concerning the supposed banning of Indian yellow production in both the India Library in London and the National Library in Calcutta, and found none. She visited the town in India mentioned in Mukharji's letter as the only source of the color, but found no trace of evidence that the color had ever been produced there. None of the locals she spoke with had ever heard of the practice. It is possible that Indian yellow came from another source, and that the cow urine story was fabricated by Mukharji, but came to be accepted by later authors. As such, the viability of producing Indian yellow from the urine of mango-leaf-fed cows is unknown.

Bartlett pear

12/4: Bartlett pear, oil on linen panel, 7x5 in.

I'm still here. I was going to post something about the Paint Out but was too tired after the reception, and on Sunday night had some kind of stomach bug that still had me feeling weak yesterday. (Maybe it was just real bad indigestion, made worse by my ignoring my wife's advice to lay off dairy and other stuff for a while.) Anyway, I haven't been at the computer much and haven't responded to anyone, but thanks to those who wished me luck the other day. I struggled at the Paint Out, as I will write about later, but I'm proud of myself for taking part and it only made me want to do more plein air work. Nevertheless I'm really glad to be back at my chunky easel, and for now there will be more small fruit.

Lately I started making my panels using Yarka extra fine grain linen glued to hardboard with a liquid hide glue, spread with a brush or roller. There are a few more irregularities in the linen than the Old Holland brand I was using at first, and the priming is stiffer. But I love its funky sizing smell, and the feel and look of it being made by hand, like they just sliced a length of it off in their cold Russian workshop and mailed it to you. I don't know how this brand compares to a roll of Claessens, but I read that it was a great value and it really is. So far I haven't had much trouble with the linen being slick - maybe I am working better and am more in tune with the surface.

Cut lemon

11/28: Cut lemon, oil on linen panel, 3x4.5 in.

Working out of my paint box really makes a difference. Without the heaviness and solidity of my easel I'm still not completely comfortable. I braced the inside of the box better and fixed the wobbliness, but I still have to get used to this vulnerable, skinny-legged contraption. I remember another time I had painted en plein air: a few guys and I were at our teacher Anthony Palliser's house, somewhere in the marshes around Savannah. We were sitting on a little pier behind the house, there were some attempts at fishing, and my friend Gus landed a hook into my pants leg (or was it me who got his leg?). Only other thing I remember now was that I settled on painting a boring cluster of trees across the water. Maybe there were other times, but I just can't recall.... Well, now I'm trying it again, and it seems like tomorrow will be partly sunny (or partly cloudy), so it could end up being a great day! Wish me luck.

Delicata squash #2

11/27: Delicata squash #2, oil on linen panel, 4x8 in.

In preparation for the Paint Out I worked out of my paint box to get more used to it. A few months ago I came across a simple way of turning it into a pochade, and discovered last night when I put it into action for the first time that it was too wobbly on the tripod. I started the painting pretty flustered and holding the box steady with one hand most of the time, expecting only to get a basic sketch. Eventually I relaxed enough to let it go and had a better time. I didn't have my lights on my work as usual so I ended up using too much chalky white throughout, but it could have gone worse. Now I'm trying to fix whatever was wrong with the box, hoping it won't take something MacGyverish.

Kiwi #2

11/17: Kiwi #2, oil on canvas panel, 4x4 in.

As I was going to shoot this I saw there was a lot of light bouncing back from some dull spots in the darkest shadow (this isn't the smooth linen so it was more pronounced). I don't normally do it but I sprayed a little Damar varnish to smooth it out some. I figure this doesn't hurt if the paint layer is still wet, as the Damar would mix in with it and not just sit on top trapping the paint and drying at a different rate. It took care of that dullness but I must have done one spritz too many because it began to liquefy and fan out some of the topmost strokes, like the purplish bits. But oh well, it probably turned out better.

Here's my "standard" palette, which lately hasn't changed much, a sign that I am getting more comfortable - I scraped a lot of the mess away from last night but left the mixed blobs, which I drew out a bit more to show the colors better:

1. titanium white
2. cad. yellow med.
3. yellow ochre
4. cad. red med.
5. alizarin
6. transp. oxide (or earth) red
7. ultramarine
8. Prussian blue
9. ivory black

Alizarin is usually used just for purples and reds, and black practically never (except lately I use it with ochre and maybe a little cad. red if I want a greenish-brown underpainting) - so probably 8 of the 9 colors are actually in the final picture. The one most used is transp. oxide red/red earth, which I learned about from Terry Miura's website - it's like a transparent Venetian red as Gamblin describes, and I've been making my two most important mixes with it: (a) with ultramarine for a transparent dark blue-brown; and (b) with Prussian blue for a semitransparent dark blue-green. (b1) and (b2) are simply (b) mixed with ochre and white, respectively.

These were useful for the kiwis and aren't standard but could be: (c) is yellow ochre added to (a), maybe with more of the red earth. I haven't been mixing it much before last night, but I found it works well for the kiwi skin and would probably be of good use every day. (d) is ochre and red earth. (e) is red earth and cad. yellow.

Sorry if this was confusing. For mediums I'm using Galkyd Lite and/or linseed oil, sometimes Venetian turpentine (tiny glob to the left of the palette cups). I keep telling myself I should go back to using cups with lids, but it may be better to let any remaining bit of Galkyd dry out completely and pour a fresh little amount the next day, than let it dry slowly under cover, creating a gummy mess inside; the linseed oil doesn't really get a chance to dry out.

Garlic #2

11/13: Garlic #2, oil on linen panel, 4x5 in. SOLD

I thought the cloves were pretty with the reddish color. This began fairly quick and light but in the end got almost too wet and slippery in some parts. This linen is great but when the paint gets too juicy it's like working on a smooth panel, not so great. Though doesn't juicy paint cause the same problems no matter what you paint on? This is why I can't do what the good alla prima painters do.

Red skin potatoes #2

11/7: Red skin potatoes #2, oil on canvas panel, 5x5 in.

I used just bristle brushes again, and painted thicker and drier than usual. A little different, but maybe a little too sticky. I like this linen; I ordered some Yarka extra fine linen the other day hoping it's similar to this stuff, so I can economically make more of these panels.

Lemon #2

11/6: Lemon #2, oil on linen panel, 5x5 in.

I tried to do better with the light transitions along the edges, and was reminded of the days I watched Markowsky paint, and how once upon a time maybe I actually "got it" - what's happened since? Oh yeah, I'd practically given up painting.... Painters and their damn "transitions," it's all they talk about.

I went to another craft store last night and found some #6 Arttec/Loew-Cornell bristle brushes for a dollar(!), so I got a few different shapes. Here I used some of those and a couple smaller ones like a cheap #3 round that I like, whose bristles are a great length for me (but which loses about 20 hairs and a brush size every time I use it so I'll soon have to find a replacement in a decent brand). Not bad for using only bristle brushes and some that I consider fat. Curses to whatever it is that makes me want to use tiny brushes!

Sketch of Hubbard squash

11/5: Sketch of Hubbard squash, oil on linen panel, 5x6 in. SOLD

This went beyond thirty minutes, but I probably managed to stop the major work around thirty and then add on the little shadows and such. I found some cheapo Loew-Cornell blunt-ended "scholastic"(!) bristle rounds on clearance at Michael's for between 50¢ and $1 each, and didn't use anything here except those and another cheap bristle round that can almost make a fat point.

From Wikipedia.org:

Hubbard squash is another cultivar of [the buttercup squash, Cucurbita maxima] that is usually a "tear-drop" shape. They are often used as a replacement for pumpkins. According to one source, the name comes from Bela Hubbard, settler of Randolph Township, Ohio, in the Connecticut Western Reserve. Many other sources list an alternate history. These sources state that the Hubbard squash (at the time nameless) came to Marblehead, Massachusetts, through Captain Knott Martin. A woman named Elizabeth Hubbard brought the fruit to the attention of her neighbor, a seed trader named J.J.H. Gregory. Mr. Gregory subsequently introduced it to the market using Mrs. Hubbard's name as the eponym. Gregory later bred and released the Blue Hubbard.

Granny Smith #3

11/4: Granny Smith #3, oil on linen panel, 6x5 in.

So I've been trying some linen by Old Holland that comes in sheets in a pad, which I've stuck onto a panel. I don't know anything about the different grains of linen, but this one says "Extra Fine" ("Excellent for Portraiture" etc.) so I guess it's like the smooth "type 13" that people swear by. I liked it the first couple of times I used it but this time it seemed too slick, like I had one too many wet layers on it or something, and I was fighting to keep the paint from lifting off entirely. Probably something I'm doing, because despite that it's pretty good stuff. If anyone has experience with the types "13" or "66" linen please send me your thoughts, it would be very much appreciated!

Small log #4

11/2: Small log #4, oil on linen panel, 4x5 in.

This is my first time on a linen panel and it's real nice. I lost the great smoky, tonal light I started with and ended up more and more "juicy," unfortunately.

Small log #3

11/1: Small log #3, oil on canvas panel, 3.5x7 in.

I could paint this thing a hundred times from different views, but I won't. Here it feels almost like a small dog (some proportions were altered). At last I'm beginning to have a better understanding of my neutrals and can probably begin to push the grey-brown range more in the future, without compromising the strength of the other colors - which has been less than intuitive for me for some reason. This ended up going beyond two hours.

I thought I'd share here the mountain of paint blobs that has been accumulating at my easel. Made of palette scrapings, runaway brush hairs and the occasional flying insect that's fatally attracted to my paintings, it grows with every swipe of my glass scraper. Perhaps growing slower nowadays as I try to let less paint go to waste (it's good when the scrapings are mostly thin and wet and not big dried globs). It started with an old sock used for soaking up turps or oil, but thoroughly dry - i.e., not a combustion hazard, as everything dries flat before ever being folded up in this way. Watch the folds!! Don't let an oily cloth sit crumpled in a way that its heat gets trapped. I've seen, a long long time ago, one of my rags smoking as it sat in a bag of trash, maybe not remembering what I'd heard Marshall Arisman tell of the fire that wiped out his studio when he was younger (but he used/uses really oily rags). So make sure wet rags are lying flat before leaving the room for any length of time - it won't take long for a fire.

But, anyway, this is a thing my wife will point to saying, "That's nasty":

Hubbard squash

10/29: Hubbard squash, oil on canvas panel. approx. 12x9 in.

I began using Venice turpentine for the first time the other day on this piece. The honey-like thickness is like some of the stickier stand oil mediums I've made, but unlike anything with oil it dries quickly and I found myself better able to layer and blend when I wanted. It smells wonderful too. And it's relaxing to me having something of this thickness along with Galkyd Lite and plain oil there in front of me to choose from (sometimes I dip into all three), and somehow I've been using turpentine less.

Idiot that I am, I felt I'd read enough about it in the books and went immediately to grab what's generally agreed to be the "finest" brand (and in the larger, costlier size), only then to find all sorts of blog/forum posts online (here's one) about getting the same stuff for ridiculously cheap in a can at an equestrian shop. It's used on horses' hooves or something....

Illustration Friday: "Grow"

10/25: Grow, oil on coated paper, approx. 7.5x8.25 in.

Well, somehow I've gone a whole day without posting (sigh). I'll have to paint an extra piece of fruit or something. At least I tried the IF this week - by chance I came across this story in The Penguin Book of English Folktales, edited by Neil Philip (whose introduction is far more exciting than most of the tales in the book):

The Turnip and the Horse

A poor man near Brighton grew a huge turnip and sent it to the King. The King graciously accepted and sent the man a guinea. Hearing this an individual (whose descendants are living, so I leave out the name) bought and sent King William a beautiful valuable horse. The King accepted, and immediately sent the huge turnip in return, saying the horse was so fine that he must give something in return that was equally fine of its kind. The man who had expected a valuable gift was not pleased.

This version dates from a 1912 source, but writes Philip, "Here we find a story popular in medieval jestbooks, which is told as true and attached to a nineteenth-century monarch." I'm struck by how nonchalant the narrator sounds - the man simply "grew a huge turnip" - and that's why I made my farmer unsurprised, and maybe as if about to say "that'll do, turnip. That'll do...." But I didn't intend for him to look like a doll.

I printed my sketch (with the reddish outlines) on a scrap piece of Rives paper, used acrylic matte medium to coat the image then mount the paper onto a piece of board, blow-dried it, and went to oils - this is a decent shortcut as long as I use a thick sort of paper and "glue" it down with a lot of medium, mainly to reduce the chance of air pockets (there were a couple here but you can't tell in the end). I tried some Galkyd Lite for the first time here and it's wonderful - it's thin like the old Markowsky medium I used before I did a stand oil mix, and it dries fast enough that I can start layering thin colors on one another like glazes. It's like rediscovering something I'd lost. I could have pushed this farther but just tried to get it done fast.

Banana sketch

10/12: Banana sketch, oil on canvas panel, 3x5 in.

I attempted here to use a bigger brush than usual and suppress my urge to break up the broad marks. I really like the green in the back - I'm still amazed by that discovery.

When I was laying down the ground on some of these recent panels I took the time to smooth the surface with the edge of my long palette knife, getting the little holes in the canvas filled more. It makes a huge difference, needless to say, in the movement of paint across the surface. This is something I should have been doing all the time, properly at the white priming stage, but I haven't always been oil-priming these panels either. I need to get a proper priming knife (or cake frosting spatula) and a bucket of oil ground, and become a real painter one of these days.

Cherry tomatoes

9/7: Cherry tomatoes, oil on canvas panel, approx. 3x5 in. NFS

I got to thinking again about simplifying my colors, so I scraped off a few "in-betweens" that had been hanging out at the top of my palette too long, and rethought the overall arrangement. Not the simplest palette, but I'm proud I can keep within a dozen colors (how can I say good-bye to burnt sienna and cad. red light?). Here's my still-evolving evolving palette as of this painting:

From left:

flake white hue (I started playing with it recently; W&N) and titanium white (*)

cad. yellow medium (Gamblin)

yellow ocher (Williamsburg)

cad. red light (*)

cad. red medium (Gamblin)

alizarin crimson (*)

transp. oxide red (Rembrandt)

burnt sienna (Grumbacher)

burnt umber (Williamsburg)

cerulean blue (Gamblin)

ultramarine blue (*)

ivory black (W&N)

The greens are mixes, generally of yellow and ultramarine, so they begin life down in the main mixing area next to my mixed browns - which feels perfect to me, as in the natural world greens and browns are usually found together. I used to have a tube green up top, but found it unnecessary most times. The brown mess in the middle is my general coffee-mud made up of ocher, transp. oxide red and burnt umber, and lately has been the color I start laying out with.

The palette itself is a glass piece that I've had since school, and which has a manila folder on the backside right now. It used to have brown paper taped to the back to mix my colors against, but I realized it made little sense when I didn't always start my paintings with middle- to dark-value brownish grounds. In one of the tin cups is a 1:1:1 mix of stand oil, turpentine and damar, which has been pretty comfortable for me but I'd like to experiment more.

*Brands I'd rather not name. The other brands aren't all my preferred ones, but may have been influenced by what money I had.

Breagha sleeping

Breagha sleeping, silverpoint on wood, approx. 5.25x4 in.

I didn't paint anything in observance of Labor Day (Sunday, actually). This drawing was from last year when my daughter was about two weeks old, one of the very few times I drew anything all year. She looks here like a little bug, as we used to call her. I always liked silverpoint though I hadn't done much since being exposed to it in school.

Illustration Friday: "Alphabets"

9/1: Alphabets, oil on paper mounted on panel, 5x7.75 in.

The theme led me to play with having two alphabets contrasted side by side. My first (terrible) idea vaguely had Roman soldiers encountering runes carved in a rock, until my wife suggested a scene with a kid writing something. Then after seeing the August National Geographic feature on the Maya, I settled on this scene. The glyphs are of course not an "alphabet," rather logograms and syllabograms - plus, though the symbols I drew began as accurate representations, I made up most of them. Sort of blasphemous from someone who loves this stuff.

I printed out a sketch that I had scanned in and tweaked in Photoshop, then mounted it with acrylic matt medium to a canvas panel (for lack of anything else). I massed in areas with acrylic yellow ocher, then later painted with oils.