An artist is truly free to create only after having mastered the basic elements of artistic craft.  Most teachers, given the pleasures of classroom schedules, simply do not have time to demonstrate the use of new materials or even to lecture on the handling of traditional techniques.  And, perhaps, these should not be the primary considerations of the studio instructor.  It is far more important for a painting master to teach the “art” of painting, to draw from students their inner resources of creativeness, than to spend time showing how to mix paints or to stretch canvas. 

                  · Stretching Your Canvas  (coming soon)
                  · Supports & Grounds for Painting
                  · Studio Tools
                  · Painting Surfaces
                  · Media *NEW*
                  · Color Theory & Painting *NEW*
                  · Photographing Your Artwork *NEW*

Field Trip to the Permanent Palette
A visit to a paint manufacturing plant to see buckets of cadmiums, cobalts, and earth colors being mixed and tubed is an exciting experience for a painter.  The first thing you learn is that the color selections on each company's charts are different, and that this is not the result of poor quality control.  Suppliers make available to manufacturers as many as thirty shades of a particular hue of pigment.  The individual manufacturer must then choose a balanced chart and, of necessity, limit the number of colors on it.  A manufacturer also picks a shade for its ability to mix well with the other colors and for its tinting strength--its ability to hold the color when thinned.  The potential variety is such that you could easily select six cadmiums instead of the normal three (light, medium, dark) sold by each company, for the range from light red-orange to red-purple is vast.  A painter--for example, Josef Albers--who preferred not to mix colors could have six different cadmium yellow medium shades, all from different manufacturers.

Pigments are ground in the factory on large mills that can hold vast amounts of pigment.  The pigment and the various oils are weighed out and dumped into a large vessel, and the vessel is placed under a mixer that stirs the ingredients.  This "rough mix" is then put into the back of the mill and ground.  When the color comes off the mill, it is checked for shade brilliance and consistency.  The pigment is then put back into the mill and ground again, after which it is placed in smaller containers, covered to keep out the air, and stored for aging.  This aging process allows the medium to saturate the pigments completely.  The amount of oil used in mixing is so carefully controlled that very seldom will any of it "sweat" to the surface.

The three-roller mills employed are water-cooled, for a machine that is not so cooled can "burn" the pigments.  In addition, the mills have pressure gauges to ensure equal grinding at both ends of the large rollers.  Each final run produces up to 60 gallons of pigment.  After aging and testing, the pigment is emptied into a group of still smaller containers, taken to the tubing department, and connected to a feeding device that injects an exact amount of paint into tubes rotating.  As the last step in the operation, each batch of pigment is retested for tone and consistency.  All the controls always have to be constant, for a company must produce a color with the knowledge that it can be repeated exactly in the future.

Another piece of valuable information is acquired at a manufacturer's plant: that "student grade" colors, as opposed to "professional" or "artist's grade", are diluted with a great deal of filler, usually aluminum stearate.  This may not harm the tone of the color but it definitely limits its tinting strength.  Test this by comparing the tinting power of a c.p. (chemically pure) cadmium or a cadmium-barium of the artist's grade with cadmium of the student grade variety.  You will find the artist's grade to be at least three times as strong. Aluminum stearate also acts as a stabilizer that prevents the separation of oil from pigment. For this purpose, however, only 2 percent by volume is needed, whereas student grade paints carry between 30 and 50 percent of the filler.  In less expensive student grade pigments, such as earth colors, clay is sometimes used, because it is cheaper than aluminum stearate. Remember that an excess of aluminum stearate may also slow drying time.  In more costly artist's grade paint, beeswax past serves as the stabilizer.  The beeswax paste also prevents the paint from hardening in the tube.

The names of some colors are chosen arbitrarily.  As an example, there is no such pigment as "lemon" yellow.  The pigment inside the tube could be cadmium yellow light, zinc yellow, Hansa yellow, azo (a light fast dye), or chrome yellow.  Learn to read the labels.  Chrome yellow, for instance, is impermanent, darkens quickly, and should be avoided.  If some companies still produce chrome yellow, it is only because its exact shade is in demand by amateurs, or professionals who do not know or care.

There are and have been controlled experiments to measure the permanency of pigments, their fading, drying time, and the percentage of oil needed to grind each one.  But the actual handling preferences for individual pigments are the result of personal experience.

A Basic Permanent Palette   coming soon

Drying Time of Pigments in Oil   coming soon

Colorfastness   coming soon

Identifying Pigments   coming soon

Grinding Pigments   coming soon