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manufacturers
are encouraging painters to follow what are at
best dubious techniques.
Of course you can ‘stir’ water soluble oils,
acrylics and watercolour paints together* but will
they stand the test of even a short time? (20yrs?)
(* You can also stir sand and butter together!!
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Colour mixing
Q. I have your colour mixing swatch book and I
am trying to produce a colour called W***** Violet
which I use in flower painting. (In watercolour).
It’s very clean and transparent. I have mixed
Quinacridone Violet with Ultramarine in varying
degrees but seem unable to reproduce the very
light shade. Can you help please. |
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A. You will not be able to exactly match W*****
Violet using Quinacridone Violet and Ultramarine
Blue. However, you will be very close and,
most importantly, you will have mixes which
are reliable. Unless changes have been made
recently, the pigment used in W***** Violet
(watercolour), is PV23BS/RS. This gives a very
clear and bright violet – for a time. It is known
throughout the art materials trade to be a
pigment which fades very rapidly when exposed
to light. The ASTM, an official body, rated it to be
unsuitable for artist quality paints.
As with many other very bright colourants
used by artists, temporary brightness has to
be weighed against future fading. However, it
could well be that the company have changed the
formula. If this is so, and if you wish me to look
into the situation for you, please send me the
information that you find on the tube.
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Q. The information on the tube reads:-
Carbazole Dioxazine PV 23. I hope this is
sufficient for your needs |
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A. There are two basic types of PV23, one leans
towards red (PV23RS) and the other towards
blue (PV23BS). The PV23RS, when used in
a watercolour paint tested ASTM 111 ‘Not
sufficiently lightfast to be used in artist quality
paints – can fade rather badly, particularly the
tints’. PV23BS, as a watercolour paint was rated
even lower, ASTM 1V ‘Pigments falling into this
category will fade rapidly’. |
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Complementaries
Q. Am I correct in understanding that
when trying to structure a painting on a
complementary colour scheme, while it is
useful to know the exact mixing partner, one
can also feel free to use the neighboring hue as well |
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| A. An understanding of colour will allow flexibility
in its use. It should never be seen as a set of
‘rules’. The close complementary pair orange-red
and blue-green (above), can be darkened by each
other (whilst retaining their characters), and will
enhance each other visually. However: |
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| there is no reason why one should not move to
either side of each colour. In the example shown
above the orange-red has been exchanged for a
violet-red. They will not retain their character so
accurately when darkened but they will offer some
interesting visual arrangements. |
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| Alternatively the more general pair, orange-red
and mid-green can be employed. |
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