Why does Anthraquinone Blue look so much like Indanthrone Blue? And what's in Undersea Green?
Paint manufacturers offer a bewildering selection of colors, all with different names. This makes it difficult to compare colors between manufacturers, or to identify what colors are contained in a mixture.
If you look closely on your tubes of artist quality paints, you'll see an alpha-numeric designation, usually two letters (and usually beginning with "P"), and two or three numbers. This refers to a system developed by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) for identifying the basic colors. Knowing a little about this system helps solve some of the mysteries surrounding paint colors.
Each color family is designated by a 2 or 3 letter abbreviation. For example, blues all carry the designation "PB" (Pigment Blue); yellows, "PY" (Pigment Yellow), and so on.
That Indanthrone Blue, for example, is PB60. If you look on a tube of Maimeri Blu's Faience Blue, you will see it described as "Anthraquinone Blue", with the designation PB60. So Indanthrone Blue, Anthraquinone Blue, and Faience Blue are essentially all the same color. Of course, some variation between manufacturers is always to be expected.
Undersea Green, a popular mixed dark green from Daniel Smith, turns out to be a mixture of Ultramarine Blue (PB29) and Quinacridone Deep Gold (PO49). So if you were so inclined you could mix this color up yourself.
Checking the ASTM designation on your paints will help you understand what's really in that paint tube with the exciting name.
A complete listing of the color designations is contained in The Artist's Handbook of Materials and Techniques: Fifth Edition, Revised and Updated (Reference)
, an indispensable volume for all artists.
I have lots of tubes of watercolor paint. I love color and I love to try out new ones. I'll take a workshop and the instructor will recommend- or even mention- a color, and I need to try it. Or I read about a color in a magazine article and want to see how it works for me.
I was keeping all my paints in a large box. That meant rooting around in it, sometimes for quite a while, to find what I was looking for. I needed a better way to organize my colors.
I found this plastic stacking, and locking, box system at Target. I think this one was for Christmas decorations (hence the green and red color scheme) but Target, and stores like it, carry things like this year round. I bought two sets with four boxes each.
In set number one I have a box for each primary color, plus greens. In set number two are my earth colors, like sepia, burnt sienna and the like; purples; and "miscellaneous" (student grade paints, watercolor sticks and so on). I have one box at the bottom available for overflow.
This system has been working very well for me. If I need a particular color, I know which box I need to open, and I can see at a glance what colors I have. The handles at the top allows me to carry the whole business around if I need to. The plastic insides wipe clean if any stray paint gets on them.
Have you found any good organizing systems for your paints or other supplies?
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| "Generating Power" |
Baseball is a great subject for art. The atmosphere, the movement, and the interactions between players, umpires and fans provide lots of opportunities for interesting paintings and drawings.
I take a small sketchbook with me to games. I sketch quickly and try to capture the positions of the players, impressions of the crowd, batting and pitching stances, and the like. Those little sketches are good reference for later paintings. I also take photos at the game, and sometimes make sketches from photos that appear in the newspaper, like the one below from a photo by Associated Press photographer Eric Risberg.
If I can capture even a small portion of the excitement of the game, and the feeling of being there in person, I consider my work a success.
Like most artists, I have a stack of paintings that didn't quite work the way I wanted. I can't bring myself to throw them out but I certainly don't want to display them.
I've been able to rescue some of those old paintings using a fairly new product, Daniel Smith Watercolor Ground, available from Daniel Smith Art Supplies. I use the ground to cover unwanted areas and to create texture. When it dries (which takes several days), I can then go back and paint, draw and/or collage over those areas.
Here's an example. I really liked the bright trees in this painting, but the background was a very uniform, and boring, dark brown, so the overall effect was disappointing. I covered the unwanted areas with the watercolor ground, using a 2 inch coarse brush. I worked around the trees but wasn't overly fussy about it.
When the watercolor ground dried, I decided to collage the bottom left area with some Japanese paper in a floral design that complemented the tree colors. Then I created a blue sky area and a soft purple foreground in watercolor, and finished with branches done in watercolor pencil.
I was pleased with the result, and feel that the watercolor ground gives the painting, which I named "Dream Scene", a foggy, dreamy quality.
I'd love to hear about other artists' experiences with reworking their "failures".
