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A History of Colors

MODERN / MINERAL
Artists have painted images of the natural and supernatural worlds for more than 30,000 years. For their materials, prehistoric painters reached into the earth. Compounds of iron oxides yield muted colors of red, yellow and brown. Carbon makes a strong black with a bluish tinge, while bone black makes a warmer color. Calcium carbonate (marble dust) is easy to find and make into a pigment. Until the Industrial Revolution, the majority of colors on artists' palettes were lightfast earth colors, which is why the Old Masters' paintings are mostly brown.

During the Industrial Revolution, oil colors were from inorganic pigments that are compounds of minerals, such as cobalt, cadmium, and manganese. These are the mineral colors, and they were developed for every hue on the color wheel. Their intense mass tones complemented earth colors on painters' palettes and replaced paints made from expensive semiprecious stones, fugitive colors, or highly toxic compounds.

Impressionism would have been impossible without this full spectrum of pigments packaged for the first time as oil colors in tubes. While intense in their mass tones, mineral colors grey down when mixed with white. This attribute makes them particularly valuable for painting natural light (landscape, portraiture and still life) because most colors of the natural world have a strong element of grey. Mineral colors are also the most opaque artists' colors.

Modern colors are very similar in masstone to the mineral colors. ("Masstone" refers to the oil color as it comes from the tube.) However modern colors and mineral colors behave differently when mixed with mediums, mixed with white (tinted), or mixed with other colors to produce secondaries. Modern colors are noted for their intense tinting strength and transparency. Most important, they do not grey down when mixed with white.

Innovation in color chemistry throughout the 20th century has presented painters with another full spectrum of colors of modern organic pigments. These pigments are called organic because they are made from chemical compounds with a central carbon atom. They are primarily made for commercial printing, plastics, and auto paints. Among thousands of new colorants made in the twentieth century, only a few, including phthalo, hansa and quinacridone, are lightfast enough to be used in artists' colors. These pigments we call the "modern colors."

Unfortunately, many modern colors were introduced as "hues" or replacements for more expensive mineral colors such as cadmium and cobalt. But the modern colors have their own characteristics. These become obvious when they are thinned or mixed with white or other colors. Unlike the mineral colors, modern colors produce high key colors in masstone, transparency and tint. While their characteristics offer painters more color possibilities, modern colors can disappoint those who use them for natural light effects because they do not grey down.

Mineral colors

Many inorganic pigments are made by heating compounds such as cobalt and aluminum to temperatures more than 2,000 degrees F for long periods of time. High priced raw materials plus the high costs of manufacturing make cobalt and cadmium colors particularly expensive. Colors from a family of mineral pigments shift from light (Cadmium Yellow Light) to dark (Cadmium Yellow Deep).

They grey down when mixed with white which is perfect for capturing light of the natural world. Mineral based pigments have larger pigment sizes and lower tinting strengths than modern colors. They are leaner and naturally more matte. Mineral colors are mostly opaque. Ultramarine Blue and Viridian are exceptions; these are semi-transparent. Most mineral colors have excellent lightfastness rating (I).

Modern colors

Modern organic pigments are made in high tech factories from molecular materials which have central atoms of carbon. Most modern colors, including quinacridone, pthalo and perylene are transparent. Hansa and napthol are semi-transparent. Because of their small particle sizes and higher oil absorption (fatter), modern pigments make colors of very high tinting strength that are naturally more glossy.

When mixed with white, modern colors make incredibly intense tints. They stay high key in mixtures unless a complement is added. Rather than shift colors from light to dark, a family of modern colors shifts from warm (Phthalo Green Yellow Shade) to cool (Phthalo Green). Some modern colors  have excellent lightfastness ratings (I) and some have very good lightfastness ratings (II). Tubes of artists' grade colors are marked with a lightfastness rating.

Here are some valuable pairings of mineral and modern colors to explore:

To boost: Add:
Cadmium Yellows Hansa yellows
Cadmium Orange Mono Orange
Cadmium Reds Napthol Reds
Cobalt Violet & Manganese Violet Dioxazine Purple
Cobalt Blue & Ultramarine Blue Phthalo Blue
Viridian & Cobalt Green Phthalo Green
Alizarin Crimson Quinacridone Red / Magenta

WHITE

Titanium White is made from titanium dioxide which was first discovered in the late 18th century. High quality, pure titanium dioxide reflects 97.2% of incident light. It is the most brilliant of the white pigments. Titanium White is non toxic and less prone to yellowing and cracking than Lead White (especially when a small amount of zinc oxide is added to the formula).

Zinc White is made from zinc oxide. As early as 1785, painters were using Zinc White instead of Lead White. Compared to all other whites, Zinc White has less hiding power. It dries more slowly so painters who want to paint wet into wet over a long time will find it useful. Zinc White is the coolest white. It has a slightly bluish cast. Being more transparent than other whites, Zinc is good for glazing and scumbling. Its creamy texture makes it a great choice when using impasto techniques or for making paintings in one sitting (alla prima).



For health reasons, white made from titanium and zinc replaced Lead White on the palettes of most American painters by the mid-twentieth century. But some painters still prefer the working properties of Lead White (Flake White).

RED

Red is the symbol of active mind. In China, ruby is a symbol of long life. In Ireland the red hand protects the innocent from harm. In England, physicians wore red robes as a symbol of the healing profession. Red means love. In Goethe's color system, red has the highest energy. Its sound is middle C.

Artists have always wanted bright permanent reds and have historically worked with hazardous, rare, and expensive materials to get them. The artists' color Vermilion was originally prepared from cinnabar, a soft bright red mineral that is the principal ore of mercury. The mural artists of Pompeii used cinnabar from mines in Almaden, Spain. Since the thirteenth century CE, Vermilion has been artificially synthesized from mercury and sulfur. This Vermilion is a dense opaque color, but it may blacken when exposed to the air or when painted next to white lead.

The red earths were common in mural painting and easel painting throughout history. Red earths are completely permanent and lightfast, but they are dull when compared to the bright reds made from mercury. Other brighter reds were made from organic matter such as the madder root, dried bodies of insects or pomegranate peel. But they were not lightfast.

It 1868 Alizarin was artificially synthesized and the madder root industry was ruined. A "lake color," Alizarin Crimson is a dye bonded onto alumina hydrate which is then used as a pigment. Alizarin Crimson is the least permanent red commonly found in artists' palettes today.

Cadmium Red was first manufactured at the turn of the 20th Century. It is a bright red that ranges in shades from orange/red to maroon. It is lightfast, permanent and considerably less toxic than Vermilion. By the 1930's Cadmium Red had replaced Vermilion on artists' palettes. 

Since Cadmiums were first introduced, many more reds have been developed and made into artists' colors. These modern organic reds include the semi-transparent Napthol and Perinone Reds and the beautifully transparent Perylene and Quinacridone Reds. These wonderful reds offer significant advantages in lightfastness over Alizarin.

Using transparent reds opens possibilities that were unthinkable before this century. Thinning down an opaque color does not increase transparency; it merely puts more space between the particles of pigments. Instead of thinning down an opaque color, painters can use a Perylene Red and achieve a warm, lightfast red that is completely transparent. We can only imagine what Turner could have done with these colors.

Napthol Red is a modern organic color which remains high key even in its tint. This is very useful, but it can be confusing. Napthol Red was originally introduced as a Cadmium Red Hue, but is important to realize that the two colors behave very differently when mixed with white. Cadmium Red greys down. Napthol Red does not.

ORANGE

"Naranj" is Arabic for ORANGE. It is derived from a Sanskrit word for "fruit approved by elephants." Arab traders brought oranges to Europe around the 11th century CE. The word "orange" most often brings food to mind. It is the color of safety. Orange life vests are easily seen on dark and stormy seas. Always a warm advancing color, orange is the forerunner of the sun. Unlike red and yellow, when deepened, orange becomes brighter instead of darker. It is the Autumn.

Few colorants produce pure orange. During the Middle Ages, orange mineral, also called minium, provided a rich and opaque pigment that was used in easel painting and illuminated manuscripts. It was made by prolonged heating of white lead over an open fire. Noticeably toxic, Chinese bookmakers painted the edges of paper with orange mineral to save their books from silverfish. Orpiment, an extremely poisonous sulfide of arsenic, was mined as a yellow to reddish-yellow pigment. Its noxious sulfur fumes and highly reactive properties made orpiment a color of last choice. Realgar, another poisonous pigment found in the earth, made a better orange, but it was incompatible with lead or copper based pigments.

Cadmium Orange was the first true orange. It is a pure hue with excellent opacity and low toxicity compared to its predecessors. Around 1820, yellow cadmium sulfide was discovered as an impurity in the processing of zinc ores. The name cadmium is derived from cadmia fornacum, a type of furnace used to smelt zinc. In experiments, chemists used hydrogen sulfide to precipitate the yellow colorant from solutions of cadmium salts. By 1880, they further discovered by gradually increasing the amount of selenium, they could produce deeper shades of cadmium orange and all shades of cadmium red.

Monoacetolone (Mono) Orange is a modern high key color. It offers painters a pure hue that is more transparent than Cadmium Orange and remains brighter in its tint when mixed with white. Painters can also create subtle color shifts by applying various thicknesses of transparent orange.

YELLOW

The color yellow appears to advance. It has the highest reflectivity of any color. The yellow nimbus of the Egyptians symbolized power. The halo of the saints is an aura of glory. Yellow is the color of the Buddha. According to a 19th century seer, yellow emanates from intellectual persons. In synesthesia, the sound of the oboe is clear yellow.

Today hearing "yellow" most painters will see Cadmium Yellow - brilliant and opaque. Artists' grade Cadmium Yellow oil colors are made from chemically pure cadmium-sulfide pigments. Cadmium is a silvery metal that occurs in nature, but cadmium pigments are manufactured. Oil colors were first made from cadmium yellow pigments in 1819. Cadmium Yellow replaced toxic chrome (lead) yellows. Although more expensive than Chrome Yellow, Cadmium Yellow was used by landscape painters, including Claude Monet, because of its higher chroma and its greater purity of color.

Before the Industrial Revolution, painters used Yellow Ochres or Orpiment (sulfide of arsenic). Occasionally painters found some Gamboge, a strongly colored secretion from trees that resembles amber. Gamboge was used for glazing before Indian Yellow became available in the middle of the 19th century. To make Indian Yellow, cows were force fed mango leaves and given no water. Their urine was collected in dirt balls and sold as "pigment." The resulting artists' color was a warm transparent glazing yellow. But Indian Yellow was lost somewhere between the decline of cruelty to animals and the rise of manufactured pigments.

In the 20th century, the most transparent of the yellows that we call "Indian Yellow" is tartrazine yellow (PY 100). In its transparency, it makes a glowing warm yellow -- as if a painting were suddenly lit with summer sunshine. Tartrazine yellow in oil is only about as lightfast as Alizarin Crimson, which means that if a painting is subjected to strong sunlight there will be some fading.  Indian Yellow will continue to be made from tartrazine yellow pigment until a suitable replacement is available. Painters who love the extraordinary effects that Indian Yellow produces, should consider the issue of lightfastness and make paintings for interior spaces on which no direct sunlight falls, and or use a varnish with a UV absorber.

Hansa yellow pigments were first made in Germany just before World War I. They are organic pigments that are semi-transparent and lightfast (Hansa Yellow Light is Lightfastness II, and Hansa Yellow Medium & Deep are Lightfastness I). In their masstones, Hansa Yellows resemble Cadmium Yellows but the similarity ends there. Hansa Yellows make more intense tints and cleaner secondaries, especially when mixed with other organic (modern) colors like Phthalo Blue and Green. Because they are more transparent, Hansa Yellows have great value as glazing colors. Painters can also take advantage of the "temperature" shifts of the Hansas-from coolest yellow (Hansa Yellow Light) to warm golden yellow (Hansa Yellow Deep).

GREEN

On a fabulous emerald tablet, Hermes Trismegistus inscribed his alchemical formula. Green is the Druid's color of learning. The Holy Grail was the quest of the Green Knight. Mo-li Ch'ing, guardian of the East, is pictured with a green face and a copper beard. Green is a primary of light but not of pigments.

Artists traditionally made greens by glazing Egyptian Blue (a glass frit called smalt) over Naples Yellow (a naturally occurring lead antimoniate). Few green pigments are found naturally. Terra Verte, or green earth, is made from volcanic celadonite and/or a mineral of sedimentary origin. Green earth was used as a bole for gilding and as underpainting for flesh tones in Medieval painting (verdaccio). Brighter green colorants were made by using pale green earth pigments as a substrate for fugitive dyes made from juice of rue, parsley or columbine.

Cennini preferred Verdigris to green earth. Verdigris ("green of Greece") is a bluish green pigment that was used by artists' of Greece and Rome and was found on the walls of Pompeii. Verdigris was a common color for draperies in Italian and Dutch easel painting from the 15th through the 17th centuries. In landscape paintings Verdigris was often warmed with Gamboge. To make Verdigris, copper plates were covered with grape skins. Their fermentation caused a green crust to form on the copper. Pigment was made by scraping the green crust off and processing it further with wine or vinegar. Verdigris is reactive and unstable, requiring painters to use isolating varnishes to protect its color. While searching for a warmer, more permanent color, some painters experimented with Emerald Green (Schweinfurt). This is a poisonous copper aceto-arsenite that was most successfully used as a rat poison in the sewers of Paris.

Viridian (hydrated chromium oxide) was available as an oil color by 1838 and immediately replaced Verdigris and Emerald Green. It is brighter and more lightfast than Viridian. It has good tinting strength and is nontoxic. Cobalt Green which is made from a compound of oxides of cobalt and zinc, found favor with 19th century landscape painters after 1856. It is a pure green, completely lightfast and opaque, with low tinting strength. Cobalt Green makes valuable greys and is especially valuable for painting the American Southwest where green should be kept to a muted minimum.

Phthalocyanine (Phthalo) Green, first made in 1927, most closely resembles Verdigris. Beautifully transparent, Phthalo Green is completely lightfast and has an extraordinary tinting strength. Phthalo Green is a modern color. Phthalo Green is the cooler or blue shade, and Phthalo Green Yellow Shade is the warmer. Painters may find Phthalo Green Y.S. easier to use since most greens in the world have a high degree of yellow in them. Either shade can be used to "boost" mineral colors in their tints.

BLUE

Blue is the soothing color of intellect, a symbol of devotion to noble ideas. While blue is abundant in sky and water, it is scarce under ground. Until the beginning of the 18th century, the only blue oil colors were made from semi-precious stones, like lapis lazuli and azurite, or a ground cobalt blue glass called smalt.

Painters who did not live in cosmopolitan areas or painters who were poor never used any blue at all. Painters like Jan van Eyck used lapis but only at the request of his patrons. Owning an oil painting made with expensive blues was a status symbol for Dutch merchants.

In 1704, Prussian Blue discovered by accident while a chemist was trying to formulate artificial crimson. It was first precipitated from salt, potash and a chemical compound made from blood. Prussian Blue has a high tinting strength and is lightfast. Prussian Blue is especially beautiful in its transparency.

Cobalt Blue is considered "true blue." In the 16th century, cobalt ore was commonly seen shimmering in the lights from miners' lamps inside silver mines. The miners named the ore "Kobold"-Goblin. Cobalt Blue was first made from cobalt ore in 1775. Cobalt Blue pigment is perfectly lightfast and the most permanent of all pigments used to make artists' colors. It is expensive today for two reasons. The price of raw cobalt ore is controlled by the government of Zaire which depends heavily on cobalt mining revenues. And the cost of processing the ore into pigment is high because it consumes tremendous amounts of natural gas.

Ultramarine Blue was first made in 1824 from the calcination of sulfur with other minerals. Having nearly an identical chemical composition, it replaced lapis lazuli. Almost overnight, the most expensive color on the artists' palette became one of the least expensive and the most widely available. Many shades are produced from violet to green. Today artists generally consider Ultramarine Blue a warm lightfast blue with moderate tinting strength and beautiful transparency. Artists have always recognized it as a great glazing color.

Phthalocyanine Blue was first discovered in 1928 but not developed as a pigment until the mid-1930's. The demand for the color came from commercial printers who wanted a cyan to replace Prussian Blue. Today the blues used in commercial printing are Phthalos. Most red and yellow process inks fade but never Phthalo Blue! It is completely lightfast.

Phthalo Blue is a clean, pure color with great transparency and high tinting strength. Phthalo Blue is similar to Prussian Blue in masstone. But each color behaves very differently when mixed with white. Phthalo Blue remains a pure intense blue, while Prussian Blue gives up intensity and becomes a little smoky. Of the modern colors, Phthalo Blues are among the most compatible with the mineral colors. Once painters can control the color strength, they find that the Phthalo Blues make predictable mixed colors. Try mixing Phthalo Blues with yellows to make greens.

VIOLET

There is violet light but no purple light. Purple is not abundant in nature. Phoenicians had to grind millions of mollusc "purpura" shells to make enough dye for their emperors' clothes. Purple is the color of power and of power corrupted, wine and wantonness. Usually a mixed color made from a cool red and a warm blue, purple symbolizes both sensuality and repentance. Purple is the color of Lent. Kandinsky described violet as red withdrawn from humanity by blue.

The compound manganese phosphate was first discovered in 1868. It makes semi-transparent Manganese Violet oil color, a warm, reddish violet with moderate tinting strength. Cobalt Violet, cobalt phosphate, was discovered just before Manganese Violet. Cobalt Violet is a pure hue that cannot be mixed from other colors. Cool in its masstone, Cobalt Violet greys down considerably when mixed with white. Considering its expense, Cobalt Violet is used mostly as a top coat color (except for those who are trapped by its charms). The modern Dioxazine Purple has the strongest tinting strength of all pigments. A cold color, Dioxazine Purple is completely transparent and useful as a high key tint.

Some painters never buy violet or purple. They mix it using Alizarin Crimson and Ultramarine Blue. While a decent color, the purple mixed using Alizarin Crimson is not lightfast. Within 100 years that mixture will not be purple, it will be blue. Mixing Ultramarine Blue with lightfast and transparent Quinacridone Red or Magenta will make a permanent purple of much higher chroma.

EARTH COLORS

Old Masters' paintings were mostly brown because most available pigments were brown. Earth colors are made from natural iron oxides that are found all over the earth in various shades of brown and muted shades of red, orange, yellow, and green. Other minerals deposited with iron oxides, such as calcium, manganese or carbon, effect their colors.

Ochre is clay and silica colored with various kinds of iron oxides. The famous "Terra di Siena" is a hydrated iron oxide from Tuscany. It contains silicates and aluminates that increase the transparency of the pigment. Umber is found in sites where naturally occurring manganese dioxide combines with the iron. Pigments containing manganese make quick drying oil colors. Burnt Umber and Burnt Sienna are made by roasting earth pigments until the desired reddish colors are produced.

In the studios of the Old Masters, painters pushed against the limitations of their colors. Sienna and Umber are key colors in creating effects of depth like Caravaggio's chiaroscuro or Leonardo's fumato with its almost imperceptible transitions from light to dark.

A hundred years after the Masters, there was a revival in their techniques. Asphaltum glazes were used to make oil paintings look artificially old. Organic in nature, Asphaltum was coal black and crumbly. The pigment was not ground into oil but rather melted into oil and turpentine. Among the few transparent colors, Asphaltum was used in glazing and shading. But it was fugitive. By the end of the 18th century, painters were dissuaded from using the color because it caused paintings to fade and deteriorate at an alarming rate.

In the 18th Century terra di Colonia or Cassel earth was renamed Van Dyke Brown after the great painter who loved this dark transparent color. Known as an "earth pigment" because it was dug out of the ground, Van Dyke Brown was actually organic because it was derived from coarse peat. It was also fugitive. 

During the past decade, painters' interests have turned again toward the techniques of Renaissance masters. Like their predecessors contemporary painters are pushing against the limitations of their colors. We are asked if earth colors were more transparent hundreds of years ago? The answer is yes. Today's earth pigments are more opaque. The once rich deposits of earths in Siena, Corsica and Cyprus are nearly mined out. Today's earth colors must be mined from various locations and mixed together to achieve consistent colors. The result is a rise in cost and a decline in transparency. Painters have noticed this change.

But there is an answer, stunning new earth pigments were recently developed to meet demands of industry.  These are transparent forms of Mars colors (synthetic iron oxides) that have excellent lightfastness ratings just like natural iron oxides.

BLACK

Black, first among the alchemical principals, is the action of fire. Charcoal was probably the first drawing tool. With white chalk and red earth colors, black formed the palette of prehistoric painters. Da Vinci counted black pigments among the most important to create tone, tint and shade. Tintoretto often under painted in black. While long associated with darkness and mourning, black has been a popular fashion color since the 16th century CE.

The making of the color "Elephantium" was first described in the 4th century BCE. Ivory scraps were tightly packed into clay pots, excluding as much air as possible. Covered with an iron lid, the ivory was heated in kilns to make ivory black. This very expensive process was used until 1929 when the last factory in Germany closed. Before the 20th century, various organic materials, including animal bones, were calcined together to form different colors of blacks. Neither the warm, purplish "vine black" made from vines, wine lees and grape skins, nor a bluish fruit stone black, made from burning pits, was completely lightfast.

At least since the time of the Neo-Impressionists there has been a controversy among painters about making greys. Thinking greys made from black are lifeless, some painters never allow black on their palettes. They only make greys from complements. Certainly overusing black in a painting will make it look dirty. But neutral greys made from black and white are the same as neutral greys made from exact complements. Greys made from complements are more lively because they are incomplete mixtures. The grey is created in the eye from an incomplete mixture of one color next to another.

In the 19th century better manufacturing methods for bone black yielded darker, more dense pigments that were less inexpensive. So bone black replaced genuine ivory black on artists' palettes. Essentially bone and ivory blacks are the same compounds of carbon and calcium, and pigment color and quality compare so favorably that artists' oil color made today from bone black is called Ivory Black. Ivory Black is a good, all purpose black that has a weak tinting strength and is slightly warm in its transparency. This is a good choice for mixing greys, tinting and mixing with other colors.

Mars Black is an artificial mineral pigment made from iron metal. It is well named for the god of war. Mars Black has approximately three times the tinting strength of Ivory Black and is very opaque. Cool in its masstone and strong, Mars Black is often the choice of the Neo-Expressionists and others who want make black opaque marks in thick wet paintings. It also is the leanest black and dries more quickly than Ivory. It is slightly warm in its tint. Mars Black is not as black a black as Ivory Black.

Van Dyke Brown is a warm black, which is completely lightfast, made from bone black and iron oxide. Payne's grey is the coolest black, made from Mars Black and Ultramarine Blue.

Copper Chromite Black made from the calcination of copper oxide and chromium oxide is a modern, more expensive black. This Copper Black is truly unique. Without the addition of painting mediums, it dries to a matte finish and looks like slate. Its tint may be the most appealing characteristic of Copper Chromite Black. Its tint is truly neutral.

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