This is just a test. Actually several tests. Recently I have been reading up a lot on pigments and paints especially the web sites called 'Color of art pigment database' by David Myers, and 'Handprint' by Bruce MacEvoy. Despite having painted for over 30 years there were many things that I was not aware of regarding paints and pigments. I decided to remove cereulean blue awhile ago because it contained cobalt, although I had added it back to my pallet just for painting the sky last summer, and now I took out for good. From reading, it seems that alizarin crimson, one of my workhorse paints that is probably in every painting I ever did to some extent, is prone to fading. Come to think of it, once I gave a painting to some family friends and they hung it in the direct sunlight, and every time we visited it had faded more, so I know it is true! Replacing alizarin crimson was not easy, Bruce MacEvoy wrote that it can be replaced with perylene maroon (PR179) mixed with other reds or violets, so I bought some recently. (The code refers the pigment-red-#179.
The painting shown above mostly contains 3 colours including winsor green (PG7), phthalo blue (PB15), and perylene maroon. You see their pure forms on the left with the 3 shapes, and then in the middle pointy oval shape you see what they look like when they are glazed on top of each other in successive layers. On the ground the three were mixed on the pallet to create brown, and in the sky they were combined in a colour gradation. Finally, the objects on the right put the colours together like a puzzle. The bright yellow on the right-most shape is pure Sennelier Yellow (PY154) also known as benzimidazolone or azo yellow, I just added that for colour balance in the overall picture. All of the paints I have selected for my new palette are considered non-toxic, and have the highest rating for lightfastness. That means they will basically not fade much even in sun light.
2 3/4" x 10 1/2" cold press watercolour, February 2020
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