Lab Book #22: Doodle Roulette, new paints, old jokes

 

To test out my new paints I made a quick doodleism painting from my laboratory notebook #22 which has been quite full of ideas. The doodles on these pages weren't very coherent, so I used the swirling eddy form in the middle - slightly off center - as the core of the design. The pencil is churning its way through, and appears melted on the beach. A little nod to Dali, who often included melting items most famously clocks in his paintings. Most of the colours here are from my new paints I bought today, although I threw in some yellow and other accent colours from my palette. Its official now, I have all the colours. Well, almost.

Doodle Roulette 9 x 10 3/4" cold press, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2529)

 

Here are the new colours with pigment code and brand, from left to right: 

Pyrrole Red (PR254) Holbein

Purple Magenta pink (PR122) Schmincke

Winsor Orange Red Shade (PO73) Winsor and Newton

Burnt Umber brown (PBr7) M. Graham

Raw Umber brown (PBr7) M. Graham

Prussian Blue (PB27) Winsor and Newton (with phthalo and indo blue comparisons)

Viridian Hue green (PG7) Holbein

Ivory Black (PBk9) M. Graham

     And here are a few obligatory notes...

Pyrrole red, any colour that is also known as Ferrari red is okay with me! I already have a small 5mL tube of this, and got a larger 15mL one today.

Purple Magenta, also a re-buy, I had this paint before and decided to sacrifice the tube last year to produce "Your Melting Heart", totally worth it. The real reason I needed this paint was to paint flamingos. Wait for it.

Winsor Orange Red Shade, according to Handprint.com: "I have very high regard for this pigment; it is everything modern pigment chemistry should be."  Bruce MacEvoy. I find it to be the exact colour of construction pylons, which should come in handy this summer. The computer screen makes it look too red though.

Burnt Umber, how do you like your umber? Burnt. Actually it turns reddish, and looks like milk chocolate. Diluted it becomes a flesh tone. With green it makes olive. There is a lot to explore with this one. 

Raw Umber, how do you like your umber? Raw. The main reason I bought this is because M.Graham uses honey in their paint, which does not freeze the same way as the other brands. I've actually bought paint because I can use it at 20℃ below. That will be chapter 2 of my book entitled 'how to paint while freezing your arse off'.

Prussian Blue, (also known as iron blue) another paint I sacrificed last year to produce an abstract painting. Something about this paint is intoxicating. Maybe its the cyanide? It literally has cyanide in it, albeit complexed with iron and non-toxic. In fact, prussian blue is used as a medicine to treat radioactive heavy metal poisoning. Now when I go out painting I'm ready for anything. 

Viridian Hue, the original viridian is base on chromium and goes way back to the time of Claude Monet. Perhaps Monet never had black paint, but viridian and alizarin crimson which he also had, make black when combined. The new viridian hue is phthalocyanine, not cyanide, cyanine. Who knew you needed a degree in chemistry to understand paint names. Luckily I have one of those.

Ivory Black, screw Monet I bought more black paint. Just kidding, I revere Monet like every good landscape painter should. This paint is warm and granular, which makes it surprisingly versatile. It does not actually contain ivory, but they do make it from de-greased animal bones. I am all ready to paint a series of paintings called 'sacks of coal'. Monet painted hay stacks. Darlington painted sacks of coal. I don't even know where to find a sack of coal. Maybe there will be some fresh asphalt somewhere, I'm ready for it.