Our Favourite Pigments
Here are a few of our favourite things..
It is often overwhelming looking at all the colours in your local art store. Below is a list of our favourites. Please be advised that the pigments with a gold star are part of our base kit and pigments without a gold star are not essential but still on the list of favourites. It is best to start with 2 yellows, 2 reds, 2 blues and white- A warm and cool version of each primary colour. Once you have a handle on these you can start to expand you palettes to include secondaries like purple and green!
Here is a shopping list of our basic and comprehensive kits. If you are curious about these pigments you can find out more below. Note the underlined pigments belong to our most basic kits- the pigments we can't live without.
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Titanium White
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Cadmium Yellow Light or Lemon Yellow
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Cadmium Yellow Medium
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Cadmium Red Light
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Cadmium Red Medium
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Alizarin Crimson or Quinacridone Crimson
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Dioxazine Purple
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Ultramarine Blue
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Cobalt Blue
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Phthalo Blue (Green shade)
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Viridian or Phthalo Green (Green shade)
When you are shopping for paints the most important thing to look for is the PIGMENT CODE. Sometimes there are imitations of our favourite pigments and a confusing myriad of names paint manufacturers will give them. Perhaps the most deceiving of all is the term "hue" for imitation pigments. So a Cadmium Red Medium Hue is NOT actually Cadmium Red at all, but a mixture of other pigments that look identical to the authentic pigment in the tube. The difference is what happens when you start mixing. Each pigment behaves a certain way when mixed with others. The hues will behave noticeably different in mixtures. Similariy, a distinguishing feature of real cadmium yellow medium is its opacity. Cheaper alternatives can be much more transparent and are frustrating when you need an opaque pigment. So check the pigment codes! Each pigment is assigned a code and manufacturers will put that code somewhere on the tube.
Titanium White - PW6
Titanium White- The modern go-to white. Opaque. Heavy bodied. Cold. Usually necessary to add a trace element of a yellow or orange to produce a warmer natural white reminiscent of Flake White which was the primary pigment used by artists before the advent of Titanium white.
Cadmium Yellow Light - PY35 OR
Cadmium Lemon - PY53
Cadmium Lemon- A cool, slightly greenish yellow. While capable of making some beautiful neutral tones when combined with purple, it is quite weak in mixtures and sullies easily. Cadmium Yellow light is also a lovely cooler yellow but it is more opaque, less greenish and is a stronger tint in a mixture. Sargent and Sorolla used a combo of Lemon Yellow and Purple quite a bit in their paintings- especially when portraying the chromatic shifts in white objects or materials.
Cadmium Yellow Medium - PY35
Cadmium Yellow Medium - A strong opaque general purpose yellow. Leans toward the orange side of the spectrum. If could only have one yellow on your palette, this would be it!
Cadmium Red Light - PR108
Cadmium Red Light is very similar to Cadmium Red Medium. Cad Red Medium is one of the most essential pigments in our kit but the light version has one thing that sets it apart- it doesn't grey out as easily when mixed with white which makes it great for skin tones.
Cadmium Red Medium - PR 108
Cadmium Red - A strong opaque general purpose ‘brick’ red. It's warm and opaque and one of our 'must have' pigments. Historically - reds have been notoriously tricky to manufacture and cadmium solved many of the issues with reds. Cadmium Red became available in 1919 and artists went all out with it!
Alizarin Crimson - PR83 OR
Quinacridone Crimson - PV19
Alizarin Crimson - A useful cooler red (think red Burgundy wine). It can be hard to find these days, especially in acrylics. So Quinacridones are often used instead. Alizarin and 'Quin' Crimson lean towards purple as opposed to the Cadmium Red that leans more towards orange. Another bonus of Alizarin Crimson is that it is really dark out of the tube. When mixed with Viridian Green it makes for a fabulous chromatic black.
Dioxazine Purple - PV23
Dioxazine Purple is a good general purpose purple. It's more common than the pricey alternative - Cobalt Violet. 'Diox' purple is another one that is fabulously dark out of the tube which can be useful to keep darks dark and chromatic.
Ultramarine Blue - PB29
Ultramarine Blue - The “workhorse” of blues. Good general purpose blue for mixing. Relatively inexpensive today (but was once made from lapis lazuli, a very expensive pigment). Leans a bit toward the red (i.e. purple) side of the spectrum. If you could only have one blue in your kit- this would be it!
Cobalt Blue - PB28
Cobalt blue is a beautiful mid-spectrum “true” blue. It is on the expensive side but makes for gorgeous grey blue skies. It is very opaque but has relatively weak tinting strength. It works quite well for greying out colours but keeping them cool.
Phthalo Blue - PB15 OR
Phthalo Blue (Green shade)
Phthalo blue is a very strong, highly staining blue. Generally on the greener side of the spectrum although there are ‘red shade’ variants. Phthalo is inexpensive - which is why it is often used by manufacturers in imitations of more expensive colours. But BOY does this pigment pack a punch. Using phthalo blue, especially in oils becomes quite obvious as it stains everything. Hazmat suit recommended with this one. If you need to use it in a mixture- a micro dab will often suffice!
Viridian Green - PG18 OR
Phthalo Green (Blue shade) - PG36
Viridian Green is easy to find in oils but often not widely available in acrylics so Phthalo Green is a good alternative. Viridian green is an oldschool pigment that makes for lovely cool greens and it is fabulously dark in the tube. As mentioned - a favourite mixture with Viridian is Alizarin Crimson. They are both a little more on the transparent side but with high tinting strength so they also do a great job in glazes.
Our Favourite Brands in Acrylics and Oils
Acrylics
"Heavy Body" Acrylics are the way to go. You can always thin out a heavy body paint but you cannot thicken up a thin body paint so the heavy body acrylics are essential to giving the most variety of body in your mixtures. Our two favourite acrylic brands are Golden Heavy body and Liquitex Heavy Body.
Oils
There are so many brands of oil paints- with a very wide range of prices but these two brands - Gamblin 1980 and Winsor and Newton 'Winton' make up the majority of pigments in our oil kits. They are reliable and great quality and will not break the bank.
