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- Basic Guide
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Staining Pigments
These colors flow beautifully. For example, if you start with Phthalo Blue in a sky, just brush it on, tilt the paper a little, add a little Quinacridone Violet here and a little Phthalo Green there, tilt again, and the colors flow with the damp paper. Before a staining color dries, it’s quite easy to life out if it wanders into the wrong areas.
They stay down. Since during the first wash you can shift them, wash them down or lift them out, they’re very adjustable. But! Once that wash dries, they’ll stay where you put them. You can glaze over them or work an area back and forth with several brushstrokes and they won’t dissolve and mix with the fresh paint.
They are powerful. When you need strength in your hue, use stains- in your first wash or first painting of an area. Also use them as powerful undercolors glowing through later washes.
Granulating/Sedimentary Pigments
Beautiful glazed over the stains of the first wash. If you glaze Cerulean or Ultramarine Blue over Anthraquinoid Red, for example, the grains of the sedimentary color seperate enough that minute glimpses of the red sparkle through, combining visually with the blue to create a violet effect.
Imagine color as sound. Take Phthalo Blue-it has a “note”- stronger with more pigment, softer with more water. When it has dried and Indian Red is glazed over it, they may make a similar hue to the violet you would get by mixing them on a palette, but that mixed color would be one note instead of two. Glazed, you see the harmony of the two hues blending, red with blue showing through. This chord effect is a good reason to use at least two washes in a sky-first the stain, then after it has dried, sedimentary colors slightly different in hue which set up a subtle vibration.
Sediment over sediment. When sediments are glazed over sediments, a thickness or density eventually occurs. This may suit certain dense subjects but frequently gets too heavy.
Transparent Pigments
Use for fine tuning and adjusting. Also called luminous pigments, they don’t have the habit of lying on the surface and masking what’s beneath. If your field is too cool, warm it up with a glaze of Aureolin. Or, if your background is jumping around too much, glaze it with Viridian. It will calm down and settle back.
Gentle Glow. Many artists, fearing the irrevocable power of stains and the sedimentary potential for soup, limit their palettes to the gentle glow of Transparents. Their transparency allows each of many glazes to show through, but they are also somewhat weak. Their delicacy works for a Peace rose or delicate skin, but not for a wild storm at sea. The deepest value of these hues straight from the tube is mid-range.
Enter the Quinacridones! Quinacridones not only have the power of Stains in the first wash, they also have the luminosity of the Transparents. This means you can choose Gold, Burnt Orange, Rose and Violet to fill out the spectrum on your palette. Quinacridone Gold and Burnt Orange are gradually phasing out Burnt Sianna and Raw Sienna for many Artists.
