The Goblin Color: Cobalt January 8, 2018 20:06
Today I ordered a bunch of cobalt pigment dispersions from Guerra: Cobalt Bermuda Blue, Green Yellow, Titanate Blue Green (which I think has great possibilities for moonlit mist), Green Blue (reminds me of spruce trees), Forest Green (great landscape green), Blue Green, and Nickel Green (another good possibility for mist - shown). Cobalt has been used to color glass for centuries and got its name from the ill-tempered gnomes (kobolds) that populate German mines and can cause havoc for miners. Cobalt in particular was problematic because it might look blue as copper or similar to silver but when smelted would release arsenic. I'm not sure if it was this poisonousness or its tricksiness that got it associated with kobolds. I always avoided it because of its toxicity and because I dislike plain cobalt blue as a paint (love it in glass), but I read recently that cobalt pigments are now produced with particles that are too large to be absorbed through the skin. I can hardly wait to try these babies--and I just got a notice from UPS that these pigments will be delivered tomorrow. YES!
I also got a bunch of non-cobalt yellows and oranges, mostly for mixing with other stuff. When working on my most recent painting, I thought my bismuth yellow was just what I needed, but it was way way louder in pigment dispersion form than it had ever been in watercolor, acrylic, or oils. I was used to it being a kind of butter yellow, and this stuff is more like greenish daffodil. I had to cover it with a bunch of titanium to crank it down. And since my other yellow is a schoolbus yellow, I knew I needed some other yellows for mixing and for making "glow." So I got orange-yellow nickel dioxine yellow (PY153), a more neutral benzimidazolone yellow (PY154 - shown), and nickel azomethine yellow (PY150), which is a very wonderful yellow for painting plants. At full strength it's kind of brownish, but as you dilute it, it becomes the most wonderful botanical yellow like you would see in gourds. It was one of my favorite yellows in both watercolor and acrylics, so I hope it will be helpful in casein.
I got a beautiful benzimidazolone orange for mixing. The older I get, the more I love orange, which I consider to be a kind of spirit color for me, especially the more rust-colored or carnelian oranges. So I was a sucker for a very beautiful quinacridone red gold (red orange) that is a mixture of much beloved PO49 (quinacridone gold, which is no longer being produced) and innocent passerby PR206 (quinacridone maroon). I don't usually like the quincridones much, but this is a beauty! I also scooped up a very beautiful burnt sienna, a color I usually don't care for, but theirs is a luscious reddish, so I had to have it.