One enduring concept has become clear to me during my years of historical pigment research. The colors used in world cultures throughout the ages are many of the very same pigments. The earth itself over thousands of centuries has created a harmonious palette of archival and readily available colors to create some of the most beautiful and enduring … [Read more...] about The World Over
Historical Pigments
Festival of Panathenaea
Well, here is the great unveiling. For the past many months, this 30x30 stretch of canvas has been my labor of love. After much research into topics for use as a theme, the Festival of Panathenaea became an easy choice because the possibilities for subject matter were so colorful, plentiful, and titillating. As mentioned before, … [Read more...] about Festival of Panathenaea
Uber Umber
There are several colors I could not do without on my palette. This is a splendid very dark burnt umber from Cypress. It is very dark almost black with a warm undertone and is easy to make. There are many versions of this pigment, but this dark one is my favorite. One terrific and useful characteristic of this pigment is the drying quality; … [Read more...] about Uber Umber
Challenges
Many attempts and many methods were tried and aborted before this beautiful surface was achieved on my painting, shown above. Initially, I used a wet on wet technique by applying a mixture of yellow ochre, red iron oxide, and white to replicate the actual color of the clay on the Greek vessel. Then, atop the wet surface I applied a mixture of black … [Read more...] about Challenges
Greek Vases 101
The black figure style of Greek vase painting was invented about 700 BCE and crossed over into the Golden 5th century BCE when the red figure style was adopted. The technique of the former method was to apply a liquid clay called slip over the terracotta colored surface of the vessel. This created black silhouettes atop the reddish color. This was … [Read more...] about Greek Vases 101
Nicosia Green Earth
Left - Pure Nicosia Green Earth mixed with Linseed Middle - Holbein Silver White Right - Exact beads of each color mixed together Nicosia Green Earth has many differing properties than Bohemian. This one has far lower saturation qualities. As you can see, mixing the same size bead together resulted in a much more pastel tone. This is a … [Read more...] about Nicosia Green Earth