Margret E. Short Fine Arts

Portland, Oregon artist Margret Short - a modern day master of 17th Century Dutch art using the chiaroscuro technique to create still life and floral paintings.

Uber Umber

by

Burnt_umber_2_1There 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; meaning it dries quickly and by adding it to other colors such as black will make it dry faster also. Black has a reputation for being a notoriously slow dryer, so by adding the burnt umber solves this problem. Burnt Umber is an earth color and has been used since antiquity like most of the other earths.

Chiaroscuro Painting

Oil painting with the chiaroscuro technique illuminates the focus area with a strong light. All other areas are painted with less detail, lower values, and intensity of color giving a mysterious appearance. By putting one or two objects in the important focus area, a strong but simple composition will emerge. Combining these oil painting techniques with a selection of superior natural pigments and oil paints result in the beautiful and evocative quality known as Chiaroscuro Painting.

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  1. Hi Margret
    Your post is very informative as usual. I use Umbers also to make black; any combination of blues and browns create variety of nice deep blacks ( ex; Burnt umber and ultramarine blue) and I can make them lean toward warm or cool as I need to. They dry pretty fast and have a much livelier feel than regular black. The only time I use black is when I need a cool gray which I mix Ivory black with lead white for some areas in flesh tones. Rubens used that in his paintings a lot. Thanks for your blog. It is a treat when I get an update.
    Hamid