5. Single-Pigment Paint, Part Five: Why it works
Koko Head and Diver from Kawaikui, 2020, Oil on Canvas
I like to keep things simple, and tube colors are no exception. Reducing your palette to its essentials brightens and tightens your paintings.
In this series I’m going to explain:
Part 1. Who are the best manufacturers of artist-grade extra-fine oil colors
Part 2. What single-pigment colors are essential for your paint palette
Part 3. Where to buy single-pigment paint
Part 4. How to tell what pigments your paints use
Part 5. Why you should limit your palette to single-pigment paints
Part 5
Why do single-pigment paints work best, then, Andrew?
Ahh, yes… the most important question: why.
Why don’t my current paints work the way I want?
Why are my colors always muddy?
Why is my paint just not strong enough?
Why can’t I get just the right color for that part of the painting?
Why can’t I have another cookie?
Wait, that last one I don't have a good answer for. Go ahead, have another cookie. You’ve earned it.
All of these questions are good reasons why you’re here learning that limiting your palette is a smart step toward better painting.
Why should you limit your palette? Because single-pigment paints are fundamental: simple, sophisticated, and flexible. You name it, they make it possible; using them fixes all the questions above, and more.
Single-pigment paints, are simultaneously clearer and stronger while being more mixable and controllable. Compared to pre-blended paints, which often use up to half-dozen other ingredients including chalky binders and fugitive dyes to brighten your color cheaply so they look great coming out of the tube but then surprise you with dull and weak results on canvas, single-pigment paints are always the obvious winner, even adjusting for medium. When you make the leap to extra-fine, artist-grade oils (which means - usually - just pigment and oil), the difference becomes unmistakeable. So let’s unpack that first sentence. If you read all the parts of this article up to now, then it should make some kind of sense, but I need to dissect it anyway.
The Van Gogh Museum restored their version (L) of The Bedroom digitally (R). Pigments fade and change over time.
Single-pigment paints are clearer and stronger.
Imagine eating a fresh juicy peach. Now imagine eating a peach pie. Now imagine eating a peach-flavored gummy. Now imagine spraying some peach-scented room freshener… See where I’m going with this? Choose the actual peach - it’s the purest choice: natural and downright healthy.
When you choose single-pigment, extra-fine, artist-grade paints with only oil and no excess fillers or binders you simply give yourself the best materials in their purest state. You’re choosing bright colors with optimal tinting strength over desaturated, diluted, or dulled paint. Single-pigment paints’ clarity make it harder for you to mix mud.
They also last longer. Late 19th Century French artists like Van Gogh and Renoir used new synthetic colors - lakes, dyes, and fugitive pigments. There are numerous examples of their works fading and mutating over the decades, even during their lifetime. Above and below you can see two recent digital restorations on works whose color had changed because they chose paint that with pigments that weren’t durable. Often times blended-pigment paints need multiple ingredients to bolster each other because they are weaker. Single-pigment paints are as strong as you can get.
The Art Institute of Chicago’s portrait of Madam Clapisson (L) by Renoir was restored digitally (R). Pigment science is important.
Single-pigment paints are also more mixable and controllable.
With them, you are able to precisely compose your own harmonies without fear of fighting against hidden, unchangeable, and immutable fillers, so you can make details pop with contrast or highlights draw focus or shadows that pull you in. Being able to surgically place color of the right hue, chroma, and saturation in the correct spot is infinitely easier with refined, precision pigments. Your ability to accurately recreate observed color as well as repeat formulations of expressive color increases when you focus your palette. Of course, color theory is different from pigment selection. In fact it comes before it. But that’s for another article. Maybe the next one?
As for control, single-pigment paints reduce your variables to one for each component of your color recipes.
For example… imagine using instead of two pure pigments for a lively neutral grey, say
Old Holland’s Burnt Sienna (PBr7)
with their
Ultramarine Blue Deep (PB29)
you decided on blended paints, like
Charvin’s Burnt Sienna (PR101 Synthetic Red Iron Oxide/PBk11 Mars Black)
with their
Indigo (PB15:1 Phthalo Blue/PV23RS Dioxazine Violet/PBk7 Lamp Black)
Already it’s too many colors to think about, right? But brown + blue = grey is much easier than synthetic reddish brown plus flat black mixed with warm acidic blue, cool red-shade purple and warm black to get… what…? fish soup?
It’s very hard to guess what you’re going to get with blends, especially as you consider colors your mix will sit next to, behind, and over.
Single-pigment paints support your compositions by reducing variables and focusing your harmonies.
They are more direct and less complicated.
They are, ultimately, the natural choice, like a fresh juicy summer peach.
So… to wrap up:
Here are the color charts from Old Holland and Graham.
Here is my FREE, super-genius downloadable guide with extra-value-added info from yours truly.
Here’s a link to something delicious. Seriously… have a cookie. Or a peach.
This series was originally published June 15, 2020. Updated, April 2021.
Questions? Comments? Shoot me a message below.