Paint mixing

Paint mixing is the practice of mixing components or colors of paint to combine them into a working material and achieve a desired hue. The components that go into paint mixing depend on the function of the product sought to be produced. For example, a painter of portraits or scenery on a canvas may be seeking delicate hues and subtle gradiations, while the painter of a house may be more concerned with durability and consistency of colors in paints presented to customers, and the painter of a bridge or a ship may have the weatherability of the paint as their primary concern.

A self-portrait by Anders Zorn clearly showing a four pigment palette of what are thought to be white, yellow ochre, red vermilion and black pigments.[1]

History

Mixing pigments for the purpose of creating realistic paintings with diverse color gamuts is known to have been practiced at least since Ancient Greece. The identity of a/the set of minimal pigments to mix diverse gamuts has long been the subject of speculation by theorists whose claims have changed over time, for example Pliny's white, black, one or another red, and "sil", which might have been yellow or blue; Robert Boyle's white, black, red, yellow, and blue; and variations with more or fewer "primary" color or pigments. Some writers and artists have found these schemes difficult to reconcile with the actual practice of painting.[2]: 29–38  Nonetheless, it has long been known that limited palettes consisting of a small set of pigments are sufficient to mix a diverse gamut of colors.[3][4][5][6][7]

In the 1910 edition of his treatise on the subject, Paint and Color Mixing, Seymour Arthur Jennings noted:

If half a dozen practical painters, experienced in color mixing, were asked separately to mix a given color, say sea green, it is almost certain that when the six colors were compared there would be no two alike. Each of the six painters might have precisely the same make of colors to work with, and yet the sea green in each case would be different. The explanation, of course, is that opinions differ as to what is sea green.[8]

To remedy this, Jennings included sample cards showing 48 different colors, and described the method of mixing these and other colors, and for mixing graining grounds and testing colors.[8] Jennings recommended that painters offering paints for commercial uses should similarly employ cards to explain color options to their customers, so the customer would not be surprised by the result.[8]

In the 1920s, radioluminescent paint was developed by mixing small amounts of a radioactive isotope (radionuclide) with a radioluminescent phosphor chemical, but the radium originally used for this purpose was discovered to be harmful,[9] leading to the use of promethium and tritium for this purpose. In the 1930s, blacklight paint was invented by brothers Joseph and Robert Switzer; Robert had severed an optic nerve due to a head injury, and was confined him to a dark room while he waited for his sight to recover. Joseph, who was a chemistry major at the University of California, Berkeley, worked with Robert to investigate fluorescent compounds. They brought a blacklight into the storeroom of their father's drugstore looking for naturally fluorescing organic compounds and mixed those compounds with shellac to develop the first black light fluorescent paints.[10]

Methods and techniques
Three oil paints, one of which is mixed with wax
A set of watercolors

Acrylic artists' paints may be thinned with water or acrylic medium and used as washes in the manner of watercolor paints, but unlike watercolor the washes are not rehydratable once dry. For this reason, acrylics do not lend themselves to the color lifting techniques of gum arabic-based watercolor paints. Instead, the paint is applied in layers, sometimes diluting with water or acrylic medium to allow layers underneath to partially show through. Using an acrylic medium gives the paint more of a rich and glossy appearance, whereas using water makes the paint look more like watercolor and have a matte finish.[11] Research has determined that "mixing durable paints with less durable paints can enhance the durability of the mixture".[12] In particular, "all paints whether durable or not will develop considerably enhanced durability if they are applied over a white lead ground", and mixtures of other paints with a white paint pigmented with lead carbonate and zinc oxide "developed the greatest strength even after drying for only a short time when compared to the much older paints".[12]

Many paints tend to separate when stored, the heavier components settling to the bottom, and therefore require mixing before use. A machine called a paint shaker can be used to achieve either effect by shaking the can vigorously for a few minutes. A wide variety of paint shakers are available. In the 1980s, a home-use version was sold that attached to an electric drill, using vibrations from the drill to mix the paint.[13]

Mixing paints in limited palettes

The set of pigments available to mix diverse gamuts of color (in various media such as oil, watercolor, acrylic, gouache, and pastel) is large and has changed throughout history.[14][15] There is no consensus on a specific set of pigments that are considered primary colors – the choice of pigments depends entirely on the artist's subjective preference of subject and style of art as well as material considerations like lightfastness and mixing behavior.[16] A variety of limited palettes have been employed by artists for their work.[17][18]

The color of light (i.e., the spectral power distribution) reflected from illuminated surfaces coated in paint mixes, slurries of pigment particles, is not well approximated by a subtractive or additive mixing model. Color predictions that incorporate light scattering effects of pigment particles and paint layer thickness require approaches based on the Kubelka–Munk[19] equations. Even such approaches cannot predict the color of paint mixtures precisely since small variances in particle size distribution, impurity concentrations etc. can be difficult to measure but impart perceptible effects on the way light is reflected from the paint. Artists typically rely on mixing experience and "recipes"[20] to mix desired colors from a small initial set of primaries and do not use mathematical modelling.

There are hundreds of commercially available pigments for visual artists to use and mix (in various media such as oil, watercolor, acrylic, gouache, and pastel). A common approach is to use just a limited palette of primary pigments[21] (often between four and eight) that can be physically mixed to any color that the artist desires in the final work. There is no specific set of pigments that are primary colors, the choice of pigments depends entirely on the artist's subjective preference of subject and style of art as well as material considerations like lightfastness and mixing heuristics. Contemporary classical realists have often advocated that a limited palette of white, red, yellow, and black pigment (often described as the "Zorn palette") is sufficient for compelling work.[22]

A chromaticity diagram can illustrate the gamut of different choices of primaries, for example showing which colors are lost (and gained) if you use RGB for subtractive color mixing (instead of CMY).[23]

References
  1. Nyholm, Arvid (1914). "Anders Zorn: The Artist and the Man". Fine Arts Journal. 31 (4): 469–481. doi:10.2307/25587278. JSTOR 25587278.
  2. Gage, John (1999). Color and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-22225-0.
  3. Boyle, Robert (1664). Experiments and Considerations touching Colours. Henry Herringman. p. 220. But I think I may easily be excus'd (though I do not altogether pass it by) if I restrain my self to the making of a Transient mention of some few of their Practices about this matter; and that only so far forth, as may warrant me to observe to you, that there are but few Simple and Primary Colours (if I may so call them) from whose Various Compositions all the rest do as it were Result. For though Painters can imitate the Hues (though not always the Splendor) of those almost Numberless differing Colours that are to be met with in the Works of Nature, and of Art, I have not yet found, that to exhibit this strange Variety they need imploy any more than White, and Black, and Red, and Blew, and Yellow; these five, Variously Compounded, and (if I may so speak) Decompounded, being sufficient to exhibit a Variety and Number of Colours, such, as those that are altogether Strangers to the Painters Pallets, can hardly imagine.
  4. Rood, Ogden (1973). Modern chromatics; students' text-book of color, with applications to art and industry (PDF). New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co. p. 108. ISBN 0-442-27028-3. It is well known to painters that approximate representations of all colours can be produced by the use of very few pigments. Three pigments or coloured powders will suffice, a red, yellow, and a blue; for example, crimson lake, gamboge, and Prussian blue. The red and yellow mingled in various proportions will furnish different shades of orange and orange-yellow; the blue and yellow will give a great variety of greens; the red and blue all the purple and violet hues. There have been instances of painters in water-colours who used only these three pigments, adding lampblack for the purpose of darkening them and obtaining the browns and greys.
  5. Nyholm, Arvid (1914). "Anders Zorn: The Artist and the Man". Fine Arts Journal. 31 (4): 469–481. doi:10.2307/25587278. JSTOR 25587278. It is true that Zorn uses only a very limited palette, especially when he paints indoors, when he considers that black, white, red and yellow should be enough for all ordinary purposes, except when a very decided color is present, as, for instance, a light blue or a positive green in a drapery.
  6. Munsell, Albert H. (1907). A Color Notation. Studio and school-room practice still cling to the discredited theory, claiming that, if it fails to describe our color sensations, yet it may be called practically true of pigments, because a red, yellow, and blue pigment suffice to imitate most natural colors.
  7. Lintott, E. Barnard (1926). The Art of Water Colour Painting. C. Scribner's Sons. p. 25. For a young student there cannot be a better way of entering upon the study of water colour than by rigorously banishing all but two colours from his palette. It is the best and surest way to the study of full colour. The colours should be a cold and warm one; cobalt blue and warm sienna—or Prussian blue and burnt sienna—are two combinations which lend themselves to a great variety of treatment.
  8. Arthur Seymour Jennings, Paint and Color Mixing (1910).
  9. "Radium paint takes its inventor's life; Dr. Sabin A. von Sochocky Ill a Long Time, Poisoned by Watch Dial Luminant. 13 Blood Transfusions. Death Due to Aplastic Anemia-- Women Workers Who Were Stricken Sued Company". The New York Times. 15 November 1928.
  10. "Robert Switzer, Co-Inventor Of Day-Glo Paint, Dies at 83", The New York Times, 1997-08-29.
  11. Staff, Artists Network (2016-10-11). "2 Ways to Thin Acrylic Paint | Painting with Acrylics for Beginners". Artists Network. Retrieved 2020-02-03.
  12. Mecklenburg, Marion F. (2020). "Methods and materials and the durability of canvas paintings: a preface to the topical collection Failure Mechanisms in Picasso's Paintings, Volume 2, No. 2182". SN Applied Sciences. doi:10.1007/s42452-020-03832-6. S2CID 230595155. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  13. "Paint mixer", Popular Mechanics (April 1986), Vol. 163, No. 4, page 174.
  14. Eastaugh, Nicholas; Walsh, Valentine; Chaplin, Tracey; Siddall, Ruth. Pigment Compendium: A Dictionary of Historical Pigments. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-136-37386-2.
  15. Ball, Philip (2002) [2001]. Bright earth : art and the invention of color (1st American ed.). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 0226036286.
  16. MacEvoy, Bruce. "handprint : learning color through paints". www.handprint.com. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
  17. MacEvoy, Bruce. "palette paintings". www.handprint.com. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
  18. Gurney, James (2010). Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter. Kansas City, Missouri: Andrews McMeel Publishing. p. 104. ISBN 978-0-7407-9771-2.
  19. Kubelka, Paul; Munk, Franz (1931). "An article on optics of paint layers" (PDF). Z. Tech. Phys. 12: 593–601.
  20. MacEvoy, Bruce. "Mixing Green". Handprint. Retrieved 24 October 2017.
  21. Bruce, MacEvoy. "The Artists' "Primaries"". Handprint. Retrieved 24 October 2017.
  22. Gurney. "The Zorn Palette". Gurney Journey. Retrieved 27 September 2016.
  23. Steven Westland, "subtractive mixing – why not RGB?", October 4, 2009 http://colourware.org/2009/10/04/subtractive-mixing-why-not-rgb/ Archived 2017-09-19 at the Wayback Machine
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