Stuff I've learned lately July 10, 2018 19:11

No matter how much I need  a good green or a peacock blue, the phthalos are not it. I had a hankering to paint iridescent blue dragonflies and hummingbirds for some reason, so I pawed through my collection of blues and greens and came up with:

1) two versions of terre verte (a dull dark green made of earth)

2) chrome oxide (good color, but very opaque and slow drying)

3) zip

So I ordered the two blue phthalos (green and red shades) and two green phthalos (yellow and blue shades) in the Winsor Newton oil paint versions. Also got some quinacridone magenta for the halibut.

I got them on Saturday and right away remembered why I had quit using them so long ago--they look like markers to me. In fact, I am sure that the pigments in blue and green markers are phthalos.  I am not a fan of colors that reminds me of markers. 

Now, I know that the green phthalo blue shade can be a great "mineral" glaze for rocks. So I tried some. Yes, but it also reminded me of markers. So I am glazing over it with other stuff.

In particular, something I found when I was digging through some forgotten tubes of paint: cobalt green.

When I was painting with watercolor in tubes, I really hated cobalt blue. I thought it was just one hell of a dead color. To me, it just looked like something that would give us cancer. Just dead.

Then I switched to making my own watercolor paints

And the incompetent jerks at Shopify lost the rest of my blog post. Because that's the way they are. Stupid, incompetent jerks who absolutely are incapable of providing a blog platform that does not delete one's work at random times.

Screw you, Shopify. You are maroons, as we used to say.