Field's Chromatography: or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by ArtistsField, George
Science
Field's Chromatography: or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists
Field, George
Color; Colors; Painting -- Technique
knowledge is slight, good orange, &c., pigments are of more or less
value, as by their use the employment of inferior mixtures is to a great
extent avoided. In mingling primary with primary, if one colour does not
compound well with the other, or is fugacious, the result is failure;
but a secondary is not so easily affected by admixture: a green, for
example, is seldom quite ruined by the injudicious addition of blue or
yellow; and even if either of the latter be fugitive, the green will
remain a green if originally durable. Thus the secondaries, if they are
not already of the colour required, may be brightened or subdued,
deepened or paled, with comparative impunity. The artist who, from long
years of experience, knows exactly the properties and capabilities of
the colours he employs, may in a measure dispense with secondary
pigments, and obtain from the primaries mixed tints at once stable,
beautiful, and pure; but even he must sometimes resort to them, as when
a green like emerald or viridian is required, which no mixture of blue
and yellow will afford. The primaries, by reason of their not being able
to be composed of other colours, occupy the first place on the palette,
and are of the first importance; but the secondaries are far too useful
to be disregarded, and have a value of their own, which both veteran and
tyro have cause to acknowledge.
The list of original orange pigments was once so deficient, that in some
old treatises on the subject of colours, they are not even mentioned.
This may have arisen, not merely from their paucity, but from the
unsettled signification of the term orange, as well as from improperly
calling these pigments reds, yellows, &c. In these days, however, orange
pigments are sufficiently numerous to merit a chapter to themselves;
they indeed comprise some of the best colours on the palette.
155. BURNT SIENNA,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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