Art Pigments

Paints
All paints have three
types of
components:
Pigments
Media
Diluents

Pigments

Pigments consist of
small particles of
colored compounds.
Are derived from
finely ground
naturally occurring
minerals: rocks and
ores.

Media

Media serves to
suspend the
pigments and bind
them to the surface
of the object
painted.
Examples are:
beeswax, linseed
oil, walnut oil,
plaster, gum arabic
and egg yolk.

Diluents

Diluents such as
water, turpentine, or
mineral spirits allow
the painter to thin
the paint to the best
consistency for the
work.

Gemstone Paints

The only two blue

pigments available
to the medieval
artist (between the
eighth and the
sixteenth centuries)
were the very
expensive azurite
and ultramarine.

Azurite was Used for

Jewelry

Ultramarine

Ultramarine, from
"across the sea", is
the pigment from
ground lapis lazuli, a
semiprecious stone.

Lapis Lazuli

Beautiful jewelry is made from lapis

lazuli.

Malachite

Malachite is also used for jewelry and

pigment.

Gemstone Makeup

Egyptian women
put ground
malachite mixed
with water on
their eyelids (as
well as soot
around their
eyes).

Cinnabar

Cinnabar is mercury sulfide and

dangerous to inhale.
It was used for pigment and jewelry.

Vermilion Cinnabar
Pigment

Cinnabar pigment applied to sculpture

and to paper.

Verdigris

Copper acetate ranging in color from green

to blue.
Made by treating copper sheets with the
vapors of vinegar, wine, or urine and
scraping the resultant corroded crust.

Earth Colors

Terre Verte

In medieval painting, it is the light, cold

green of celadonite, found chiefly in small
deposits in rock in the area of Verona, Italy.
The chief deposits of glauconite, which yield
the yellowish and olive sorts, are in
Czechoslovakia.

Burnt Sienna

Iron Oxide
in clay
Reddish Brown

Umbers

Burnt umber is a combination of iron

oxide, oxide of manganese and clay,
made by burning raw umber to drive off
the liquid content.

Lead White

Lead oxide
Very opaque white

Lead White

Roman women used ground lead

powder to make their faces look white.
Roman women wore a face cream made
from tin oxide.

Chinese White

Zinc oxide is derived from smoke fumes.

It has very fine particles.
It was first introduced in 1840.

Vine Black

Carbon

Blue Pigments

Recipes for blue

pigments were
mentioned
extensively in
medieval artists'
manuals

Recipes for Blue

Old Latin
manuscripts contain
recipes for making
blue pigments from
both copper and
silver.
This search for ways
to create colors
more cheaply is
early chemistry.

Egyptian Blue

It is one of the oldest man-made colors.

Commonly found on wall paintings in
Egypt, Mesopotamia and Rome.
Calcium copper silicate

Iron or Prussian Blue

The iron blues are the first of the

artificial pigments with a known
history and an established date of
first preparation.
The color was made by the Berlin
colormaker Diesbach in or around
1704.
The material is so complex in
composition and method of
manufacture that there is
practically no possibility that it
was synthesized independently in
other times or places.

Prussian Blue
Potassium Iron Ferrocyanide

Tyrian Purple

Tyrian Purple

Alexander the Great

destroyed the city of Tyre
by filling its prosperous
harbors with silt and
killing or enslaving its
inhabitants.

Most Dyes Came from

Organic Sources

Mostly plants like indigo for

blue or madder root for red.
But also a few animals like
cochineal beetles for
carmine.
Hampden-Sydney's "garnet
and grey" colors date back to
the Civil War when the
students dyed their civil war
uniforms with pokeberries
and butternut hickory husks.

Carmine

A dyestuff precipitated on clay.

Made from the ground female Coccus cacti,
or cochineal, insect which lives on various
cactus plants in Mexico and in Central and
South America.

Pysanky Natural Dyes

Types of Paints

Encaustic

The Egyptians, Greeks, and

Romans often used beeswax as
the medium for pigments.
The encaustic method was in
very common use until the 8th
century A.D. and is still used by
a few painters today.
In this technique finely ground
pigment is mixed in melted
wax and applied to the surface.
Waxes are polymers composed
predominantly of
hydrocarbons.

Fresco

In fresco painting, the medium and the surface are the same.
An aqueous suspension of the pigment is applied directly to
a wet plaster of calcium hydroxide and fine sand.
The pigment is absorbed and is bound into the surface as the
plaster dries.

Egg Tempera

Until the 15th century, egg yolk was used as the

most common binder and medium for paints.
Egg tempera is prepared by mixing egg yolks with a
slurry of artist's pigment in water.
Enough water is added to provide the proper
consistency for painting.

Oil

By the 15th century, oil paints, using

vegetable oils as the medium,
replaced egg tempera as the most
common paint.
The oil most commonly used is
linseed oil which is obtained from the
seed of the flax plant.
The oil does not dry but rather is
cross-linked where there are carboncarbon double bonds in the oil.

Watercolor

In water paints, the pigments are

usually very finely ground mineralbased transition metal compounds.
The vehicle is an aqueous solution of
gum arabic, a resin prepared from the
sap of the African acacia tree.
This resin is a translucent water-soluble
polymer.
The resulting paintings usually retain a
translucent quality; they appear bright
in part because the whiteness of the
paper is reflected through layers of the
paints.

Acrylic

These paints use an aqueous

suspension of both the pigment and
monomers of compounds such as
methyl acrylate and vinyl acetate.
The paint does not become plastic
until the monomers combine.
In a process similar to the "drying" of
oil paints, these monomers are linked
together by a chain reaction to form a
polymer molecule that is insoluble in
both water and most organic solvents.