My friend John Lokke introduced me to watercolor in 2005, teaching me with his personal palette of 12 favorites. They included burnt umber and raw umber (“milk chocolate and dark chocolate”) but he never used the siennas. I always wondered why he detested burnt sienna — after all, he had a gorgeous head of “burnt sienna” hair!
John’s favorite gray and black mixes combined ultramarine blue and burnt umber so that is what I started with, but in recent years I have used burnt sienna instead — so I thought I would compare the two. There really isn’t that big of difference, not surprising since both are the same PBr7 pigment. (I do see now that the blue-gray next to black on the lower row should have had more blue in it.)
While I was playing, I made a color chart on the back of the same card. Just for fun. John taught us to do these as well, to really get to know our paints.
Vicky if you are using W & N Burnt Sienna they use PBr 101 which is orange compared with the PBr7 of Daniel Smith. I enjoy the DS Transparent Red Oxide which is also PBr101 with Ultra PBb 29 and love the greys.
ReplyDeleteAll my watercolors are Daniel Smith. I also have transparent red oxide — love it’s crazy granulation! I should paint another test using it for grays.
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