Testing out new pigments for landscape sketching

I’ve been testing a few new pigments for landscape sketching in the small Compuzzle palette that I showed in the last post (not a recommendation by the way). But for these small amounts of paint the palette was nice. To see the pigments that I usually use for all of my sketching (including landscapes), here’s a post about the most recent iteration of my small field sketching palette.

The pigments I tested range from interesting but seldomly used colors (like Nickel Titanate Yellow, Cobalt Violet and Rose Doré), to new earth tones I’ve been wanting to test more (Caput Mortuum, some Holbein and Winsor earth colors), and I’ve topped up the rest with a few more familiar choices to round out the palette and turn it into something that gives me a wide enough range for landscape work (for everyday sketching I still have my everyday palette).

Thoughts about the pigments:

Winsor & Newton Raw Sienna & WN Yellow Ochre: The raw Sienna is lovely because of its transparency, but it’s apparently a pigment mix? The yellow ochre is less yellow and I think that makes it slightly more useful for mixes (skies, fields, stone color of buildings). I’ll have to experiment more.

WN Nickel Titanate Lemon Yellow: A slightly weird niche yellow that I wanted to try out because it seems similar to Naples Yellow and Jaune brilliant. It’s opaque. Creates nice light slightly muted greens and soft yellows that are lovely in skies, and far away elements. I created a pastel yellow from this together with white that I liked to use for a while, apart from that it seems expendable.

WN Rose Doré: This is a light rose pigment with a touch of yellow. I like this for botanical work (think back to the apple blossoms) and wanted to see if it’s useful for landscapes. It can create subtle light earth and brown mixes, and it’s interesting with yellow ochre and for neutralizing sap green, but I’m not completely convinced yet.

Holbein Cobalt Violet: This is a fun and useful violet and almost wish I had included this into my regular palette when filming my landscape class. Oh well. You can totally paint without it and mix a similar color from Quinacridone Rose and Cobalt/Cerulean Blue. Lovely as a shadow in greens, and for mixing neutrals. Great with Yellow Ochre and Cerulean Blue.

WN Ultramarine Blue green shade: I mainly wanted to see if this performs similarly to the Schmincke Ultramarine finest (non-granulating UM blue), so far I’m happy with it. I’ll stay with whatever paint I can get for less money.

WN Burnt Sienna & Holbein Light Red: these two are similar, both of them are made from PR101 – synthetic red iron oxide – a transparent, intense earth orange that’s great for mixing dark neutrals (with ultramarine blue) and all kinds of natural hues for landscapes. Very reliable. The light red is a bit more intense and more red.

WN Caput Mortuum & Holbein Imidazolone Brown: These earth colors creates really dramatic purple mixes with ultramarine blue, the Caput Mortuum is more brown and very opaque which makes it a bit less flexible for me. But I like the color on its own. The Imidazolone Brown creates very interesting subtle neutrals when mixed with cerulean blue – interesting for skies. Also nice with sap green for muted greens. I have to paint more with all of these.

Holbein Umber, Holbein Sap Green, Holbein Benzi Yellow, Holbein Cerulean Blue, Schmincke Perylene Red: basically just used these to fill up some color spots to create a more well-rounded palette. All very stable, well-performing pigments.

Here are some mixing examples that create lovely neutrals and muted colors – with yellow earth colors for a warmer mix, and the red earths mixed with blue for more neutral grays:

Here are some mixes with Rose Dore (top row), variations with Cobalt Violet (second row), and neutrals with the different red earth pigments and ultramarine blue:

These are my recent experiments so far, I hope some of this is of interest to you and maybe helpful when choosing colors for a palette, particularly for landscapes (I’ll share a landscape I’ll painted with these colors soon!).

I usually don’t switch out my standard colors if I don’t see a huge benefit from a new pigment, but testing and exploring pigments is fun on its own from time to time.