Artistic Pigments

November 6th, 2007 | by Art Supplies |

Different art supplies are used for different types of arts. These arts are also produced using a variety of coloring substances. These coloring substances are known as pigments. Pigments were used for paint making for the first time in the 19th century. The pigment is titanium dioxide. The pigment is extensively used to produce both artistic paints and house paints. It is the quality of the pigment that it imparts or gives color. There are two main types of pigments in use:-

  • Prime pigment or hiding pigment
  • Inert pigment or extender pigment
 The hiding pigment has two types.
  • The first type is known as organic and
  • The second is known as inorganic type.
 The inert pigment is also of two types. These types are
  • Natural and
  • Synthetic.
 A pigment is normally brought into the form of a powdered substance and it is normally mixed with a base such as oil and water to create paints. These paints are then used by the artists on the arts they produce. Any other base can also be used to produce paints by mixing with a pigment. Other than artist paints certain other products are also manufactured by the process. To make the paint opaque normally hiding pigments are used. Then there are pigments, such as lead pigments used in lead paints, which are toxic. The pigments are also used to bring opacity.

Normal paints available in the market also contain certain other chemical substances. These paints are available in form of tubes or in other packing material. These substances can affect the quality of the paintings. Therefore many artists prefer to make their own paints by mixing the base substance and pigment. The process is not very difficult, provided you learn it properly once. An artist can produce oil paints by mixing linseed oil and a pigment. The color of the paint depends on the color of the pigment which is being used.

Then there is another kind of paint used extensively by the artists for paintings. It is known as acrylic paint. There is an emulsion known as the acrylic polymer emulsion. This emulsion is binds the acrylics. To produce acrylic paint the acrylic polymer emulsion is mixed thoroughly with water and a colored pigment is also added to it. The acrylics have a tendency to dry up rapidly. This is a limitation on the mixing time. It dictates that very less mixing time is available to mix the base, pigment and acrylic polymer emulsion.

There are pigments like watercolor and Gouache. These pigments are mixed with base like Gum Arabic. Gum Arabic is a medium for watercolors. It helps in bringing more transparency and also assists in increasing the drying time. The use of pigments was increased when the acrylic and oil paints were used extensively. This was around 20th century. Since then pigments have been used with numerous bases to produce paints of different colors and types.

  1. 1 Trackback(s)

  2. Nov 7, 2007: slashplaces » Blog Archive » Artistic Pigments

Post a Comment

*
To prove you're a person (not a spam script), type the security word shown in the picture. Click on the picture to hear an audio file of the word.
Click to hear an audio file of the anti-spam word