Testing Out New Colours

First up was Mayan blue, which I wanted to compare to Prussian blue, the nearest equivalent that I’d been using to date.  So I have a big swatch of Mayan blue in the top right and of Prussian blue in top left.  Both of these have been mixed with my three transparent yellows and my three transparent (and semitransparent) reds.  The greens that I get are similar in tone but the Mayan versions all granulate a lot more.  There’s also more granulation when the Mayan blue is mixed with reds but there are also colour changes.  The warm reds make browns with Mayan blue but greys with Prussian.  The mix of Mayan blue and Winsor red looks particularly interesting.  And quinacridone magenta makes a more vivid purple with Prussian blue than with Mayan but that may just be the Mayan blue adding a patina and taking the shine away.

In the bottom right, I compared straight Mayan blue to Prussian.  They’re more different than I thought, the Mayan maybe looking somewhere between Prussian blue and cerulean – something that will help me when setting out my new palette.  I also noticed in all this that the Mayan blue is quite thin and watery – I’ll need to use a lot of paint to get some dark values from it.

Finally I tried out the green apatite genuine (bottom middle) and hematite violet genuine (bottom left).  Both have a weird way of separating into two colours as they dry.  Fascinating.  At times the hematite violet looked black before settling into becoming pink with black spots.  I also tried mixing the hematite violet with my brightest violet (a mixture of French ultramarine and quinacridone magenta) and got a toned down but granulating violet.

I’m really looking forward to using these colours.