Where Do Painters Get Their Colors?
The painter’s original color chart might well have been the rainbow, and while we can not make colors more beautiful than those we see in the sky, we can imitate them with pigments. A pigment, taking its name from the Latin pingere, to paint, is a coloring material. Many pigments are found in Nature. Yellow ochre, for example, is a clay dug from the earth. Cobalt blue comes from a mine in the form of ore. Plants and trees supply us with a variety of natural pigments. On the other hand, coal tar is an example of artificial coloring material from which the great group of aniline dyes is developed.
Yellow ochre is one of the simplest pigments to obtain, yet neither the house painter nor the artist could use it in its raw state. Were we to spread yellow ochre on the side of a house, the first good rain would wash it off. But if we mix it with linseed oil, we get oil paint, which will hold. If we combine it with glycerin and gum arabic, we have a water-color paint; if we mix it with chalk or wax, we obtain pastels and crayons. In all cases the pigment is the same, while the mixing materials differ in accordance with the use intended for them. Today, colors come ready-made, but once the painter had to be his own chemist.
