I ordered some oil paint from Ken Bromley online. It's Winsor & Newton artists' oil colour, they have a sale at least once a year with up to 35% off the usual retail price, and throw in a free 200ml tube of Titanium white if you buy a minimum of six tubes.
Ordered on Thursday and they arrived at my door on Friday.
So: Over a third off the full price, and next day delivery.
Service so good you feel miffed because you can't find anything to complain about.
Why did I buy Winsor & Newton?
Good enough for Turner, probably more than good enough for me.
Why artists' quality?
Colour stability and permanence. Student quality paint sometimes uses odd pigments with peculiar and unexpected colours. There's a world of difference between Cobalt blue and Cobalt blue hue, for example. Also the pigment load in artists' quality paint is higher, which means you don't end up with weirdly washed out mixes on your palette. I've used cheap paint and ended up with an over oily, low colour mess on my palette. Cheap paint is usually a false economy.
Why these colours in particular?
Cadmium Lemon: purest, cleanest yellow closest to spectrum yellow. Excellent covering and tinting power. Better for mixing clean greens than Cadmium Yellow, which tends to be a bit orangey.
Yellow Ochre: gets a lot of work done painting landscape. Good base for dirty greens, with the addition of black or blue. Also a cheap pigment, which doesn't hurt.
French Ultramarine: pure, clean blue slightly on the violet side of spectrum blue. Good in glazes and mixtures, with good tinting strength. I've been using this as a general purpose blue for a while now. Again, a cheap pigment.
Burnt Sienna: good dirty red, useful in landscape. Makes a coloured black when mixed with blue. If you use a layered technique, it's a nice warm, orangey underpainting for landscape.
Flesh Tint: should probably never be anywhere near your palette if you're painting actual flesh, but it's great for lightening landscape greens and taking the bilious edge off the green hue.
Naples Yellow: this used to be made from lead antimonate, and was a marvel at creating distance when scumbled thinly over a painting's background. Now I think it's just a mix of white and yellow ochre, but it's a convenient colour to have on your palette. Again, great for lightening landscape greens.
That's all for now. Look out for a review of Rosemary & Co. brushes next.
