Acrylic paint: colors

Colors are made of pigments. Some of them are monopigmented which means that they are made only with one pigment and some are made with multiple pigments.

It depends on your workflow: monopigment colors are purer, so the result is more predictable when mixed, but if there are specific colors on the range that you tend to use, I will get them to optimize my time.

In the following pictures the first one is a Raw Sienna made of 3 pigments and the second one is a Cadmium Red (Hue) made of 1 pigment.

Many colors such as Cadmium Red, Cadmium Yellow, Chromium Green, Cobalt Blue… can be found on the market today with the word “Hue” at the end. That means that instead of using minerals for their pigments they are artificial pigments. They are therefore less toxic, as they are not made from heavy metals, and they are also cheaper! 👌

There are plenty of packaging in the market like tubes, jars, pots and bottles. Usually, they relate to the viscosity of the paint inside.

If it’s fluid it usually comes in a bottle and if it is heavy body, it comes in a tube/jar.

I resist buying jars because I know how easy it is to end up dipping the brush and messing up the color.

I don’t have a special preference now.

I tend to look for a specific color between Vallejo, Amsterdam and Liquitex and then check the formulation of each. If the same color on brand A it’s formulated with 2 pigments and on brand B with 3 pigments, I will take the first one as I prefer purer formulations.

Also, if you want to mix colors is better to mix colors with the same pigments, e.g. if you mix Emerald Green (PG7/PY74/PW6) with Phthalo Green (PG7) the result will be brighter and more predictable as the Emerald Green formula already has the PG7 in it.

Monopigment colors are purer, so the result is more predictable when mixed.

Do you have a preference depending on the formulation? Did you know about it?

Hopefully this was helpful or interesting to read. Thank you for reading!