colour comparison

It does pay to look at the information on the tube, especially (if they offer it: not all do) the pigment number - otherwise you can find yourself buying two or three tubes of the same colour, or as near as makes no difference. Cadmium Yellow should be a strong, very opaque yellow veering towards orange: Lemon Yellow should be somewhat more transparent, leaning in a cooler (greener/bluer) direction. Alizarin Crimson in acrylic is a devious little devil, because genuine Alizarin can't be used to make acrylic paints - so it might be a quinacridone (and probably is), which will also be the base used for Permanent Rose, which itself goes under a variety of different names (rose madder; rose madder quinacridone; quinacridone rose; quinacridone violet - and a few more). Cadmium Yellow Hue might really be Azo Yellow - but if it's called Cadmium Yellow, that's what it should be: and it should be distinguishable from Azo Yellow. You get duplication dangers with other paints of course - particularly with the Pthalo/pthalocyanine colours, which are described sometimes as Monestial, Monastral, or Winsor colours - but I think most acrylic makers, and I hope all of them, don't call them anything other than Pthalo Blue or Green, because all this is confusing enough already! There's often not a lot of difference between Indigo and Prussian Blue, either - both are likely to be based on Pthalo Blue, because of the difficulty in making the dyes work with acrylic resin: and you could mix something very like the usual Prussian Blue colour yourself, by adding a bit of black or Payne's Grey to Pthalo Blue. Then, Cerulean and Cobalt Blue in acrylic is usually a form of Pthalo Blue, because of, among other things, the cost of the genuine pigments and, again, the problem with making them compatible with acrylic resin - I'm not sure it's even possible. In theory, you should be able to make your own version of Cobalt Blue in acrylic by just adding white to Pthalo, but - in practice, it's not that easy. Still - try it and see. You can certainly make your own purples and violets - but now and then, it's convenient to have a tube of dioxazine or prism violet to hand; and if they're well-made, they might be cleaner and sharper than colours we can mix ourselves .... there's a colour made by Winsor and Newton; well two colours: one is Cadmium Lemon, which is a gorgeously sharp, clear yellow; the other I like rather a lot, in skies for example, is Medium Magenta - now you could, in theory, mix that yourself, but it would take a lot of doing to get that warmth and consistency. So - keep an eye on the labels, try not to duplicate the same colours, but some W & N colours, and Daler Rowney's, especially the brighter ones, probably are best bought ready-made. Now, of course, there are some colours whose names sound as if they're a chemical formula - but they're unique, and we can't readily mix them ourselves; and they can be hard to resist.

This is really helpful to know. Will also keep on file.

I use Daler Rowney Georgian Paynes Grey which comes out blackish but I have used other Paynes Greys which have a bluish black appearance which I definitely like better. Prussian Blue being my most loved colour of all time.

Marialena - you'll be on firm ground with Syd, because he hates the pthalo colours in any medium. Speaking here of both acrylics and watercolour - I rarely use them in oil unless they're hidden, as they are, in other colours (eg, W & N's Manganese Blue, which is sometimes an interesting colour to use, but it's a variant of Pthalo nowadays) - I have used the Pthalo colours; in watercolour, they are, as you say, extremely invasive and have to be handled with enormous care. In acrylic - depends on how you use it; a little Pthalo Blue can be a useful mixer - but even then, I realize some still hate it. As for W & N's tubes - I keep a strong magnifying-glass to hand just to read their w/colour labels... they haven't reduced the size to unreadability on their acrylic tubes too, have they? I have a large collection of acrylic paints, and haven't bought a W & N tube lately.