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Favourite Oil Colour
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Message
Posted
Caput Mortuum. Sounds comical, the name. It has shades of life and death. Wallace and Seymour do it in the painters online shop. I have a different brand at the moment. Would now never do without it. Someone might be humorous by giving it that name, but correct me if I’m wrong. Kaput!! Or caput, and mortem nearly post mortem. Bare in mind I paint people
Edited
by Martin Shaw
Posted
It has another name - wish I could remember what it was!
But yes, it's a great pigment. I WILL remember what its other name is (or sneak cunningly off to Google, and pretend I knew all the time when I come back to this). There are few really useful rich darks - which I suppose is why so many of us have resort to Payne's Grey. Another one I like is Brown Madder Alizarin.
Posted
Is this it Robert?
Many people know caput mortuum by its other name, “mummy brown.” For centuries, there were just two ways to make caput mortuum paint: the vegan version, which gets its reddish-purple color from iron oxide, and the meat-lovers’ option, which was manufactured using ground-up pieces of mummies, plus white pitch and myrrh.
Posted
Yes, Mummy Brown was one, and ... Cardinal Purple? Yes, Cardinal Purple - apparently. An odd name, because cardinals very rarely wear purple: when they go into conclave, apparently! You get paint information here, and titbits concerning the rituals of the Roman Catholic church - eclectic, I think, is the word.... And I've just discovered that my tube of Caput Mortuum is empty, apart from a useless smearing - you can mix an approximation (and the colour varies a lot between manufacturers anyway) but that's going on my shopping list: alongside genuine Naples Yellow - which is horribly expensive.
You sometimes have to really steel yourself to buy oil paint.
Posted
Yes, well. Great, reply John, as usual. You can get close to Naples yellow in Williamsburg, or even Lagridge. True Naples yellows I I didn’t know about as far as the expense. I guess Wallace and Seymour might have something close too. It’d be as good as more expensive brands, I suspect, if not better. Wish you lived close so I can spare you some of my stuff. A good alternative to true Naples yellow, might be Winton oil. Yes, Winton! The thing is, painters online stores are cheap for postage per single tube. Once I need stuff they have I’ll make an order. Yes, they do Winton too. I don’t get money for their advertising. Ha! I just like this place., that’s all. And they are competitive.
Posted
Thanks for the positive comments Martin! We are continually sourcing more lovely materials for our new online shop and we're excited to be working closely with Wallace Seymour and others to bring you even more goodies https://artsupplies.hooluh.co.uk/
Posted
If it comes to it, you can mix Cadmium Yellow Pale/Light with white, to make a version of Naples Yellow - but I like the real stuff. Snag with the cheaper versions of N. Yellow is that they nearly always have Zinc Oxide mixed with them - and that can crack or delaminate: not saying it will, just that it can.