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The Alizarin saga continues
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Posted
I'm in the process of getting settled into favourite split palettes of single pigment colours rather than mixes. With some traditional earth's thrown in.
I wanted to mix a violet rather than a pre mix out of the tube. It seems that Aliz is the favourite for the sort of hue I'd like. I'm well aware of its fade qualities, but it looks like the Permanent variety is a solution. But oh, the price! At least twice that of other colours in the same range. If you go hunting online for a decent price, you invariably end up with a sneaky PR177 and not the established PR83.
When it comes to the water miscible products , you'll be lucky to get PR83 at all. I think I've bought the last remaining tube from Daniel Smith...unless they too have mislabelled the pigment code. Its interesting that DS have managed it at all. Perhaps its as difficult to make with water mixable oil as it is with acrylic binders. I'll see when it arrives.
Posted
A good alternative to Alizarin Crimson is Quinacridone Violet (also available as Quin. Magenta, Red, and sometimes named Permanent Rose). The letters and number to look for are PV 19. It can be darked with Viridian or Pthalo Green to get nearer to the typical PR 83 tint: but it won't be the same.
PR 83, real Alizarin, should not be used in tints, i.e. mixed with white, if lightfastness is a concern. There is some tentative agreement that it's safer in oil glazes - none of the transparent crimsons are entirely lightfast; my own tests of Alizarin Crimson in watercolour showed two examples, one faded to a mucky brown, looking like a coffee stain, in around 6 months, the other (as I remember) virtually disappeared.
Frans Hals used a range of crimson lakes in his portraits, which have survived these hundreds of years - basically, by knowing exactly what he was doing, and of course he would have mulled his own paint; most of us will have little alternative other than to trust the paintmakers; my thoughts are a) I wouldn't use it in watercolour washes; b) I might risk it, mixed with other colours in watercolour - but the risks of doing that, or of using Rose Madder Genuine, will be obvious; c) I might use it in mass-tone, in oil, or in glazes; but probably won't; d) the colour described as Alizarin Crimson, or in a couple of cases Crimson Alizarine, in acrylic, aren't Alizarin at all - the pigment particles are not compatible with acrylic resins.
Permanent Alizarin Crimson is NOT Alizarin - it's not PR 83. I'm not convinced it's all that permanent, either.
It'll take a fair bit of experiment and adjustment to get PV 19 to behave as your PR 83 would have done, and perhaps it never really will: but it's a good pigment, worth working with to determine what it will do rather than mourning what it won't - when you want a crimson-type paint to modify other colours (it's delicious used on its own, which I wouldn't say of Alizarin) it will do the job, and it is transparent. There are plenty of deep dark opaque reds, if that's what you're after.