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Zinc white -- a coming catastrophe.
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Message
Posted
Keora - Zinc white is semi-opaque and can be brushed out to virtual transparency - it's useful in colour mixing if you want to lighten red (say) without turning it pink - it will retain the intensity of the red; it's also useful for adding misty veils of white, which would just obscure what was underneath if you used Titanium or lead white.
The link in Mats' reply is useful, not only because it tells you about Zinc White but takes you to a very useful book by Tony Paul which we should all have in our libraries. I would quarrel with it only superficially - he says Zinc White is 'best used' in the upper layers, or words to that effect; I suggest it should ONLY EVER be used in the upper layers. He also makes a point about its use with Flake White on which I'm not as yet convinced: the argument that a little Zinc added to lead white helps to counteract the latter's tendency to soften over the years - I'm not entirely sure about the wisdom of using it for that purpose, but it's a bit of an esoteric point which takes me beyond my area of expertise and isn't especially relevant to your question either!
Posted
Here is a link to a scientific article about the zinc white problem, should anyone be interested. /Mats
'Zinc white: a review of zinc oxide pigmentproperties and implications for stabilityin oil-based paintings', by Gillian Osmond.
https://aiccm.org.au/sites/default/files/AICCMBulletin_33-Osmond.pdf
Posted
Yes, the decision was made a couple of months ago - it came about because many of us got together and lobbied hard to ensure it did: paint makers, artists, writers about art: and the EU committee actually looked at the evidence we all submitted and agreed with us that the contribution made by artists to cadmium build-up is negligible. You mentioned Michael Caine, and he was indeed extremely important in putting together a brilliant scientific case for cadmium, as well as an artistic one. This came as a great relief to a painter very near to you, Syd: Ken Bushe, who works mostly in oil: he lives and works in Broughty Ferry, and also submitted evidence to the EU.
As we all know, there is really no alternative to the cadmiums - nothing else has their strength, opacity, brightness, and covering power. I know some painters bought in large quantities of cadmium paint so if production was banned, they'd have a good stock...... Shades of Lucian Freud acquiring huge stocks of Cremnitz White (which I'd love to get my hands on...). I didn't do that: for one thing I couldn't afford it, and for another I was confident that we could make a good case: confident but ...... twitchy.
It is a relief.
Posted
How about Pyrrole Red and Pyrrole Orange? Some say that they are good substitutes for the cadmiums. (But how could anything compete with cadmium orange?) Aussie artist Tony Johansen lauds them (here). They were invented in the eighties by the car industry, as lacquers for expensive sport cars. However, it took some time before the pigments were adopted by artists, and they are still not well known, it seems.
W & N Bright Red (Pyrrole)
Mats
Edit: there are 12 pyrrole pigments in the Art Pigment Database (here) :
PR254 Pyrrole Red
PR255 Pyrrole Scarlet
PR264 Pyrrole Red Rubine
PR270 Pyrrole Red
PR272 Pigment Red
PR274 Neelicol Ponceau 4R Lake
????? IRGAZIN Orange 2037
PO66 Isoindoline Orange
PO71 Pyrrole Orange
PO73 Pyrrol Orange
PO81 IRGAZIN Orange 2038
PO107 Pigment Orange 107
Edited
by 9230114
Posted
Tried them all - Pyrrole Red is a very good colour, combining elements of crimson and scarlet in the same paint. But for sheer intensity, Cadmium Red is currently unbeatable - and yes, if you find anything as pure and vibrant as Cadmium Orange, let me know. (If searching for Pyrrole Red and unable to find it, Winsor Red is the same thing.)
Posted
Maybe the solution is to use an alkyd white. Alkyd oils are wholly compatible with standard oil paints. Griffin alkyds (W&N) has a "mixing white" which is supposed to be an alternative to zinc white: "excellent for tints and glazing". However, it is made of titanium dioxide (PW6). Titanium is a fearful colour vibrancy killer, so I wonder whether it is really a good substitute for zinc white. However, Da Vinci has an alkyd zinc white (here). This could be a good alternative.
Or one could just go on painting, oblivious to all the chemical properties. I have to stop my greed for knowledge if there is going to be any painting done.
Mats
Edited
by 9230114
Posted
Alkyd white isn't recommended for any large scale overpainting on conventional oils, because it dries faster than the oil paint over which it's applied. You can manipulate that to some extent, but if you were to apply it over a slow-drying oil paint (of course, you might have more sense!) there is a risk of subsequent cracking. I agree that Titanium White can kill colour vibrancy, which is why I use a lead-chromate white, preferably Cremnitz, as well as Titanium. But it's very hard to get hold of a reliable supply, and of course it's now expensive. Even so - I continue to use it when I can get it.
Titanium White is in very many ways a good paint - if you try the Michael Harding Titanium White, you'll have just about the best one I've ever used. But even the best has the drawbacks to which you refer. We've just got to get better at managing them, I suppose.......
Posted
I said I'd post any reply I got from Winsor and Newton on this thread's concerns. The reply was just a touch on the brief side, frankly, but for what it's worth, here it is:
Hi Robert,
Thank you for your interest in Winsor & Newton. Problems will only occur if the colour/pigment is used incorrectly. Zinc white should be used for tinting as it has the least opacity and is a clean blue white which makes clean and bright tints. It also has a high oil absorption rate. If a paint with high oil content is used beneath one with a lower oil content it will expand more than the surface layer causing it to crack. Kind regards,
So far, so obvious I suppose. We gather from this that it shouldn't ever be used in base or lower layers, which indeed is the advice I've always given. It doesn't touch on the use of Zinc White in Titanium White (eg the Flake White Hue) but then I probably didn't ask specifically about that - you have to use a form for submitting queries to W & N, rather than a "proper" email, which basically raises a ticket in their system to which they reply strictly on topic.
However - on the whole I'm not too troubled by using Zinc White, if it's done properly. What I would say for the Zinc mixes is what I would also say about using lead whites - don't apply coats heavy with Titanium White on top of them in either case: the tension between the layers is just too great for safety.
Posted
Still opaque and pasty, though, which is probably the trouble. But there are all sorts of ways of reducing the stark white of Titanium - and there again, sometimes stark white is exactly what you want. I did know an artist who always used the palest Naples Yellow then available for her clouds - Rowney Artists' Naples Yellow No 1, as I remember; wonder if they still make it.... I must find out. It was lead-based, of course..... Ah, lead...... I do miss it.....
Posted
Brand? I have a little Naples Yellow acrylic from Chromacolour, which doesn't behave like that. Naples Yellow is now a very vague term - meaning any pale yellow which is heavily opaque. In acrylic (in oil, come to that) you could just mix your usual yellow with opaque white; it's a "convenience" colour, which doesn't sound as if it was especially convenient in your case......