Organic vs Inorganic Pigments

Did you know that there are different kinds of pigments in oil paint? Learning about the difference between organic and inorganic pigments can help you decide which colours are best for your goals, and help further your understanding of why certain paint colours behave the way they do.
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[@pollyester6627]

Very clear, direct and easy to understand demonstration, (without unnecessary music), thanks!
Excellent and vey useful point about adding similar color, instead of white to achieve a lighter value, like orange to lighten a red or yellow to lighten orange.

[@blancodeplomo]

Thanks Nicole.

[@nicolesleeth]

Thank you for watching!

[@scotthaynes5419]

Thank you Nicole

[@diegoallcore]

Beautifully presented. I like to make my own mars red, Mars black and Mars yellow out of synthetic ochres, very cheap and what makes them appealing for me is the particle size is bigger and sort of give an "holographic effect" in my skintones

[@nicolesleeth]

Love it, sounds beautiful!

[@ltwig476]

I try to use inorganic as much as possible for lightfastness. Inorganic is basically rock or metal. They are permanent no matter how many years or exposure to light. Organic is like a flower or plum. They can biodegrade or bleach out. However, modern science adds stabilizers in attempt to preserve them. The biggest downside for me is their opaqueness. Where a shadow is not an object. Rather a shadow is suspended light and you should be able to detect the object beneath. The other problem is that most organic grounds are tiny mostly rounded particles as apposed to inorganic rock and metals are jagged, odd shaped, glass like particles that reflect light in multiple directions. Where the more opaque reflects light basically back in one direction. While Titanium white is fantastic for brightening hues, because it is a super opaque cool color it tends to change the original hue. So your original hue rarely perfectly matches your lightened hue. Some ultramarines, it will even turn them violet, yellows turned greenish and so on. There are other whites such as Lithopone ( mix of of Barite and Zink) that will hold the hue perfectly while lightening the colors. Except the Barite also causes more translucency and slightly less "rich" color.
However, most art does not use all that much pure rich colors, other than pop art or other gleam art. Most rich color gets toned down and the paintings have sparse amounts of rich color and highlights in perfect contrast to their large amounts of toned down colors. I always have an opaque white on hand as well as a translucent. On the opposite, a warm black is rather useless for me. It's basically the darkest mud. Probably why for years art teachers said to avoid using black. But cool blacks can make some of the most beautiful grays with the tiniest bit of blue or violet in the mix. If you're stuck with only Titanium white, try mixing a tiny bit of Naples Yellow into your blob of white. It will keep your cad red from going too violet and gives a much richer pink and will also balance the vibrancy of your violets. I do an equal amount of landscapes and figurative abstracts. The fault that I see in a lot of abstracts today is they lack depth because the artist have not learned to handle translucent color properly. Of course, many abstracts are meant to be flat 2 dimensional statements.

[@rimskichua1]

this is so helpful! thank you!! :)

[@pollyester6627]

Indeed, thankfully cows are no longer force fed mango leaves to make Indian Yellow.

[@dumbbiiihh1204]

its so backwards lol u would think organic meant natural and inorganic were the dyes

[@nicolesleeth]

I know! I got it mixed up a couple time while filming :)