Hobby Science: Paint Pigments
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 พ.ค. 2020
- It's time to learn about those pretty colors in our paint! Let's find where art and chemistry meet, and see if we can understand our art supplies a bit better.
Pigments are the lovely powders that give paint their color. In this episode we mix our own paint, look at chemical structures, read paint labels, and generally try to get our head around the materials that we use every day at our hobby desk.
And of course, I slap some paint on some poor drukhari kabalite warriors from warhammer 40k! :-)
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Came for the paint chemistry, stayed for the deer eating a pumpkin.
Oh yeah, that's how I get cha! :-)
@@GoobertownHobbies I have no Idea what you said during the time the deer were on. They looked so happy eating that pumpkin lol.
I was very confused what this was about, and now I’ve learned. Somehow deer eating a pumpkin is far more entertaining than it should be on its own… The chem lesson is always a bonus
The weirdest part is how I switched to this video after watching several shorts of people feeding deer carrots and bananas.
That's 100% how I'm planning to get my wife to watch this!
Brent; "... painting a happy little Drukhari ..."
Me; "HE SAID THE LINE!"
I thought the same. :-)
;-)
Are there even happy little Drukhari?
@@geronimo8159 yes, if they have a friend. Because everyone deserves a friend!
science brent, science brent, I love science brent
Brent: analyses paints and pigments on a deep level to better understand them using chemistry and science
Me: "so that's a darker green paint..."
I just observed an Elven Mage giving an introductory lecture on his vast knowledge on alchemy, and even though his sonorous voice is full of wisdom, my Barbarian brain still pictures him shredding a lute as part of a Norscan-metal bard troupe.
There's a miniature of what I'm sure is this Brent, and it has decidedly barbarian vibes: www.ebay.com/itm/Trouble-In-The-Tavern/124058455513?hash=item1ce275cdd9:m:m6bdE-V66HBNA4F1iPJw_oA&var=424889615525
@@bramverbeek7109 yes that is the Artisan Guild sculpt they did of Brent
This is like if Bob Ross had a PhD in chemistry. Thanks for sharing!
Bob ross did have a PhD in chemistry
@@tpdbuilder what? Bob Ross was a high school dropout. He never got a degree.
@@omfgblondie yes, that is part of the story. He did carpenttry, joined the Air Force and bartended and painted part-time. Eventually he was making more money selling his art than from being in the military, so he retired form the Air Force after 20 years.
1. Goobertown Paints - I'd buy them.
Especially if the range had a yellow that that didn't make me cry when I realise I have to do 20 coats to get a smooth finish.
That and some strong metallics.
2. Brent is the Walter White of mini painting.
PINK IS THE KEY
Check out the Vallejo game air metallics. I paint them on and airbrush them - great coverage, a lot less clumping.
@@kriegsblade7094 Pink is the key? Please, divulge these secrets!
@@willjones1696 A pink undercoat gives the yellow a warm "orange" shading. Yellow over a black undercoat is difficult to give adequate coverage, and gives a greenish tinge at times. There's a Goobertown vid that uses the pink undercoat and explains it.
@@BlackCoyote66 Very interesting. I will have to give that a try once I find that video. I plan to experiment with underpainting in greyscale tomorrow and will have to try this pink undercoat for any yellow I paint. Thank you : ]
Science!
There are museums that store some of the pure sources of pigment (shells, plants, metals, etc), which make for fascinating viewing.
Indeed! It's fascinating stuff, We'll need to go deeper! :-)
Ancient Egyptians used Bone for white pigment. Imagine a “skulls for the skull throne” made out of actual skulls.
There was a color called, mummy brown, that was made from actual mummies lol.
I was actually thinking yesterday "I wonder what Brent is up to, I haven't seen an upload for a while", interesting video dude, thanks!
Hey hey!!!! :-)
Same here! I had even gone searching for his channel to see what new video I had missed!
@@GoobertownHobbies Hey from Luci. Thanks for the video!!! You ask for more info on pigment and spectral data on pigments. I work with the most famous and world renown pigment expert and pigment chemist Luke. (from Lucid Colour and Mafia Pigments) You should contact him as he would be happy to work on giving you the technical info (near impossible to get info) from the secret pigment world. Luci
Hey from Luci. Thanks for the video!!! You ask for more info on pigment and spectral data on pigments. I work with the most famous and world renown pigment expert and pigment chemist Luke. (from Lucid Colour and Mafia Pigments) You should contact him as he would be happy to work on giving you the technical info (near impossible to get info) from the secret pigment world. Luci
@@GoobertownHobbies 6666 to on offer too too on out oit is a food that too iou you
Great to see you back discussing the chemistry side of things. It's something you do that I've not seen from anyone else.
Very concise and informative! Thank you Dr. Brent :)
I had a really stressful day at work, got home had dinner, poured a large rum, hmm still stressed, popped TH-cam on watched this, now completely chilled out and looking at my paints in a whole other way. Thankyou Brent.
This was so interesting! Seriously considering adding this video to my chemistry curriculum next year, and now I'm super stoked for your future physics video on reflection and absorption as it's one of my favorite topics to teach. Hooray science!
Hooray!- Glad you liked it! I'll have to keep reading up on this stuff and make some more vids ;-)
@@GoobertownHobbies Hey, I know this is about 2 years after the video, but I do have a reference that you might like:
"The Artist's Handbook of Materials and Techniques" by Ralph Mayer
It has all sorts of stuff including pigment information including reflectance spectra, chemical formula, common names, color index names, and medium compatibility.
Science Brent is the Best Brent!
And Kimera Kolors are absolutely amazing, but they cannot at all used as you are used to by other mini painting brands. It needs a LOT of practice to get nice results with them. However, if you got that practice, there is nothing better (at least for display painting). They are not really suited for casual painting or army painting, cause they have no coverage at all because of the missing titanium white in the hues.
@@KevinvL Interesting! good to know :-)
Those are all on my list of things I'd like to learn someday. Once I understand that stuff I'll definitely make a vid! :-)
Ah, I love science flow into our hobby.
Best Video chart! TY!
As an Oil Engineer, i countinuously get things like, pressure, connections, capilarity, fluids mechanics that apply to the painting and hobbing world that surprize me, everything is interconnected and its wonderful, this was such a great video Goober, thanks, i felt i havent learn this much in such a long time! Keep up the awesome work!
Amazing video! Our hobby is starving for more information like this. I'm definitely with you in that science is beautiful and can only enhance the art. And while I'm all for experimentation in painting, it's also nice to avoid mistakes with some good information before starting! Keep making these videos!
Right on! Finding stuff that's the right mixture of science+ art is tricky, but as I keep learning things I'll keep sharing them, I'm glad you like this stuff too! :-)
I'm only 5 minutes in and I *know* this is going to be one of my go-to videos. Your information is transparent, easy to understand It's completely facilitating!
If you're interested in the spectrum reflections of different paints, you can make an easy setup with projecting white light through a spectrum and seeing where along the rainbow a certain paint reflects. What's hard to do, is making the whole dark enough so you only see the right reflection, but with some creativity, it's possible to pull this off.
Your content is awesome, and the presentation is as good, keep at it!
Juste coming back to this one once in a while when the day is hard and you want to (re)learn how it all works.
Coming from the art side of pigment appreciation, I can only second the importance of understanding the qualities of different pigments, rather than thinking of paint as just paint. Mini painting have kinda been spoiled by being an art form that came about after the synthetic colour revolution of the early 1900's. That's not to say that natural pigments are inherently superior to synthetic (quite the opposite is true in many cases) but rather that the limitation that naturally comes with having a limited range of specific hues is a great motivator for actually learning colour theory rather than getting super caught up with what specific paints are used for a given effect. That becomes a roadblock to creative improvement in my opinion - ie. thinking "what colour from the Citadel(TM) product line did they use for that effect?" rather than "what approach to color did they use to create that effect?" obscures what it is that is really the reason the model look good.
Mixing all the colours from the base colours is difficult, as you say, but not impossible and practising it is, IMO, the best way to get a practical grasp of colour theory. I follow the same principle with mini paints as with paint-on-canvas paints: Get a good quality red, blue, yellow, white and black paint and mix your way from there, and only buy more paints from there when the need for it arises naturally - ie. if for my army I need a lot of, say, indian yellow and turquoise, I'll specifically get those colours, but primarily as a convenience, to save me time.
This became kinda tangential and I don't want to bash anyone's way of painting, I just know that for myself personally, my painting level took a quantum leap when I started to think about paint as a limited palette of basic "carmine reds" and "raw siennas" and so on (sort of "god given" pigments in that they are of a naturally limited number) that I have to wrestle into the hue I want, rather than as a practically infinite range of specific hues that I have free choice between.
One of my friends took a class where one of the big projects was just being able to mix the color wheel from 3 primaries, and he said it was super challenging but also really rewarding when he got it figured out. This is such a deep deeeeeep subject to jump into, but it's super fun and useful! :-)
@@GoobertownHobbies as I write in comment, I was searching for your "futur episode" that you didnt seem to done yet, the subjects really interest me because as many people I coulnd make a nice purple by mixing red and blue and we have different sets of primarys as I think you said in a video, the red blue yellow and magenta cyan yellow principaly, in paint, now can I mix magenta with a bit of yellow to have a red then mix on another side cyan with a little bit of magenta to have a blue then use theses (blue and red) then mix them to have a nice purple ? So have basically magenta and cyan and yellow to have a purple.. while yellow is complementary of purple so should avoid making a red with magenta and yellow and instead use directly magenta instead of making a red.. I feel none of these primary sets are perfect. A perfect red(not magenta) and a perfect blue (not cyan) gives a very dark purple that isnt even teally purple, its very redish brown or blue grey.
I doesnt really trust in primary anymore or at least do not think anymore that, as the person in the comment said, that you can just have the blue red yellow white and black to do every color.. I would personnaly have both blue and red so a nice pure.blue, kind of cobalt imo PLUS cyan, same for the red, the purest red I can find PLUS magenta. To these double blues and red I would also take two yellow the purest and a cool yellow for the greens then even test.my "purest yellow" with red to see if I have a nice orange, if not I ll take a 3rd yellow that would be an orangish yellow. To this I would buy a purple even having double blues and double reds and test the cool yellow with both of the blues to see if at least ones gives me a perfect green which I doubt because the purest blue as he say for me seems to tend to red and the cyan to have white, to be whitish so even green I would buy ..
So I think orange would be the unique secondary I would not buy.. or.. maybe even a "purest" orange..
Plus black and white
From there the first thing I would do is preparing unsatured colors, a lot writing the precise mix on the bootles, I.would start with olive/camo colors that I dont call green because.. mix a yellow and black and.. you'll understand..
So I would start with basics ones with each of them using one of the yellows plus black then I would, do more unsaturated ones using different mix of a yellow plus cyan or the other blue and black.
Then I ll do some browns, greys and other colors.
I know I'm a few years late to the party, but I also come from sort of artistic background (hobby art, I'm not pro or anything), specifically watercolours and coloured pencils. While not having pigment information with coloured pencils is not a big deal, since you tend to have more colours available for relatively speaking cheaper price, with watercolours it quickly became a problem for me. I love to use limited palette and I was lucky enough that I met artists who explained the difference between "light" primaries (the ones used in light mixing, which could be easily RYB) and "pigment" primaries (similar to in cartridges, CMYK). While CMYK isn't perfect, it's the best 3 (well, 4 or 5 if you count black and possibly white) primary colour limited palette you can find.
But I also find that if you start with limited palette and do the mixing yourself, you can learn a lot and creating "muddy" colours is also a skill that's used. Now for watercolour I adopted "split primary" approach, I do have cooler and warmer versions of each colour plus split neutrals. This has given me the most freedom in mixing whatever the heck I want in paints. However, there's one more key thing. As mentioned in the video, titanium white and a lot of black pigments tend to lean opaque. There are other opaque pigments, but these two are the major ones. Transparent colours I find to be the best for mixing new colours. And not only on the palette, you can use with glazes or layering visual mixing with them. But when you go for opaque colours, it starts to get trickier.
I started acrylics journey (just miniatures, I don't use acrylics on anything else) with opaque colours. With no pigment information. And I got frustrated super fast with mixing the colours I want. And I don't think it was specifically a problem of not knowing the exact pigment code, I could do without that. But as mentioned in the video, problem is with the colours being mixed from quite a few things, some of them stronger than others, some of them with weird undertones if you mix white in them. It's a pure frustration. If they used a single pigment or 2 similar pigments like you tend to have with most artist colour paints, I could do without the pigment information. Just knowing it's a single/two pigment formula (preferably also knowing if it contains white or black pigment), I could be happy. This made me actually go for artist acrylics instead of hobby paints since I love mixing. And as a bonus, you can find transparent (to an extend, it's acrylics after all) colours in their ranges. And as I mentioned, those work for me much better for colour mixing.
Of course most people don't stop with the "basics" and start to aquire "convenience" colours so they don't have to mix every single thing if they use it a lot. But for me the imporant things missing on hobby paints is their opaque/transparency rating and at least something about pigment (like a mix of 2 blue pigments, a mix of green and white, whatever, or just you know, use the pigment codes artist paints use). Both play a huge role in how I mix colours and the success before even trying to mix the colours.
The most problematic thing about RYB btw is that you can't mix all the colours in their most saturated form. While you can easily desaturate any colour you want, you never can make it more saturated than the mix gives you. And the reason opaque colours have more of a problem with this mixing is that you need to mix white into some of the paints to bring out their colour, because the mix is too dark to see anything (it basically looks black). This is most visible with mixing purple or green colours, since blue is the colour with lowest value in saturated form. Some of the vibrancy (or saturation) of the colour gets lost when adding white. Hence why I lean toward transparent colours, but as I said, even those in limited palette aren't perfect. But they're as close as you can get.
And I wanted to say, lovely to read both of your coments and seeing this video, I really appreciate it.
I'm curious to see how the minis you coated at the end turned out once they dried, what a tease.
Whoops! I forgot to include that shot! Nothing funky happened when they dried from what you saw, lots of white poking through after one coat, but all-in-all not terrible. :-)
I was also curious about that. Maybe put up some pictures somewhere Brent?
Probably look like a 80s copy of White Dwarf
@@GoobertownHobbies maybe he can drop a shot on the discord =)
As much as i enjoy your videos about miniature painting, but those videos about crafts products chemistry are precious. If ever you fancy doing more, you have an audience. Thanks for the joy and knowledge!
I love watching your videos and listen to your soft and calm voice. Havent painted a single mini in my whole life!
Hehehe, I'll talk you into it one of these days! :-)
Yessss, this is my jaaammm!!
I love pigments and would absolutely love a deep chemistry nerdy dive!!
I have a few friends who mull and make their own watercolours from either self-sourced or bought pigments, and tbh I am a little addicted.
I loved this video so much.
I also love just how certain pigments can produce such a wide variety of colours, like PR101, PBr7 and PV19.
I think one of my biggest peeves with mini paints is just how many of them clearly contain white, most probably PW6. I know this is a highly personal peeve from someone who came in from other kinds of traditional art, but argh.
I have been waiting to get the Kimera Kolors for about six months now. Not having access to good mixing colours and pigment and lightfastness info is part of why it took me so long to get into mini painting, so when I saw Marco Frisoni mention KK, I was sold!
They have been sold out for most of that time, even before the lockdown, though. I know they I working on making more, and my wallet is ready!
Thank you, Brent!
Moar pigment and dye nerdery! MOAR!!!
MOAR!!! :-)
13:34 magnetized paint handle !!! wow !! clever !!
He has a full video on those, among his first ones
Excellent video Brent! I love Science with Goobertown Hobbies. The Happy little drakari line made my day. Please keep up the great work good sir!
I discovered your channel two months ago. Since then, I watched all old videos, because they are not only well done, but also very soothing. You have become my Bob Ross of Miniature Gaming. 😂
Well one of us has a PhD in chemistry! Good video, Dr, Goober! It gives me a new appreciation for my Vallejo and Army Painter sets and the work that goes into them. Cheers.
Saving this to watch for later but dropping the like now as Goobertown videos are always number one in my
book
I love this man more with every video. Loved the hobby and goes out of his way to answer questions of curiosity about it
love u 2!
i live in the intersection of chemistry and art, what a lovely video!!
This must have been a lot of work, really interesting and delivered in an easy to understand way. Cant wait for the next one. Thanks Brent.
Thanks Brent, this is honestly something I have never actually looked into for some reason, time to buy a coffee grinder XD. This one will be bookmarked ^_^
Tunes in for cool paintings and knowledge. Now headed to the store to buy pigments and medium to play with....
As someone who has a BSc & worked as an industrial chemist for years before switching to study fine art, these videos are good on so many levels. Thank you!
I love the b roll of you looking at the paint pots.
Love when you teach us, waiting for a next lesson!
Your videos are the best. I love how the chemistry view makes everything click into place when using these glues, pigments and what not. I noticed how I actually understand what's going on now and how that makes me calmer and more confident when using the materials. Thanks!
This is outstanding, Brent!
;-) shouldn't you be painting orks???
Hahaha, happy little Drukhari warrior... you truly are becoming the Bob Ross of minis!
This is really interesting, as a whole pigment history is something I'm super interested in, great video! I'll admit, maybe in many ways game paints might be emulating GW in their 'you must use these multiple colours to achieve the result rather then mixing your own which is incredibly cheaper' thing. Once you know cool v warm colours, you can mix colours knowing exactly what will result
This dude is very smart, very skilled, and very calming. Great combination.
Ten out of ten video on a fascinating subject, I look forward to more on it.
I might try to find some of these! They look interesting and fun! 🖌
Enjoy! :-)
This is cool I was actually about to get into painting and getting into Warhammer 40k epic time
Love the pigment analysis. When not enjoying my other hobbies watercolour painting is in my hobby box.
Having a chemist explain pigments is a welcome addition since all I knew was the more pigment the better and the better the cost was higher.
Hunting down the pure pigments will help easily spot the unidentified ones like GW.
We just recently had discovered a new blue pigment for the first time in 200 years! To say this science is stable is an understatement.
Thanks for pointing this out a while back: it has been rattling around in my head for a while as a means of organization.
Chroma, hue and value will enable there to be quite literally millions of distinct paints, never mind medium or carrier ratios or dispersants.
The main takeaway is the less pigments, the less likely to go grey or brown when mixing.
Brilliant video. Many years ago BBC (I think) had a documentary on paints. From what I recall, there are actually very few paint production factories. And paint brand companies will copyright colors from these factories, resulting in creating a competition on making different chemical builds, and with a different build it's then a new "paint" and can be use and again copyrighted. Also, the paint production factories use a massive color chart to select colors, and if the paint color was just a small % different on the chart it's technically a different color and free to use/copyright again.
Not sure how accurate that is for the paint business today, the documentary was very old, and unfortunately I have yet to find it again, but I found it very interesting.
Oh yeah, those gits are definitely guarding their little paint recipes :-) All this is fascinating, there's soooo much to learn on this topic!
@@GoobertownHobbies Absolutely. It's kinda strange that' the whole business is such a mystery too. I've tried to find sources of the whole process, with no avail. Please take what I said above with a pinch of salt. Like I said, it's was an old documentary (well over 10-15 years ago) and I am just going off memory...which is not to be trusted. lol
Those chemical diagrams have really put me off putting my brush in my mouth!
I like this. This encourages a level of understanding that makes subtle differences in how to achieve a particularly desired result/effect. It is knowing which tool to reach for to perform a certain task. Once you understand the tool, how it is made, what is its purpose, and the raw material you are transforming, you truly reach a deeper level of craftsmanship.
Just to come back to the fineness of grind. I have worked for 5 years as Material engineer dealing with ceramic tape casting, so a process similar to paint manufacturing: solvents, binder, dispersant and a powder. Fineness of grind has a massive influence on viscosity. So grinding a bit more will make your paint more fluid.
And second, I'm a subscriber of Anne Foerster, the ex-Reaper paints chemist. In one of her first video she mentions also that claiming to have extra fine pigment was a commercial ploy as each pigment has its optimal fineness of grind and if you go too fine the pigment start to become transparent.
So, please continue these more scientific videos, I love them.
Hey Brent! This is by far the earliest you’ve posted!
I've been using more and more high quality artist acrylic paints and honestly, I'm getting to where I will never go back to the junk they make specifically for gaming. They're just so good. My favorites/recommendations:
*Golden High Flow and Fluid Colors - The high flow are AMAZING through the airbrush and the fluid colors are really good for brush painting
*Liquitex Soft Body Acrylics and Acrylic Gauche - both are just great, Marco Frisoni did a dwarf on his channel with the gauche if you want to see it in action
*You already touched on the greatness of artist inks
Sure, some of the paints need a bit of thinning with mediums, but geez, you cannot beat the quality (and typically price!), IMO.
Thanks for the recommendations! Yeah I definitely want to experiment with more of these! :-)
More of these! I love looking at art through a scientific lens! I would love to see the videos you mentioned you were so excited to make “in the future”. The future is now Brent 🥹
as an artist ive been looking for info like this for ages, so interesting and informative
Duncan Rhodes: 2 thin coats.
Goober: hold my beer!
20:20
I'm not sure if that's actually true
I remember somewhere in a bit of information from Winsor & Newton, that this is an issue that they have with certain pigments when it comes to making sure the colour is correct, that different grinds can effect the colour pretty substantially
I don't think my analogy is quite right, but possibly there's a similar effect to how quantum dots, and the effect of size determining excitation energies, to that of the crystals of some of the ground pigments, and them possibly having size dependent optical properties?
It's only something I remember hearing a while back with regards to colour and grind, could have been marketing nonsense, but I'm leaning more on the idea that at least certain pigments have grind-dependent colours (if even subtley) than not!
Anyway, great video, enjoyed seeing some of the compounds making up the pigments we use every day!
Was quite shocked at the effect of those halogens on the pthalo blue/green and what a difference it made! :)
Interesting! Yeah I'm thinking of all this as a gas-phase spectroscopist, but you're right, at some point the physicists have a say in how light interacts with small particles ;-) Thanks for the lead, I'll spend more time looking into what Winsor & Newton publish and keep trying to piece together the truth of all this! For the Phthalo compounds there are a few sub-variants based on how the ligand is coordinated with the copper... I've gotta brush up on my inoragnic chemistry too!
@@GoobertownHobbies Physics background, guilty as charged ;)
By all means, please keep us all up to date with more videos on the topic! The blend of your Chemistry background and your hobby really did make for a special video :)
I work as an engineer in the R+D of a paint manufacturer. The size of your particles matter very much. The smaller the particle size, the clearer your Hue. If your particles are to big they settle Mode easily at the bottom and your hue will mit be as bright and clear.
That are only some examples why this matters, there are more which are very in depth and would need more explaining.
PS: some Pigments need more grinding and extensive force (ie. CIPB15) while others dont.
Tim-Yannick Schulze am I right in thinking one of the key differences between modern gouache and watercolour is the pigment grind? A lot of ranges don’t use zinc white for opacity anymore.
I came here from your "so you wanna paint minis do ya" video, which was excellent. I am now well versed in paint pigments and have learned great techniques and practices in just over an hour.
You sir, produce amazing videos. Thanks!
Listening to you speak when I have a horrible migraine is so soothing. No crazy music, no bright lights and no loud sounds. Just your great voice distracting me from a terrible night. Thank you!
Pfft, you Scientists have all the best toys! :P Awesome video, found it very informative, never really looked at paint to this level before. Thanks for sharing this info with us!
Here I was, having a bad day start, thanks a lot Goobertown Hobbies, 23 minutes of relaxing therapy! Can't wait to finish work and try to paint some minis, also just ordered Zombicide Season 1 (was on sale :D), tons of really forgiving paint zombies minis!
Hi,where did you get Zombicide on sale? Please share the link😁
@@drummerdanny1269 Oh, I live in Brazil, the Zombicides usually goes for around R$350-500 ($60-100), found the season 1 on Amazon.com.br for R$199 ($35), couldn't resist. Also was like 3am and it only lasted for a couple minutes until was out of stock.
@@Wa11breaker I see. It's awesome that you got lucky. The best time to get games is when they go on sale. Thanks for the reply.
When smart people do art, it's very beneficial to all! This was fascinating. I'm digging into how to make my own paints and this has given me such a better understanding. Thanks!
Aw yiss - hobby science time. Splendid video as always.
I was wondering when someone would get around to making a video like this for miniature painting. From what I understand, the basic problem with acrylics is the molecular weight of the medium isn't very high when compared to the oil mediums, like linseed and safflower. The higher the molecular weight, the greater the pigment load the medium can take. You also mentioned solubility, which is also a factor in how much pigment can be crammed into paint.
Furthermore, many of the "good" pigments, the ones with good solubility and opacity, are either toxic (cadmium reds, oranges, and yellows, red lead, red mercury, chrome green, lead white), expensive (vanadium purple), or earth tones (umbers, ochers, and iron black). The safer and cheaper alternatives tend to be lakes, precipitations of dyes using metal salts, which are by definition transparent. The lower pigment loading combined with a quarter to a third of the color wheel being dominated by transparent lakes means that craft and hobby acrylics on the whole struggle with coverage, particularly with highly saturated colors.
Manufacturers of craft and hobby paints try to compensate by introducing extra titanium white, which is heavy and sometimes chalky, or boosting saturation of a more opaque pigment with lakes. This also accounts for the non-linear way acrylics mix, since some are cocktails of lakes and an opacifier while others are simpler blends of truly opaque pigments.
Oil is more acidic than acrylic too so that means some pigments that are perfectly safe to use aren’t available in the latter medium. Prussian Blue, for example is very rarely seen.
This subject is SO DEEP, I'm really enjoying learning about it. :-) That bit about manufacturers adding titanium white to paints to increase coverage- whoa! that makes sense, I hadn't noticed that!
@@GoobertownHobbies Adding zinc white (which is admittedly more transparent than titanium white) to watercolours is the traditional way of making your own gouache, but that's changed a lot in the last century.
@@GoobertownHobbies Really good paints (very rare to find) will not use titanium to increase "coverage" but use similar shade in combination to original pigment with a low toxicity MMO (mixed metal oxides). Mom are reasonably priced and easy to modify to make more opaque for "coverage". Titanium dioxide is $1 per/Lb ($2per/Kg) = cheap paints... Hidden secrets of the manufacture ;-)
"Actually yes" got to me don't know why but it did
Science me more!!!!!! This was a great video and it's refreshing to see you speak to both your expertise. Thanks for the great content.
The library of 'good colors' is huge too. All you can do is ask in the community that revolves around the paint subject and hope that someone knows the exact color you mean. On top of that there's the color difference on monitors and before you think about brightness and color settings, the fact that if you're using an old monitor will change things too.
If you can invent or find a new yellow pigment that covers well, you'll be *RICH*.
Gotta get that yellow! :-)
I really want to get my hands on some of those old dark eldar models
Oh they're super handy to have around! :-)
Good job on this video man. Hope you are happy, safe and healthy .
A hair-god chemist? Huh. I'd make a chemistry joke, but I fear the reaction would be detrimental. But color me a stroke more educated than before!
The science behind miniature painting. I love it.
Hey Brent, I want to thank you so much, I've only watched a couple of your videos for the past few days and you've totally got me hooked into mini painting! When I was 5, my favourite thing in the world was this tiny gamesworkshop store but as fast as I discovered it, it sadly shut down. After that the only things to remind me were a second hand collection of a Sisters of Battle minis and a single white dwarf magazine. Now after a long wait, an intro to D&D last year, and a spark of this old flame, I think It's time to go out, grab some minis, and get to some painting!
(Nothing but admiration, inspiration and respect towards you!)
Hey hey, I'm glad that you're back into it!! You'll have to paint those sisters one of these days :-)
I think most of the game color lines hide their pigment lists because they're deliberately trying to match Citadel's tones, and they don't want to expose themselves as copying the pigment recipe.
Yup yup, there's a bunch of corporate/ IP shenanigans going on there. Still annoying for us as consumers tho! :-)
Can you even trademark a formula? I would think that you could not patent it either.
Do you know the youtuber NileRed? He's a chemistry youtuber and he's done some work on pigments. I would be interested in seeing a collaboration. Cheers!
Yea he does some cool stuff! :-)
YAY - science!
This video explains perfectly why you should add some white to your yellow on the first few coats to get opacity. Or undercoat with various shades to get undertones for yellow
a mad scientist Brent episode. My favorite type of episode
hehehe me too!
i'm now starting to understand why games workshop said they had to paint an entire chapter worth of space marine test models while developing contrast paints. which leaves me wondering, what is the difference between acrylic paint and acrylic ink?
Paint to Ink is mostly the ratio of water to binder polymer to pigment. :-)
@@GoobertownHobbies I was under the impression (probably from marketing) that inks tended to have more pigment in them as well.
@@redleg1376 I'm not sure what the exact ration are of solvent to pigment, but inks certainly have less binder than paints. Same basic ingredients, just different ratios. :-)
Redleg 137 you can tell inks have a pretty high pigment load because you can dilute them fairly far without losing intensity. Though it helps that most ink ranges use pigments like the phthalos that have very high staining. Ultramarine blue, by comparison, is very rarely seen in most acrylic ink lines (and you almost never see a hobby paint for Ultramarines that uses ultramarine! They tend to be PB15.1 or PB15.6, red-shade phthalo blue)
@@nicholascaldwell6079 Yeah, I am pretty new to the miniature painting hobby and was pretty bummed to find out that ultramarine is not ultramarine... With the limited painting I did before I was used to just get seven hobby-art colors (lemon yellow, carmine red, magenta, cyan, ultramarine, black, white) and mix everything else. Doesn't work so well with hobby paints.
I never heard about pigments before I discovered this channel.
Warning: chemist at work.
Thank you for this. There are too many myths circulating in the hobby that basically boil down to people not really having a grasp on what paint even is, and this video has a chance of helping with that
Right on! I'm still trying to get a handle on all this myself, one step at a time! :-)
@@GoobertownHobbies By the way, and I dunno if this is obvious or news to you or not since I'm a physics student talking to a chemist here but I seem to recall that you can get the color spectra for various compounds from the band structures, and those do get calculated for a lot of different compounds so that's something to look at?
I love learning about the chemistry behind my hobby! Thank you so much!
When you go to your local hobby store, it's like a wizard has mixed the contents of the paint bottles. Anyone got the pigment powder code for GW's Macragge Blue ? I've looked around and have not figured it out yet.
All I can find is "The hexadecimal color code #0d407f is a medium dark shade of cyan-blue. In the RGB color model #0d407f is comprised of 5.1% red, 25.1% green and 49.8% blue. In the HSL color space #0d407f has a hue of 213° (degrees), 81% saturation and 27% lightness. This color has an approximate wavelength of 473.62 nm."
Ths video is the first of its kind and is awesome.
The cowards hide their pigments! No good yellow bellied pigment hogs... :-)
If Macragge is what they're calling Ultramarine Blue now, I'm guessing it's probably just ultramarine blue, which is a standard artist colour.
@@gavinmillar what I would like is a website which gives you RGB ratings or R,G or B powder pigments, like a value of 0-255, then you could mix the powders with matt medium and get the Citadel color just right
Super informative Brent! Actually my second time watching the video, but had to come back for a refresher after buying some pigments for myself and trying to make my own oil paint.
10/10 mate. Both Schmincke and Golden acrylic paint companies are at the cutting edge of paint tech for artists and their websites are a chemists heaven. Used both of them for 20+ years. Here in New Zealand the fugitive light sensitive reds are a real problem due to our personally aggressive sunlight. great to hear all the technical terms. thanks heaps. Chur.
One of my favorite colors, that copper ammonia complex color. Beautiful
Really appreciated and loved this episode. So cool to hear you expand on the sciency side of things and stuff you know! Keep it up!
I just discovered your video now, im an artist who does many different mediums and right now im doing watercolor and have been studying pigments, and I so appreciate this video - thank you! 😄🤗💖🧑🎨🌹
YES!!! Can't wait for more science! I'm very interested in white and why it sucks so often. :D
Great video! One of your best so far! Love the little nuggets of chemistry!
I love getting the chemistry side of painting and I found watching you mix the paints with those slick shots. Great job! My eyes also didn't glaze over when you went into some of the detail on the compounds, so great job on keeping that stuff accessible.
It would be cool if Vallejo and other conpanies listed their pigments, but I think that it's fair for companies to want to keep their trade secrets. Plus nobody would want to go first! As for the languages, removing a language potentially puts your product in violation of local trade laws, plus potentially cutting off a whole market to seel product in. Not surprised companies would want to avoid that! Great job, Brent, I really learned a ton from this amazing video!
I love having a deeper understanding of our hobby. Watching how much pigment you dumped in and seeing the result really made me appreciate how much work goes into to getting the proper proportions together to make our hobby paints.
As painter I always looking for information about pigments and medium and Google brings me here! This video is deep and best video I ever seen! I love these material videos and please makes more!
I really like your science videos. Always good to know these things.
This is a video I didn't know I needed, but definitely did. I found myself reaching into the recesses of my memory for chemistry and optics lessons. Great stuff!
Mulling pigments is for dispersion in the suspension. It's more abundant in watercolors. Handprint is a cool source to go to
Great watch, definitly hoping to see more on the science behind painting.
Love this video. Its always nice to know some science behind stuff, and you always explain it well. Can't wait for more experiments!
one thing that i've found really helps when youre mixing your own colors is the understanding that pigments are not perfect. there is no pigment that reflects 100% blue light and nothing else. every blue you find will be just barely nudged slightly to either red or yellow. so naturally you want to leverage this by picking your colors wisely. if you want to make a vivid green you need to pick a yellow and a blue that are already tipped in that direction. if you use either a warmer yellow or a warmer blue then the green will be muddy.
I couldnt give a flip about paints or hobby figures, but i watched this whole video with glued interest. Nice job. Keep up the interesting content!
Thank you for your videos. It may seem strange, but I am beginning to rely on your videos. Not only does it scratch my hobby itch, but it feels like chatting with a friend.
The Bob Ross of minis - LOVE IT.