Charles Lewis Art - California

Riff on Red

Red is primary. Red is real. Red is fun. I like red. A lot of artists don’t. They fear red. Red is powerful. Red is dangerous to sales. “You should only use just a little red, as an accent,” the teachers say. I found this description of red’s emotional nature on the web:

“Red has always been symbolic of blood and life. The universal color of blood binds us all together, giving us a common point of empathy for anyone that’s hurting. The color red is also used as a warning. And, since red is such an intense, hot color, it’s often used to show passion. Emotions like anger, love, or shame can all lead to a rising inner temperature and a quickly beating heart, leaving us red with anger, burning with love, or scarlet with shame. All of that combines to make red—by far—the most emotionally charged color of the entire color spectrum.” (http://www.viuzza.net/art/paint-color-mieaning.html)

I looked in my paint kit at the reds. Some tubes go back decades, all mashed up and barely identifiable – heck, one tube of ancient Grumbacher cadmium red still had a price on it of $1.05. That’s old! I can still squeeze a bit out of it if I need to. Here’s my take on some reds. Unfortunately the variability of web color viewing makes it impossible for me to illustrate the differences here.

Cadmium Red. The most common mineral reds are the ones made from cadmium and/or barium. They are bright, bold, opaque, and cheerful – what more could you ask for? Cadmium reds have a natural feel to them. We are used to them from advertising. One of the three classic American cars I really like (I’m not a car guy), the 1962 Corvette came in that amazing “candy apple red” color that just draws a grin on my face. Candy Apple Red. How great is that! How American! 

Crimson. Alizarin Crimson is a versatile, deep scarlet paint, with a pronounced blue tone that pushes it toward the purple. It originated as a synthetic version of madder red, in the mid-1800s. It is translucent and doesn’t have much covering power on its own, but in layers can build up a nice tone and used as a tint is quite lovely. A little AC underpainting adds depth to skin tones (at least Caucasian ones). Quinacridone crimson is a more modern synthetic color that has greater light-fastness. Some artists use a classic mix of AC with Prussian blue to get a neutral lavender-like “mud” that can be used as a mid-tone, gray substitute that is calming to the eye.

Vermilion is a powerful, orangy red pigment (mercuric sulphide) with high opacity. Vermilion is the traditional Chinese red. Analysis of the Shroud of Turin revealed vermillion. It was an important chemical and color in the history of Alchemy (the result of the interaction between the key chemicals sulfur and mercury), where it shows up in the 9th century AD. Cadmium reds basically can do the same job as vermilion with a bit of yellow mixed in, but I like vermillion when I need a blast of orange-red. I find the tints - mixture of vermillion and white- to give a particularly ugly pink.

Cinnabar is a bright red ore of mercury. It was extensively used by the artists of Pompeii. But for the last 600 years or so, cinnabar red has been largely replaced by vermillion, since cinnabar red darkens when exposed to the air.

Azo Red is a bright, bold stable red that is very much like vermillion. Azo is a type of totally synthetic dye widely used in clothes dying – in oil paint, colorless particles (typically earths or clays) are tinted using an azo chemical. It works well, is lightfast and has high covering power, but I can’t see that it has any benefits over regular cadmium red or vermillion.

Red Oxides are earth colors. They are permanent and fairly opaque. The truly natural ones can be gritty and don’t work very well as glazes, although they can give interesting tints in white. (The Natural Pigments website says, “The particles of natural pigments are at least six times the diameter of synthetic pigments in modern artists’ colors.”) Most earth reds are iron oxides, and tend to have names associated with their place of origin (Venetian, Indian, Spanish, etc.). One type - ochre - is a naturally tinted iron oxide clay that was used in ancient cave paintings. It’s not hard to find natural earth reds (Rublev paints are nice:  http://www.naturalpigments.com/rublev_oil.asp), but most red oxides are now made synthetically. Persian red, for instance, is a deep orangy-red color made these days from iron silicate, alumina, and magnesia. Some impostors, like mars red, look like earths but are completely synthetic. (Anything that has mars in the name is, to my eyes, intensely ugly. Mars yellow has to be one of the ugliest colors made.) Earth reds tend to be dull when compared to chemical reds.

I wish I could buy all the earth reds on the market, since they all are slightly different, reflecting their origins in different mineral deposits around the world. It’s hard to do faces without earth reds, where they add subtlety, complexity, depth and a natural look. I have a fave to plug: Old Holland makes a paint called Italian Brown Pink Lake that I got in an online order (I usually try to pick one new color to try out when I order paint, and this is a killer.) It’s a gritty earth with a red-brown tone that is just amazingly versatile. I find myself using it in every painting these days.

Carmine has been made for millennia from the dried bodies of the cochineal insect, a kind of beetle that lives in the prickly-pear cactus. This bluish deep red is vibrant and bold, and is one of the main dye colors used in antique oriental rugs and other weavings. Cochineal is a labor-intensive color, requiring zillions of little insects; its pigment base is still made in Mexico and India. Alizarin crimson can cover the job of carmine in many cases.

Madder or rose madder is a natural plant color obtained from the roots of madder plants, which are native to Persia and central Asia. It is one of the most ancient and stable natural pigments. I love the color of madder. Once you key into it, you can pick it out easily – I have a lovely 19^th century Afshar rug from Persia that has a field of the most intense, beautiful madder. Madder is, to me, the most neutral of the reds, and I use it in a pure state or to balance the drift to blue or orange of other reds. It doesn’t have much covering power, so you usually need multiple coats to get a really primary look.