What type and brand(s) of pigment do you use to make your paints?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Rebecca on January 29, 2011 at 2:42am

Hi Linda!  I too am getting ready to start my bandwagon, although I won't be purchasing my items till next month I have made pieces a million times in my dreams and just know it will be something I enjoy.  Do you have any guidance on products you have purchased?  I would be very interested in your input.  If you have things like boards that you still need someone put a website up of a guy that will build them for you and ship them, not sure if the prices on that are comp. or not but I'd like to keep in touch since we are close in starting time, hopefully I can start around the 15th but if not it will be the end of the month.  Hope to talk with you soon!  And great luck in color!  Becky Collins

 

 

Permalink Reply by Lin B. on January 29, 2011 at 12:04pm

That's exciting! I'm glad we're starting around the same time! I really hope I can start soon. It's a little hard since I'm going to school and that keeps me very busy as it is, but I want to  (hopefully) make my medium and colored waxes this month.. like later this month LOL. We will definitely keep in touch! So far I have ordered my wooden panels & brushed from dickblick.com ... and my wax and damar from this artist supply store in New York. I purchased the book "Encaustic Workshop" by Seggebruch-- you should check it out!

Permalink Reply by Judy Wood on January 29, 2011 at 3:02am

I use dry pigments and am happy with the results. I do have a decent face mask and am careful when handling them.

I'm in Canada and the two sources I have tried so far are

Kama http://www.kamapigment.com/index_en.html and

Kroma http://www.kromaacrylics.com/dry-pigments/. Both have been very satisfactory. They are smaller companies and artist-owned and operated. Kama carries oil sticks and paints as well. 

Permalink Reply by Lin B. on January 29, 2011 at 11:50am

I was checking out Kamapigment! hmm... I'm going to take a better look at their site. For some reason, Kroma won't allow me to zoom in on their dry pigment price list. Thank you :)

Permalink Reply by Judy Wood on February 2, 2011 at 10:49am

Forgot to mention that with Kroma you have to phone the order in rather than order online. It seems to me I was able to see the price list, but I don't remember what I did to get there. I got my recent and first order from Kama, which included a few oil sticks which also seem good for encaustic.

Permalink Reply by Lin B. on January 29, 2011 at 11:46am

Thanks for this information Michael! :) Why do u feel that synthetic pigment is not worth it?? Is that the case for Sinopia or from any dry pigment brand?

Permalink Reply by Mo Godbeer on February 1, 2011 at 11:04pm

I always use oils to colour my waxes but i use a bit more damar in my medium mix than is usually recommended. I havent had any problems with oil not drying or loss of shine but i suppose i could try some pigments and see if there is much difference. The pigments in australia are so ridiculously priced and i worry about the health risk of handling all those chemicals. 

I saw a small jar like a spice sized jar of prussian blue pigment at the art store the other day and it was $90. I'd have to charge heaps more for my work if I used this.

Permalink Reply by Lin B. on February 2, 2011 at 2:49am

Oh wow! $90 is insane for a small jar of pigment! I actually ended up purchasing pigments on earthpigments.com yesterday. it'll be my first time dabbling with pigments. The health hazards worry me too so I'm going to purchase a half-face respirator and work outside before I attempt to make my colored waxes, haha. Why do you put more damar in your medium mix? to make it harder?

Permalink Reply by Janelle Lorenzen on April 28, 2012 at 4:45am

I have purchased from earthpigments.com. I have only mixed a few colors with these pigments and I am dissappointed. It seems the pigment all sits at the bottom of the tin and I have to keep stirring it to get a good color. Has anyone else had this problem? Maybe I'm not mixing correctly or not using the correct amount?

Permalink Reply by Michael Billie on May 2, 2012 at 1:24am

I never heard of earth pigments. I get my dry pigments from sinopia, kama pigments or natural pigments. Some do tend to sink to the bottom depending on the type. They all have their own behavior. I know that both companies that I use grind the crap of out them to get them to a fine dust. I also have some other metallic which I use dry since I know they're too heavy and tend to sink.

On an earlier post I had mentioned earth pigments but I was really talking about natural pigments.

Permalink Reply by Janelle Lorenzen on May 2, 2012 at 3:42am

Thanks for your reply, Michael. I've been reading up on it and it seems like some colors do mix better than others. Unfortunately these pigments were expensive and have ended up sort of being a pain in the butt! I think I will definately be buying premixed colors from now on.

Do you happen to know about using artist's pastels in encaustic. There is a video of Kandy Lozano in the video thread and it shows her scraping dry pigments into her paintings. Just wondering if you know anything about this process?

Permalink Reply by Mo Mapes on May 2, 2012 at 11:13am

Janelle-I believe those are soft pastels she is scraping onto the surface of the wax and rubbing them in. The others are oil sticks- nice and creamy. I use Sennelier. Oil pastels can be rubbed in but they are harder- not as creamy. I have been drawing into the wax with the oil pastels and they work great as long as you don't heat them much. I have been using powdered graphite too.

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• Next ›
• Page