Your non-profit art supply & book store, inside the Minneapolis College of Art & Design
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Color is a living language. Creative currents ebb and flow while science moves pigments to the forefront and pulls other into obscurity. A display of Williamsburg Handmade Oil colors shows the cycle of history. Colors we share with generations of painters in the past, as well as Colors owned only by this generation of artists.
Here, we present three colors from the Williamsburg palette. Each with its own place in history, and because of their inherent beauty and personality, they should also have a place on your palette.
Viridian
The color of emeralds, this was the favorite green of the French
Impressionists, central to the palettes of Monet, Van Gogh, Canne, and
Renoir, among many others. Its translucent,
blue-green tones cannot be matched by a
blend of other colors. Never
strident or artificial in
appearance, it has an almost earthy, mineral feel that allows it to sit
comfortably within a painting. Williamsburg grinds it to a velvety surface,
rather than the more glossy sheen common to Phthalo and Sap Greens.
Mixed with white it can almost feel blue, yet blended with yellow can
generate a wide range of leafy landscape greens.
Alizarin Orange
Like peeling back the shadowed skin of a tangerine to reveal the bright golden notes hidden inside,
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Williamsburg's Alizarin Orange explodes with color. From the tube its masstone hovers between saffron and paprika, with a mid-tone note of russet-orange that is moody and alluring.
But none of that prepares you for the vivid, hot streaks of yellow left by your brush pushing the paint across the canvas, or the infusion of warmth it provides in glazes. Its most vivid and dazzling moments hide just beneath the surface.
Sevres Blue
Inspired by the crisp, bright blue, Celeste enamel found on the finest Louis XV Sevres porcelain. It is opaque yet airy, dense yet luminous, it is the blue of a clear sky at noon. But its usefulness goes well beyond landscapes. Blend with warmer earth colors for steely grays, pull a touch into skin tones to create shadows, or go electric by playing off its nearly perfect complement of Williamsburg Cadmium Red Vermilion.
Descriptions of colors, or even close examination of paintings that employ these colors, cannot do them justice. You must experience these colors. Ask for the special sample set containing these three colors next time you visit your Williamsburg retailer.
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