This month, for the first time in a while, there wasn't too much pressure on my materials budget so I've taken the plunge and bought myself half a dozen of the Pip Seymour paints I mentioned a few months back. Today, they arrived.
First up, a quick word about where I got them from, Pegasus Art. They have the biggest selection from the range that I've found, the swatches on the website are remarkably accurate (as long as your screen is set up correctly) and, very importantly, the order was the best packed box of art materials I have ever received through the post. Jacksons in particular should sit up and take notice of how well this outfit pack things.
Today I'm just going to give first impressions of the paint - you'll see why! As many of the colours in the range are unique and there is very little in the way of independent, unbiased information on the web I will look at some of the individual colours when I've spent quality time with them.
I bought English Green Earth, Davy's Grey, Roman Black Earth, Victoria Green, Cumbria Pure Iron Ore and Titanium Orange. Not the most obvious selection, but I was thinking about gaps in my paint box and the oncoming autumn and winter. Of these, 3 are unique (Green Earth, Victoria Green and Iron Ore) and a fourth - the black - is only available from one other supplier as far as I can find. One of the things I find particularly compelling about the range is that Pip is very specific in his information - the iron ore comes from the Florence deep mine on the Furness peninsula while the green earth and Davy's grey both come from the same quarry in Oxfordshire.
Pip says on the website that, whereas other manufacturers try and be consistent across their range, he wants to mill each pigment as if it were done by hand, adjusting the amount of milling to emphasise that pigment's fundamental character which, depending on your point of view, is either a revival of traditional production when each studio would make its own paint or the paint-maker's equivalent of modernism. This is the overwhelming first impression. Tested blind you would not believe they were all from the same maker, and the fact you like or dislike one paint can't be used to predict your reaction to the rest of the range. This is the quality that will either appeal immensely to you or put you off the range for good. Its difficult to communicate just how far Pip pushes this. If you buy a tube of bog standard, high street artist-quality paint or one from most of the pro-quality paints like Michael Harding you can read a lot into that tube because every other tube of paint from that manufacturer will be very similar. Each pigment will have its own characteristics in terms of opacity, how strong it is in a mix and - to a lesser degree - how much oil the pigment has been mixed into (aka how fat the colour is) but fundamentally the entire range will have a similar consistency (Harding tends to be stiffer than W&N for example) and a similar pigment load and approach to fillers and bulking things out (again, Harding tends to be far more intensely coloured than W&N). A few makers, like Williamsburg, embrace the variation between pigments and make different colours have different characteristics - some may be thicker, some more intense, others slightly gritty - but I have never come across one that takes this to the same extreme as Pip Seymour. The English Green Earth has visible particles in it and gives a clearly visible texture, even in just my first manipulations on a piece of scrap. The Cumbria Iron Ore feels gritty and looks like fine mud in texture. The Titanium Orange looks and feels like a normal high end paint. I can't overstate the difference between individual colours, and this is why I will look at them individually when I understand them better.
I was going to put up a picture of the colours as I have squeezed out a little and played with them, but I've played too much and it would be confusing. Follow the Pegasus link above and you'll see decent but small swatches. For now it will suffice to say that a palette of Green Earth, Davy's Grey, Roman Black Earth along with Raw Umber, Ivory Black, a couple of whites and whatever green suits your local area will make an awesome palette for winter landscapes on those days when at first glance everything is monochrome, that as I suspected Victoria Green is the colour of Southern England during spring and summer rain, that the iron ore is very close to Burnt Sienna in hue but it is far more transparent and it behaves differently and that the Roman Black Earth might just be the answer to a lot of painters' prayers - a black which is lively, a black which doesn't kill a picture stone dead, a black which is subtle and transparent. I've avoided black for such a long time, seeing it as a very blunt tool, but this one is possibly going to be the most useful colour I've bought today.
Anyway, in short, really really really not for everyone! Indeed I wouldn't want them to be the only paints available to me, but it looks like they will provide solutions and opportunities that nothing else will. Most of the colours will need time, experimentation and understanding - there are some you can just pick up and use like any paint but others are strange beasts that will need to be learned. Its really nice to see a manufacturer doing something entirely on his own terms.
I'll report back when I've got the hang of them.
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