When I fall in Love

When I fall in love ..... I don't know if it will be forever, but it is with Payne's grey at the moment. I bought a little tube of Schminke Horadam Payne's grey in the summer and it is still enchanting me all these months later! 

  

Colour is a funny thing, when you look at swatches, or colour charts different companies interpret colours in different ways, Schminke for example offer two different versions of Payne’s Grey; the one I like which is the Paynes Grey bluish, but they also have another version which is more black/neutral. In itself not too tricky to mix, using Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna or Prussian Blue, yellow ochre and crimson lake, but sometimes a ready mix is more consistent in colour and is quicker. 

Here you can see the Horadam version on the left and a quick mix of Burnt Sienna/Ultramarine on the right. Interesting to see that the finished mix gives smoother cover and dried more quickly. 

The name Payne’s Grey (Gray) got me wondering just where it got it's name from;  just like Van Dyke brown it was named after an artist. William Payne (1760-1830) was a watercolourist who really set the scene for modern watercolours using a style that did away with ink contours and dealt with foliage in a revolutionary manner; the first mention of Payne's Grey was in 1835. A  similar story can be found for Hooker's Green (a bit of an unfortunate name really), you could be forgiven for thinking it was named after the green stockings in Irma La Douce, but no its origin is less spectacular. William Jackson Hooker  (1779-1832) was  a botanical artist and illustrator and developed this colour for painting leaves. Turner's yellow however did not get its name from the artist but from the inventor of this hue.

 Rummaging around the world of colour does bring disgusting things to light, artists have always used revolting things to paint with, Leonardo was very specific about the use of urine from red headed boys, but "Egyptian brown" or "mummy brown" was  a shock. I suppose the name really gives it away, doesn't it? Yes, mummies both human and feline were ground down to make a pigment, which was then used for mixing paint. As disgusted as I was, I shouldn't have been surprised, because "mummia, mumia or mummy" was also used in medicine by apothecaries from medieval times on, and yes although it started out as bitumen, ground human mummies were later used as bitumen became too expensive. The Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne Jones was so disgusted when he discoverd the origins of this popular colour that he gave his tube of "mummy brown" a funeral in his garden. 

What is somewhat disconcerting is that Sennelier Pastels still offer a shade called "mummy", indeed I have a stick of it. Sooooooo, just in case I thought I'd pop out into the garden and give it a decent burial....... actally think I've got a lovely little box in the shape of an Egyptian Sarcophagus..... ancient Egypt always exercised a deep fascination for me, without realising that I may  have had my own "mummy" lurking in my pastel collection.