Further Information

This section gives you some additional information and useful facts about Artists' Acrylic Colour. 

Artists' Acrylic Colour Range

We always aim to provide the widest colour spectrum of colours within all of our ranges. The colours are chosen according to mass tone (colour from tube), undertone (bias of colour when in a thin film), strength and relative opacity.  The resultant colour spectrum ensures that all artists can obtain the palette which best suits their work. Here are the benefits of the main colour groups available in Artists' Acrylic Colour:

• Cadmiums
  Cadmiums are particularly opaque pigments in the red and yellow part of the spectrum. They have excellent covering power and make dense, flat areas of brilliant colour. Indispensable to artists' quality colours.
• Cobalts
  Cobalts are traditional semi-opaque pigments with moderate tinting strength, making them easy to control over a wide spectrum. Well-loved by painters wishing to represent images in a natural light or realistic colouring.  Artists' Acrylic Colour has a wide range of cobalt colours, from blues and greens to turquoise.
• Earths including Mars
  Umbers, Siennas and Ochres are the oldest pigments known to man. Cleaner and brighter than mixtures made from primaries, earths are excellent for toning in shadows and underpainting. Mars colours tend to be more opaque and higher in tinting strength than traditional earths.
• Metallics
  Artists' Acrylic Colour metallics outshine all others, quite literally. Dense, opaque and highly metallic, these colours do not tarnish.
• Organics
  Modern organic pigments offer lightfast colours of relative transparency over a broad area of the spectrum. Made from complex chemical compositions, they include Benzimidazolone, Pyrrole, Perylene, and Quinacridone pigments. Organics are excellent for bright, clean colour mixtures and are favoured by painters for bright light, flowers and  abstract images.
• Whites, Blacks and Greys
  Titanium White is the whitest and most opaque of the whites and is recommended for general use. Mixing White is a more transparent white with reducing tinting strength, making it ideal for strong tints, glazing, and toning down colours. Iridescent White captures the unique effect of "light interference" and can be mixed with or painted over colours to create interesting pearlised effects. Ivory Black is a brown black of moderate tinting strength recommended for general use. Mars Black is a denser, more neutral black with stronger tinting power. Davy's Gray is a mixing grey, specially formulated for toning down a colour without the dirtying effect caused by adding black. Graphite Grey is a dark grey which is not made from black and white. Like Davy's Gray, this makes it useful in colour mixing.

Basic Palette

Your initial Artists' Acrylic Colour palette should provide a wide colour spectrum and should have a good balance between transparent and opaque colours and between strong tinting and weaker tinting colours.

Permanent colours are always desirable and the main palette should ideally be low in price.  The common practice is to maintain a broad palette of about twelve colours and add to it for specific requirements.  Here is the recommended palette for Artists' Acrylic Colour:

Lemon Yelllow, Azo Yellow Medium, Cadmium Red Light, Permanent Rose, Permanent Alizarin Crimson, Ultramarine Blue, Phthalo Blue [Green Shade], Phthalo Green [Blue Shade], Raw Umber, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Titanium White.  Click here to see these colours in our colour chart.

Mixing Colours

The three primary colours in the Artists' Acrylic Colour range are Azo Yellow Medium, Phthalo Blue [Red Shade] and Permanent Rose. These colours are the best selection when only three colours are used. We recommend Lemon Yellow, Azo Yellow Medium, Ultramarine Blue, Phthalo Blue [Green Shade], Permanent Rose and Cadmium Red Light when using a six colour mixing system.  You can view all of these colours in our colour chart.

Back to top