I purchased a Sennelier Plein Air Oil paint set with 8 - 40ML paint colors: titanium white, cad yellow light, yellow ochre, cad red light, alizarin crimson, chinese orange, azure blue, and french ultramarine blue plus a #6 Isabey bristle brush, filbert.
I decided to create a color chart and compare their pigments next to Lukas and Utrecht, already in my collection. I mainly wanted to compare the Lukas Cad Yellow Lemon to the Sennelier Cad Yellow Light and see how it mixed greens. I also got a tube of phtalo (pronounced "thalo") turquoise since it already leans toward green ("greeny blue", my technical term), both yellows mix some pretty intense greens with the phtalo turq.
I also mixed both yellows with french ultramarine blue which leans toward red so it makes the mixture more dull, as seen on the chart. I typically gravitate toward the intense mixtures but the dulls seem more soothing to me, and more like nature?
I kept experimenting towards the bottom of the chart and mixed some really nice grays/browns with cad yellow light, cad red light, and fr. ultramarine blue as well as azure blue. I never really liked using grays in my paintings but these are so rich and beautiful, I'm going to find a way to use them.
In the bottom row, I mixed yellow ochre + azure blue. I didn't like so much but then I added a bit of titanium white and wow! I love that "minty" cool green. I'm going to remember that mixture, just beautiful.
In the second to the last row, I put chinese orange out on the canvas straight out of the tube and then I added white. I've never seen or heard of this color before. I guess Gustave Sennelier invented two paints, Chinese Orange and Cinnabar Green, at the request of Cezanne and Monet. Picasso and Modigliani used Chinese Orange in creating rich and creamy flesh tones.
I had a lot of fun playing with my new paints, now it's time to put this to good use and create some paintings!
