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Oranges When deepened, orange - unlike red and yellow - becomes brighter instead of darker. Few colorants produce pure orange. During the Middle Ages, orange mineral provided a rich, opaque pigment for easel painting and illuminated manuscripts. Near the end of the 18th century, the emerging commercial paint industry developed synthetic iron oxides, "Mars Colors," which made more predictable colors than natural earth pigments. Used for color consistency and opacity, Mars colors range from orange to dark red/purple. Today, painters have several orange options. Painters like Wolf Kahn reach for Gamblin Transparent Orange, a warm color unique to the Gamblin palette. CLICK SWATCH TO [+] Transparent Earth Orange: A truly transparent version of Burnt Sienna. The best of the Old Masters' paints were semi-transparent colors; these new hydrated Mars colors give painters more clarity in transparency and higher tinting strength. Excellent for glazing. Pigment: Transparent Mars Yellow, Transparent Mars Red (PY 42, PR 101) Vehicle: Alkali refined linseed oil Lightfastness I, Series 3, TRANSPARENT, MSDS Cadmium Orange: Gamblin Cadmium Colors are in regular chromatic steps from Cadmium Yellow Light through Cadmium Red Deep. Chemically pure Cadmium Orange is a medium opaque orange. No health labeling required. Pigment: Concentrated cadmium sulfo-selenide (PO 20) Vehicle: Alkali refined linseed oil Lightfastness I, Series 4, OPAQUE, MSDS Cadmium Orange Deep: A regular chromatic step between Cadmium Orange and Cadmium Red Light. The color of day lilies in late summer. Chemically pure. No health labeling required. Pigment: Concentrated cadmium sulfo-selenide (PO 20) Vehicle: Alkali refined linseed oil Lightfastness I, Series 4, OPAQUE, MSDS Mono Orange: A modern high key color with a pure hue and the same masstone (but more transparent) than Cadmium Orange, and it remains brighter in its tint when mixed with white. Painters cannot mix a secondary with the same purity of this pure hue Orange. A thinner layer makes a rich glowing glaze. Pigment: Monoacetolone (PO 62) Vehicle: Alkali refined linseed oil Lightfastness I, Series 3, SEMI-TRANSPARENT, MSDS Transparent Orange: Our best-selling orange, this is Wolf Kahn's signature color. Noted for its transparency and warm red undertone, it can be used as a completely transparent glazing color. Painters can create subtle color shifts by applying various thicknesses of transparent orange. Pigment: Diarylide yellow HR 70, Perylene (PY83, PR149) Vehicle: Alkali refined linseed oil Lightfastness I, Series 3, TRANSPARENT, MSDS Orange is the color of safety: orange life vests are easily seen on dark and stormy seas. Always a warm advancing color, orange is the forerunner of the sun. During the Middle Ages, orange mineral, also called minium, provided a rich and opaque pigment that was used in easel painting and illuminated manuscripts. It was made by prolonged heating of white lead over an open fire. Noticeably toxic, Chinese bookmakers painted the edges of paper with orange mineral to save their books from silverfish. Orpiment, an extremely poisonous sulfide of arsenic, was mined as a yellow to reddish-yellow pigment. Its noxious sulfur fumes and highly reactive properties made orpiment a color of last choice. Realgar, another poisonous pigment found in the earth, made a better orange, but it was incompatible with lead or copper-based pigments. Cadmium Orange was the first true orange. It is a pure hue with excellent opacity and low toxicity compared to its predecessors. Around 1820, yellow cadmium sulfide was discovered as an impurity in the processing of zinc ores. The name cadmium is derived from cadmia fornacum, a type of furnace used to smelt zinc. In experiments, chemists used hydrogen sulfide to precipitate the yellow colorant from solutions of cadmium salts. By 1880, they further discovered by gradually increasing the amount of selenium, they could produce deeper shades of cadmium orange and all shades of cadmium red.

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