Being a color company is the perfect antidote for living in the Pacific Northwest.  For the master paintmakers at Gamblin Artists Colors, handcrafting small batches of pigment rich, luscious oil colors at Gamblin is the visual equivalent of a quadruple-shot Americano with extra sugar.  The grey skies of our surroundings do give us the occasional burst of inspiration, though.  After painting through the cloudiest winter in Portland’s history, founder Robert Gamblin formulated three Portland Greys – Light, Medium, and Deep.    Being a painter himself, Robert’s development of new colors is driven by helping painters with issues that are innate to color mixing and the painting process – such as providing consistent, neutrals greys for creating an array of tones.

 

Portland, OR

Filed under: Color Mixing by scott on December 6, 2011

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We at Gamblin were incredibly honored to be asked to support the Sedona Plein Air festival, which took place in late October.   Thirty-two professional landscape painters from across the Western U.S. embarked on the red rocks of Northern Arizona for the week-long plein air competition.  The event was hosted by the fine folks at the Sedona Arts Center (www.sedonaartscenter.com).

To commemorate our involvement in the event, we made a special color called Sedona Red, which was inspired by the red rocks of Sedona, intensified by evening light.  I collaborated with Gamblin painter and Sedona Plein Air participant, Michael Chesley Johnson, in creating this special warm red color.  Sedona Red is available exclusively through Sedona Art Supply (www.sedonaartsupply.com).  Sedona Red proved to be a valuable, versatile color for the Sedona paint box, and when mixed with a warm yellow or cool red, it perfectly captured the effects of the morning or evening light on the surrounding terrain.  From what I’ve gathered, Sedona Red was a hit amongst the painters! 

"Sedona Red"

Evening Light on Red Rocks, by Scott Gellatly

Congrats to Dave Santillanes (www.dasanti.com) of Fort Collins, Colorado, on winning the “Main Street Best Painting Award” for his painting Sedona Light, chosen by juror Kevin Macpherson. 

Sedona Light, by Dave Santillanes

Sedona Art Supply also hosted me for a two-hour lecture demonstration outside their store for their community of painters.  Thank you Zenna, Tim, and Tanya for all of your support, and to all of the painters for the excellent questions!

Overall, it was a terrific opportunity to engage, and paint with, such a talented group of landscape painters…in such an inspiring location!

Filed under: Uncategorized by scott on November 5, 2011

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As painters, we live in the world of subtractive color mixing.  The rules of “subtractive” color mixing state that when two colors are mixed together, the resulting mixture will be less intense compared to the two original colors.  Essentially, when two colors are mixed together, the resulting color is determined by the portion of light that is “left over,” or not absorbed by the mixed color.  Secondary color mixing is the rule when it comes to the mixing of paint and ink.  Take Cadmium Yellow Medium and Cadmium Red Medium, for example.  The mixture of these makes a decent orange…

…but this mixed orange will be quite muted when we place it next to Cadmium Orange out of the tube.  Since Cadmium Orange is a single pigment color, it reflects a narrower piece of the white light that hits it.   As depicted in “Color Space” the mixed orange is lives closer to the neutral center of the color wheel.

Taking this concept of secondary color mixing to its extreme provides us with a very interesting color mixing challenge…creating a color palette based on secondary colors – orange, violet, and green.  For this exercise, we’ll be using three modern organic colors: Mono Orange, Phthalo Emerald and Dioxazine Purple. 

So, what about yellow, red, and blue?  How do we get these colors?  Here comes the fun part…the mixture of orange and green “pass through” the yellow slice of the color wheel, the orange and violet pass through red, and the violet and green pass through blue:

The results are some very beautiful muted primaries for the rest of our color mixing needs…great for paintings with subdued color schemes or exploring tonal painting methods of light and dark.

Filed under: Color Mixing by scott on May 6, 2011

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Crimson Lovers, by Allison Green

Earlier this month, Gamblin Artist-Rep Jordan Graw and I visited the home studio of Allison Green in Jersey City, NJ.  Allison contacted us months ago, requesting an individual consult regarding oil painting materials, techniques, and studio safety tips.  What followed suit was a three hour visit covering such topics as painting mediums, fat over lean, varnishing, and children’s books. 

It was a pleasure to see Allison’s beautiful work as she prepares for her first solo exhibition next month at Susan Eley Fine Art in New York City.  Congrats, Allison! 

To view more of Allison’s work, please visit: www.allisongreen.net.

- Scott Gellatly, Gamblin Product Manager

Allison Green studio

Filed under: Painters by scott on February 21, 2011

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Gamvar Picture Varnish

In his recent blog post, Seattle-based landscape painter, instructor, and author Mitch Albala writes about Gamblin Gamvar Picture Varnish at: http://blog.mitchalbala.com/?p=1604. 

Albala’s book, Landscape Painting(Watson-Guptill/Random House, 2009), is a “must have” for landscape painters at all levels.  Albala includes examples of paintings from a broad range of plein air and studio painters alike, coupled with a fresh approach to sharing his own painting techniques and notes on color palettes and materials.

Landscape Painting, by Mitch Albala

To view Mitch’s artwork, please visit: http://www.mitchalbala.com/.

Filed under: Painters by scott on February 6, 2011

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Pygmalion’s Art Supplies in Bloomington, IN, came to us a while back with a very interesting request – if we could create a custom oil color that matched the eyes of Kiki.  Kiki being the store cat, of course.  They sent us a swatch of dry paint to match, and the result is Kiki Cool Yellow – an opaque greenish yellow.    Starting February 1st, Kiki Cool Yellow will be on sale, exclusively at Pygmalion’s, and the proceeds will go to their local animal shelter. 

Stop by this terrific shop, or give them a call at 812.332.0025, to inquire about a tube of this unique color! 

Kiki

Kiki Cool Yellow being mixed

Kiki Cool Yellow - exclusively at Pygmalion's!

Filed under: Gamblin at Retail by scott on January 31, 2011

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Prints for PICA event in Portland, OR Photo: Patrick Leonard

Earlier this month, Gamblin Product Managers Briana Ball and Scott Gellatly pulled some monotypes at the annual Prints for PICA event in downtown Portland.  Hundreds of monotypes were produced by local artists and put up for sale to support the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (www.pica.org). 

Gamblin supplied both Relief and Etching Ink for the event, which gave us a chance to talk shop with some of Portland’s most exciting artists.

Photo: Patrick Leonard

Filed under: Events, Uncategorized by scott on December 28, 2010

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More often than not…it’s true.  This is one of those color mixing anomalies that painters come across early on and incorporate into their “bag of tricks.”  Many landscape painters have used this pairing to create natural looking greens with a limited palette.   It’s quite effective.

Recently I responded to a painter about this phenomenon, and he urged me to share this info with a larger audience.  So, Monsieur Bart in France, here it goes…

First, let’s not blame Black.  It’s not Black’s fault.  Let’s look at Yellow and add a little color science into the conversation. 

The color wheel is generally presented, graphically, where each hue family (or piece of the pie) is the same size.  This simplifies color theory a bit for communication. 

But, if we look at the spectrum of visible light, we see Yellow and Orange, are really quite narrow compared to, say, Red and Green:

So, when we take this into consideration, the color wheel may look like:

In this revised diagram, we see how little the Yellow slice is compared to Green and Red, so it is easy for yellow to get “pushed” into other hue families in color mixing.  When we take into account that black pigments tend to shift cool in their tints and mixtures, we can begin to understand how yellow is “pushed” into the green hue family. 

Here is our Hansa Yellow Light (a cool yellow) mixed with Chromatic Black, Ivory Black, Van Dyke Brown, and Manganese Violet:

As you can see, the two blacks “push” yellow into the green hue, and to a slightly lesser extent, so does the warm Van Dyke Brown.  The warm Manganese violet has enough red in it to “push” the yellow into the orange category.  

So, in the end maybe we should have a bit of sympathy for Yellow…always being pushed around… 

Isn’t color mixing great?

Scott Gellatly

Filed under: Color Mixing by scott on November 18, 2010

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Mid-America Print Council 2010 Conference 10/14 to 10/17

 We will be attending our first MAPC conference next week – with more than 500 printmakers participating, it’s sure to be exciting!  The schedule is jam-packed with lectures, demonstrations and exhibits. 

One don’t miss event is the “Printmaking Pig Circus” which will entail printmakers printing woodblocks, etchings and lithos on shirts and paper for conference attendees.  Portland Intense Black Relief Ink and Portland Cool Black Etching Ink will be joining the circus as demo colors.  It will be a great chance to see the inks in action and take home some artwork too!

If you will be at the event, please stop by our booth at the vendor fair and say hello.  We are looking forward to answering questions about our etching and relief inks.  Samples will be available for anyone who would like to test-drive them.

Some of our favorite art materials retailers will also be attending the vendor fair if you would like to take some ink home with you or have some shipped.  McClain’s and Takach are a great resource for shipping materials.  Wet Paint and Utrecht have our materials on hand locally.

For more information about our Printmaking materials please visit http://www.gamblincolors.com/printmaking-materials/index.html.

To learn more about Mid America Print Council and the upcoming conference visit https://sites.google.com/a/umn.edu/mapc2010.

Filed under: Events by Briana on October 6, 2010

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They also put on a one-day show from their extensive print collection right here at the factory.  Their print collection is full of incredible prints from artists working throughout the United States.  I highly recommend taking in a DBP talk or show if you get the chance. 

Oh yeah, and they have a press in their car!  Truly impressive to see a fully functional print shop set up in under half an hour.  Many thanks for printing everyone the great shirts too . . . we love them.

To learn more about Drive-By visit www.drivebypress.org.

For more information about our Printmaking materials please visit http://www.gamblincolors.com/printmaking-materials/index.html.

Filed under: Events by Briana on

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