Gamblin Artists Colors
Robert Gamblin Interview


Gamblin Artists Colors Co. is dedicated to oil painting. To serve oil painting, we make the finest artists' materials; to serve painters we make technical information available on composition of colors and oil painting techniques. Paintmaker Robert Gamblin tells his story about making artists' oil colors.

Why did you establish Gamblin Artists Colors Co?

I want to make permanent paintings. I want to make artists' materials for painters who share my goal. When I went to art school during the 60's and early 70's, we wanted to be in the movement. Artists were making paintings out of anything - sail cloth covered in house paint and fireplace ash. We were expressing ourselves, exploring our own ideas, throwing out the rules. The idea/concept mattered more than the materials. Our teachers knew better. Some were caught in the same desire to break with tradition and make new art forms. As I learned more about being a painter and the physical properties of oil painting, my attitudes changed. We know paintings can last for 500 years so why should we settle for 50 years? I decided to start Gamblin Artists Colors Co. to make materials for artists who choose to make permanent paintings.

So how did that make you start making oil paints?

To make permanent paintings, artists need to know the composition of the materials and know how to use materials. Oil paintings are structures that we build with correct techniques from oil painting mediums. As a painter I want to know more about my oil paints than surface color. Which red - Cadmium Red Medium, luscious buttery paste that makes colors of the natural world and dries more matte? Or Perylene Red, softer texture, transparent and cooler red that does not grey down in tints and mixtures? I want to know what's in the paint and who made it. So I started to make Gamblin Artists Colors. I know who makes Gamblin Artists Colors.

I stood behind a three roll mill for ten years and made paint. That is how I refined my formulas. Our artists' grade oil colors are made from finest quality linseed oil mixed with pure pigments. I select the pigments for Gamblin Artists Colors because they take important places on the color wheel. Using Gamblin Artists Colors, painters can select palettes of all high key, transparent MODERN colors or palettes of MINERAL oil colors for painting the colors of the natural world.

The Impressionists were the first group of painters with a full spectrum of lightfast artists' colors available in tubes. The Impressionists had the idea about the full spectrum from Newton but what if they had only the concept and no oil colors to make the paintings? The Industrial Revolution of the 19th century gave the Impressionists their palette of intensely pigmented, opaque colors from all around the color wheel. They were the first painters able to go out easily in the landscape... and paint directly from the natural world.

Their new mineral colors made from cadmium, cobalt or chromium (packaged in tubes for the first time in the history of painting), create the colors of the natural world. So, without the addition of much painting medium, the mineral colors will look more matte and greyer in mixtures. The mineral colors hold the roots of direct painting.

Because the mineral colors are opaque and leaner (therefore more matte), direct painting makes the brightest paintings. Light hits the surface of the painting and comes right off. Direct painting has dominated the 20th century.

The Impressionists broke tradition with their ideas but not with their materials. They used artists' materials of good quality and as many lightfast colors that were available at the time. The break between artists and our materials comes after World War II with Abstract Impressionism. Paintings were not being made to sell. Many artists started using their materials to explore their spiritual lives. The searching, the act of personal discovery became a more important process than the act of art making - the painting process.

After 50 years, we value the ideas of Abstract Expressionism more than we value their paintings. Paintings made as recently as 1950 are faded, discolored or delaminating. And 500 year-old paintings that still hold an artist's vision just as s/he painted it. Once we step away from painting, all we have is infused in the oil painting materials. From the response to Gamblin Artists Colors Co.'s call for more consideration and dialogue about materials, painters already know that.

You speak about the mineral and the modern colors. Can you explain the differences?

The 19th century gave painters the fabulous mineral colors. The 20th century has given us a new array of lightfast colors, which I call the "modern" colors. These colors are often called "organic" because carbon is an essential component of their chemical composition. The mineral colors come from metals dug out of the earth. The modern colors are derived from petroleum and made in high tech factories. The modern colors are made from pigments, not dyes as some believe.

Most modern colors, including quinacridone, phthalo and perylene, are transparent. Oil colors made from hansa and napthol pigments, are semi-transparent. Because of their small particle sizes and higher oil absorption (fatter), modern pigments make colors of very high tinting strength that are naturally glossy.

When mixed with white, modern colors make incredibly intense tints. Each modern color has a distinct temperature bias, which means the color is either cool (Phthalo Green) or warm (Pthalo Green Yellow Shade). Most modern colors in the Gamblin palette have excellent lightfastness rating (I) and some have very good lightfastness rating (II). Tubes of artists' grade oil colors are (or should be) labeled with a lightfastness rating.

Just as the Impressionists responded to their opaque mineral colors, have any painters today responded to the modern colors?

With the modern colors comes a renewed interest in glazing. Glazing is the technique of applying a transparent layer of color over a painting to modify it. By building up glaze layers, painters can trap light inside the painting. Instead of bouncing off an opaque surface, light travels through the glaze layers until it reaches the first opaque layer (or the ground) then the light works its way out. Because some light is trapped inside the glaze layers, the paintings appear to glow.

Painters usually think about Rembrandt and the Old Masters who used glazing. Unfortunately, the Old Masters had few lightfast transparent colors. So they created their glazes by thinning out opaque colors. Painters today can do more than put space between particles of pigments, they can create completely transparent layers by using oil colors made from transparent pigments. The modern colors are mostly transparent.

Are painters looking for new painting mediums that do not contain turpentine, especially for glazing?

Gamblin Artists' painting mediums are made and dilute with odorless mineral spirits, the mildest form of solvent. Gamsol (odorless mineral spirits that we use to make painting mediums, and package for studio painting) has the safest profile of any 100% volatile spirit on the market.

Gamblin Artists encourage oil painters to work the lowest level of solvent. We face the future so we do not make painting mediums that require turpentine. Turpentine is the only aspect of oil painting that is toxic. Remove turpentine from the painting process and immediately painters have safer studios. Oil paints do not contain solvents. So painters can paint with no solvents at all if they choose.

By deciding to face the future, I knew I had to formulate oil painting mediums that mix and thin with odorless mineral spirits but also give painters traditional working properties. Gamblin Galkyd painting mediums are made from alkyd resin, the polymerized oil of the 20th century, and pure odorless mineral spirits. Galkyd is formulated to replace a traditional medium based on a heavy oil, (stand oil or venice turpentine) combined with turpentine and damar varnish. Brush strokes tend to level out, you can create an enamel like finish. Galkyd Lite is formulated to replace a traditional medium based on refined linseed oil, turpentine and varnish. Galkyd Lite is useful for thinning paints and for producing thinner glazes. Galkyd Gel is useful for making marks and creating impasto of approximately 1/4".

So I can choose my painting mediums, now I want to choose colors for glazing. Where do I look on the Gamblin palette?

Look on the tube. Transparent colors, semi transparent, and opaque colors are labeled right by the chemical composition. For glazing choose "transparent colors." For scumbling, choose "semi-transparent colors." I recommend Zinc White as the white to use for scumbling. By knowing about the physical characteristics, artists can better control the painting process.

The way I make oil colors, I try to preserve the unique tinctorial and textural characteristics of each pigment. Some companies make artists' oil colors with all the same texture. I prefer to enhance the unique physical properties of pigments because, as a painter, I recognize their value. I think this contributes to our paint quality. Many painters recognize this.

Paint quality?

Artists' grade oil colors are the most simple mixtures of pure pigment and naturally occurring vegetable oil. These oil colors give painters the experience of working with color at is maximum intensity and they form strong, flexible paint films. By using artists' grade oil colors, painters can make permanent paintings.

There are two other types of artists' oil colors. The first is student grade. There have always been students and there have always been student paints. Before academic art instruction, painters learned in professional studios. They started as painters' assistants. I am sure they did not use the same paints as their teachers! To make the student or "practice" paints, paintmakers added a handful of marble dust (calcium carbonate) to the artists' paints. They could double the volume and still make decent paints. Gamblin Artists make our Art Sketching Oils (ASO) the same way. We add good quality extenders to artists' quality Gamblin Artists Colors. So ASO colors are made with the same pure linseed oil, the same pigments - just less of them. By using ASO, painters can learn all the techniques of oil painting with colors that actually work.

The third type of paint is what I use to call "el cheapo." My partner, Martha, talked me into using the term "economy" paints instead. To make economy paints less expensive than student grade, rheological agents must be added. Rheological agents gel the oil so it absorbs less pigment. These paints often feel slippery or greasy. And all the colors cost the same ... there is not enough colored pigment in them to influence the price. The colors do not mix well ... in fact, they mix into instant mud. The disadvantage of learning on economy oil colors is painters never to learn to mix colors. To me, learning to mix colors into your own unique vision is the joy of oil painting.

How can you tell the difference among artists' colors, student colors and economy?

Artists' grade oils cost about what Gamblin Artists Colors cost. (Considering some paints are sold at 50% off list, be sure to compare the actual costs rather than the list prices). European brands are more because their prices include taxes, duties, and higher distribution costs onto the actual cost of making paint.

The tinting strength of arists' grade oil colors should be comparable. To test for tinting strength:
  • Take five part artists' grade Titanium White and one part artists' grade color. Mix.
  • With an edge of a palette knife, draw down the mixture on palette paper of stiff white card stock. Modern colors will make high key intense tints. Mineral colors will grey down and make muted tints. If you are testing a mineral color that looks more high key in its tint, perhaps the color has been "boosted" with an organic.

Do you ever mix mineral and modern colors?

As a paintmaker, I choose to make artists' oil colors that retain the unique qualities of the pigments. So I formulate full arrays of both mineral and modern colors that give painters oil colors at their maximum intensity. I believe painters can explore these two - mineral and modern color arrays and experiment with mixing them together. Appreciating the physical characteristics of each array enhances the experience and shortened the learning curve. If you do not want to paint landscapes or other natural light situations, look at the colors on the modern side of the palette.

I am a landscape painter so I often mix mineral and modern colors together on my palette. Sometimes the tint of a Cobalt Blue/Titanium-Zinc White mixture is perfect but the chroma is too low. I add a very small amount of Phthalo Blue to bring up the color without changing its value. I select my palette from both mineral and modern colors. I use Hansa Yellow Light as my cool yellow and Cadmium Yellow Medium for my warm. I use Cobalt Blue and Indanthrone Blue. I love the coolest blue on the Gamblin Artists' palette, Manganese Blue Hue, which is made from a type of Phthalo Blue pigment.

We are the first generation of painters who have two full arrays of lightfast colors. All the choices would have dazzled the Old Masters. Some painters are so overwhelmed by the choices that they don't know where to start to experiment. Some painters pick up a color they have never tried because they want the adventure. What I love painting is we can all use the same materials and all make something different. During a recent meeting among Gamblin Artists, we had a heated discussion about which color is really "yellow."

I have heard you only employ oil painters and printmakers in the Gamblin factory. Is it true?

Yes. Because we all use the materials we make, quality is important to us. From the painting student who sweeps the floors to the painter/chemist who runs production, we work together. Quality control is the job for everyone.

  
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Telephone: 503.235.1945  Fax: 503.235.1946