Prussian Blue Pb27 (Oil Paint)

Prussian Blue,  a deep midnight black blue.  Pairing it with cobalt teal blue is sheer paradise.

It packs a punch when used in mass tone, it is so dark and powerful.  Prussian Blue pb27 is one of my staple blues for color mixing, especially for foliage.

 

The closest I can get to mixing a simile, a color substitute for Prussian Blue is blending Indanthrone blue with a dash of cobalt and a dash of phalo blue green shade.  You’d get a color near to the above painting.   But,  it will not mix appropriately when trying to get greens.

 

In Oil painting, its a lovely, versatile color to use when creating textures throughout the painting.

 

 

Oil Paints, Prussian Blue mixing

The oil paint colours I used for these abstract landscapes were Prussian blue, Burnt Sienna, Lemon Yellow, cobalt plus White.

 

Prussian blue in oils, when applied full tone, will appear nearly black.  It is a lovely velvety dark I could use in its full strength and in its palest lightest hint of a blue. Ideal range of tonal values.

 

 

Prussian blue being a Staining paint, falls in the Category of being very intense.  Powerful, great for glazing, for mixing with nearly anything you throw at it.

 

And I’ve always delighted in its capacity to create the best foliage, shrubbery greens.

Mix it with burnt sienna, raw sienna,  quinacridone gold, nickel azo gold,  raw umber, winsor lemon and you have 100’s of fabulous, foliage greens!

 

In my Gallery,  prussian blue plays a major role in quite a few paintings.

This beautiful blue colour is in my top 5 that  I ‘need’ to have in my palette.

 

 

 

 

Warm Weather is great for oils,  not acrylics

It was quite warm out today, which is why I chose oils for this morning’s paintings.  I love how oils blend so well for me on hot days.

 

Acrylics and watercolours would have been more of a ‘challenge’ in this heat.

They both will dry too fast and create way too many hard sharp edges all over the painting.  Thus, causing problems with the painting’s depth and perspective.

 

 

 

Mountains in Prussian Blue Pb27 

Creating the textural effects for the mountain painting was actually fairly simple.

The board had been already scuffed up and damaged with deep marks. All I did extra was to further enhance those a bit with more gauges & grooves.

With the board ready, I wrapped my hands in glad wrap and rubbed and smeared the paint into the areas I’d chosen.

 

 

I created several other abstractions with oil textures using my hand, a palette knife and  plastic wrap to glide the paints on the canvases.

 

This approach is quite satisfying.  I find there is more of a immediacy and ‘response’ to it.  For me, it feels much more natural, fluid and intuitive.

 

Enlarged,  you can really see the layers of textures that I was able to obtain.

 

It was fast, fun, imaginative…. Kind of like a “speed paint” event.     I was outside painting, in the 95 degree heat for no more than about 20 minutes.

 

The textural effects we’re able to obtain without a brush using oil paints,  is surprising for many of us!

I used my hand, fingers, glad wrap, palette knife, an old banged scratched up board, old newspaper to create many fun, fast and fascinating textures that I’ll definitely use a lot more often.

 

Tints and Textures of Prussian blue and white:

 

 

Other Prussian Blue posts of interest may be

Prussian Blue Color Mixing 

Prussian Blue  and Cerulean

Mixing Your Own Paints from Pigments, Prussian blue