Paints and their ever so fascinating colors...

Ever since we were children we have had or incorporated some form of art in our lives. From playing with paints to drawing on walls with crayons. The wide array of colors ever so fascinating. I make an attempt to paint at least once a week, it relaxes me and I enjoy playing with colors and expressing my feelings through art. Until we started looking at different techniques in chemistry for analyzing art I had not really thought much about certain elements of art that I particularly used. I have used watercolor, acrylic, oil, pastels and a bunch of other stuff.

What exactly is paint, where do all the colors come from, who invented it? are all questions I now asked that I had previously never thought to ask. Paint consists of ground up pigment in some sort of liquid. When the liquid dries into a film, the ground pigment is stuck to the painting surface. Before paint was produced commercially during the Industrial Revolution (c. 1800), painters had to make their own paints by grinding pigment into oil. The paint would harden and would have to be made fresh each day. Paint consists of small grains of pigment suspended in oil. Although it appears smooth to the naked eye, on a microscopic level, particles of pigment are suspended in oil, as fruit in a Jello mold.

Oil paints use a binder cause linseed oil. Unlike other vegetable oils such as canola or olive oil, linseed oil oxidizes, to slowly go from liquid to gel to a tough solid form, therefore we refer to it as siccative oil because it solidifies through oxidation. Linseed oil does not stop oxidizing once it is dry and continues to oxidize for years to come and therefore presents a dynamic technique in this respect that it still continues to transform when the painting has long been finished. Oil paints do not "dry" by evaporation (as do watercolor paints); rather they harden through chemical reaction, as a Jello sets. Contact with the air causes oils to oxidize and to crosslink. The paint sets and hardens over time. Paints of different pigments dry at different rates.

Acrylic paints use a binder called acrylic polymer emulsion. Unlike siccative oil that oxidize, this emulsion of plastic resins dries by evaporation of the water and solvents it contains to form a tough & flexible film. It can be purchased as gel or gloss medium, modeling paste and so on, each is acrylic polymer emulsion, but they have been added something else to make it mat or glossy, thick or liquid. These mediums are designed to be opaque or transparent.

The binder for gouache and watercolor is gum arabic. which naturally comes from acacia trees. To make watercolor we again the use of dispersions of pigments is most important. By adding drops of dispersions in the solution, you will instantly obtain transparent watercolor. To get an opaque gouache, simply mix either talc, zinc white or china clay into a paste using the same solution and add your dispersions or pigments.

This covers just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to learning about paints. I prefer using acrylic paints because they are easier to handle, paint on both canvas and paper and are very cheap. Oil paints in contrast cost a lot, but have amazing quality. They also take a longer time to dry. If you want to learn how to make your own paints here is the link to the website


Here is a cool website that lets you create art by moving your cursor around