As one of the primary colours, Magenta is now an essential part of art painting. The dye was developed chemically in 1856 and owes its name to the bloody battle by the Italian town of Magenta. Due to the poor lightfastness of the dye, the red-pink colour these days is made based on the pigment Quinacridone.
The pigment Indigo was already popular among artists early on in history. First among the Romans and later, particularly between the 14th and 19th centuries, also among artists in the rest of Europe. The blue colour was originally extracted from plants. This natural variant disappeared from the scene when the German chemist Adolf van Baeyer developed a synthetic alternative. These days Indigo is made from pigments with an excellent lightfastness.
For a long time, it was thought that Indian yellow was derived from the urine of Indian cows. But the mystery surrounding the origins of this wonderful golden yellow pigment is still unresolved. For years now artists have been making use of synthetic alternatives that are identical in colour to their natural counterpart.
The beautiful golden yellow was already used in the Middle Ages to colour in ornamental letters and illustrations. The transparent colour comes from the sap of the Garcinia tree. As the sap is poisonous and has a poor lightfastness, the original Gamboge has been replaced with harmless pigments that do not fade under the influence of light.
The specific colour of a paint, indicated by names such as yellow light, yellow dark, carmine red or ultramarine blue, is determined by the type of paint or by the combination of various pigments.
Primary colours (yellow, red and blue) are colours that you cannot create by mixing other colours with each other. ...
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