Blue shades in oil paint

Transparency

Many blues in the Rembrandt collection are transparent or semi-transparent, which makes it difficult to judge the actual colour right away. Though the pigments themselves are transparent or semi-transparent, since they are so concentrated, they look much darker and more opaque.

If you spread a thin layer of a transparent shade onto a canvas, you are looking through far fewer of the pigments, so the light can pass through the paint and bounce back on the white canvas to your eye. This allows you to experience the blue shade in its true form.

To preserve these beautiful properties, we recommend mixing these shades with an equally transparent or semi-transparent colour. If you mix these transparent shades with a more opaque shade, both the transparency and brightness of the colour will be diminished. The opaque pigment will overpower the more transparent pigment.