Ultramarine Red

Oil paint can stay viable in the tube for just about forever; I'm sure I still have some colors from my undergraduate days that I use only rarely. Sometime back in the 90s, I was offered about thirty tubes from someone's estate. The colors were not ones I use on my standard palette, but occasionally I dip into the English Red or the Terre Verte. At this point, I've worked through much of that old paint that I keep in a box in the studio, but in a hunt for some Yellow Ochre Light, I found a tube of Ultramarine Red, something you don't hear much about.

A little research on the web turned up the following information about it: low strength as a tinting color; extremely light fast; best used as a glazing color; when mixed with white turns a nice pure violet that can't be duplicated by mixing reds and blues.It's also hard to find— the only manufacturer I can find who makes the true hue, not a synthetic, is Maimeri.

Lately I've been thinking that the Rose Bowl painting needed some violet shadows, so I added some of the Ultramarine Red to the mix:

  Rose Bowl, © 2018, work in progress (click on image for larger view)

I think it worked well!

Also put in a lot of time on this one; it's very frustrating but at least the colors and shapes are getting closer to where they need to be.

    Learned Pond, © 2018, work in progress (click on image for larger view)