Artist oil paints by Gamblin at RUSART

Gamblin is a dedicated manufacturer of oil paints based in Portland, Oregon (USA). Their conservation colors have been used to restore some of the most revered oil paintings in the world – including a Van Eyck at the National Gallery in London – one of the earliest oil paintings ever made – as well as notable works by da Vinci, Van Gogh, and Monet.

In Gamblin paints the manufacturer uses different binders depending on colour and pigment used. What about pigment, the other crucial component of paints, they are always in search of better and innovative options available. Let’s look at pigments they use.

Yellow colours in Gamblin artist oil paints

Although, cadmium yellow is the most beneficial yellow due to its brilliancy and opacity, you can also consider the modern and more transparent yellows – hansa yellows. They are organic pigments that are semi-transparent and lightfast. Hansa yellows retain their intensity in tints and make beautiful glazes. Also, hansa  can boost cadmiums in mixes. Also, hansa yellows make more intense and cleaner secondaries, when mixed with other organic (modern) colors like Phthalo Blue or Green.

For glazing techniques Gamblin offers Indian yellow (hue). Its transparency and a glowing warm yellow bring some amber shine to your painting.

Orange colours in Gamblin artist oil paints

Even though all we know that yellow and red make orange, mono pigmented paint are always preferable over mixed colours, because one pigment means cleaner mixing and more predictable results. Here, you can find transparent orange colours, such as Mars Orange, for glazing techniques, as well as opaque strong orange, such as Cadmium Orange.

Red colours in Gamblin artist oil paints

When we talk about red colours, we usually mean cadmiums (opaque), napthol and perinone (semi-transparent), or quinacridones (transparent). Gamblin has them all.

One of the beautiful reds is also vermillion, which is mixture of sulfur and mercury. The resulting bright, opaque red was a marvel short of philosophy but a delight to painters for a thousand years. The earth red and vermillion colors were prepared by Robert Gamblin for a Smithsonian Institute research project and are NOT available from Gamblin Artists Colors, as well as Alizarine colours.

Violet colours in Gamblin artist oil paints

Violet pigment is very rare and expensive to find, thats why painters used to mix violet colours and as a result violet and purple shades faded with time. If you still prefer mixing over single-pigment colour, try Gamblin’s alizarin permanent for mixing with ultramarine blue. Or consider making violets with quinacridone or magenta, which will make a permanent purple.

Blues colours in Gamblin artist oil paints

Gamblin blue colours include the full range of blue shades and temperature: from indanthrone, cobalt, and phthalo blue  to ultramarine Blue and turquoise blue.

Greens colours in Gamblin artist oil paints

Green is a secondary colour and as well as for purple and orange. So, green can be made by mixing colours or by using mono-pigment colours. In Gamblin you can find both options and you can choose anything from transparent phthalo green and opaque cobalts.

Earthy colours in Gamblin artist oil paints

Earthy, or brown, colours are the oldest pigments that painters all over the world used for centuries. And there is a strong reason for that. Earth colours are quite easy to extract and they have the highest lightfastness.

The late 20th century has produced the first significant change in iron oxides with the invention of transparent Mars. These colors are made by hydrating earth colors, a process by which opaque colors are made transparent.

Black and grey colours in Gamblin artist oil paints

Artists are controversial about making greys. While some artists prefer to use black as is, the others think that greys made from black are lifeless, so they remove black colour their palettes.

While overusing black in a painting will make it look dirty, neutral greys made from black and white are the same as neutral greys made from exact complements. Greys made from complements are more lively because they are incomplete mixtures of one color next to another. So come back to black with Gamblin Chromatic Black, a neutral, tinting black made from complementary colors.

An interesting alternative to mixing with white, the Portland Greys quickly lower the intensity of a color without changing its Munsell value.

Black and grey colours in Gamblin artist oil paints

White colours are core in any artist palette. Between 1/2 and 3/4 of the paint on most oil paintings is white, so the white color holds most paintings together.

Gamblin Radiant White, the most buttery white, and Titanium White have the highest tinting strength. Excellent for direct painting styles, they make the brightest, most opaque tints.

The Flake White Replacement project evolved from a prominent artist’s request for Lead (Flake) White, which had been the only white pigment commonly available until titanium dioxide was produced in 1920. Not surprisingly, the artist wanted Flake White’s working properties without the lead. Challenged, Robert tested all the Flake White oil colors on the market and found tremendous differences among them.

Check our selection of Gamblin oil paints >>