A Colour A Day: Week 50 1st – 7th March
Jo Volley writes…

This weeks colours include Peter Newell Price’s Black Carbon Fibre who says of it;

‘Carbon fibre was first used in1860 by Sir Joseph Swan as a filament in the development of the first primitive incandescent light bulb, from which Thomas Edison further developed the first long lasting electric incandescent light bulbs. High performance structural carbon fibre used today was invented in the USA in 1958 by Roger Bacon. Its commercial manufacture took many years to develop and uses polyacrylonitrile as its raw material, which is white in colour. It is stretched, oxidised and finally carbonised in high temperature furnaces, in an inert atmosphere, that vaporise half of its materiality. The end product, carbon fibre, is almost pure carbon and black.

My own use of Carbon fibre came about almost by accident. I’d been using some in a totally practical way to strengthen some laminated fibre glass joints when a section of the woven carbon fibre cloth unravelled and linear lines of the warp and weft from the cloth fell to the floor. What immediately interested me was that the scattered black lines were like a drawing and not just because they were linear, but because they were the same element as one of its allotropes graphite, the material of a humble pencil. I liked the idea that a drawing in carbon fibre extended the pencil line, yet it had the tensile strength to liberate the line off the paper.

I experimented with ways of using carbon fibre, making three dimensional drawings, which lead to using it in a milled form to mix with epoxy to make fillers and trying it with mediums, to see if it would work as a pigment to make a black paint. The fibres are extremely fine, about 7 micrometers in diameter and reflective, so I’ve found that as a paint it has a subtle velvety appearance, which slightly tones down its blackness. Used as a water colour the black tone remains consistent with no secondary tone bleeding from the denser black.

Carbon and what we call black has a tightly fused relationship. Black is technically not a colour, as black absorbs all light from the visible spectrum and reflects none of the light back into our sight. So it is carbon in its various forms and shades which has formed the physical interpretations of what we know as black. I like to see black and carbon as one and the same and If black is the absence of light then carbon, like Joseph Swans light bulb has made it shine.’

Image: Peter Newell Price Untitled A3

First column top to bottom:

Indian Purple in gum Arabic
Jo Volley’s Iron solution (2019)
Field’s Purple in gum Arabic

Middle column:

Peter Newell Price’s Black Carbon Fibre (2018) in gum Arabic

Third column top to bottom:

Anthracite
Perrindo Violet in gum Arabic
David Dobson’s Synthetic Vivianite (2017) in gum Arabic

A Colour A Day: Week 49. 22nd – 28th February

Jo Volley writes…

This weeks colours are mainly produced by Ruth Siddall who says of them;

These slates and shales represent the Palaeozoic stratigraphy of north west England and Wales. The coal-black, black shale from Britannia Quarry in the Pennines and was collected during a field trip to the South Pennine Coalfied with Onya McCausland. The slates from Penrhyn (Cambrian Slate) and Blaenau Ffestiniog and the red shale from the shores of the Menai Straits were all collected in North Wales over the past year. I would like to dedicate this set of pigments to my late mother, Anne Siddall (8th June 1940-22nd November 2020) who grew up in Lancashire, the daughter of parents from North Wales and with ancestors who worked in the slate quarries of the region. The Plas Brereton red ochre slate outcrops close to her final home in Caernarfon.

All colours are bound in gum Arabic on Winsor & Newton watercolour paper and read from left to right.

Cambrian Heather Slate
Cambrian Sage Slate
Blaenau Grey Slate
Blaenau Ochre Slate
Plas Brereton Red
Britannia Black
Cote d’Azure Violet from Kremer Pigments

A Colour A Day; Week 48. 15-21 February

Jo Volley writes…

This week are colours are seven earths generously gifted to me by their makers and accompany George Szirtes’ wonderful poem Soil.

‘Soil takes place in England on a train journey. I was taking a ride I think from London up to Yorkshire and I looked out at the soil, the earth and I thought I recognise that colour – where does that colour come from? And what does it mean to me? It seemed to be saying something, it seemed to be saying something and it brought to my mind the subject of belonging – to the soil, or to that soil.’ George Szirtes

Soil

What colour would you call that? That brown
which is not precisely the colour of excrement
or suede?
The depth has you hooked. Has it a scent
of its own, a peculiar adhesiveness? Is it weighed,
borne down
by its own weight? It creeps under you skin
Like a landscape that’s a mood, or a thought
in mid-birth,
and suddenly a dull music has begun. You’re caught
by your heels in that grudging lyrical earth,
a violin
scraped and scratched, and there is nowhere to go
but home, which is nowhere to be found
and yet
is here, unlost, solid, the very ground
on which you stand
but cannot visit
or know.

From The Budapest File (Bloodaxe, 2000) George Szirtes 2000; used by permission of the owner. Click to listen to George reading Soil.

Colours read from top to bottom on W&N watercolour paper:

Christine Chua’s Singapore Ochre
Chalybeate – Cohen’s Fields Fountain JV/2020
Gail Lamarche’s Arizona Red
Penelope Kupfer’s Waterfall Red – Brazil 2019/20
Penelope Kupfer’s Roadside Red – Brazil 2019/20
Hampstead Heath no.6 JV/2020
Onya McCausland’s Six Bells Burnt Ochre (oil paint)

Chalybeate Fountain, Cohen’s Fields, Hampstead Heath

A Colour A Day: Week 44.  18th-24th January

Jo Volley writes…

This week’s colours were manufactured at Joshibi University of Art & Design,  Japan and donated to the Slade some 20 years ago, where they are now housed as part of the Slade Material Research Project Pigment Collection. 

At that time the Joshibi department were conducting a study on materials used in traditional Japanese painting adding to their understanding and knowledge outside of Japan.  Along with 14 pigment sachets of colours and glues, there are 5 very beautiful sample boards of 45 pigments including an explanation sheet to their origins and production. 

Here are my favourite seven pigments.

Each pigment is bound in animal skin glue on Winsor & Newton watercolour paper.

Top row from left to right:

Stones from Fuji River   

Sand (heat-treated) from the Sahara

Stones heat-treated) from Fuji River   

Middle row: Japanese glass beer bottles

Bottom row from left to right:

Soil from Joshibi

Mussel Shells

Sand from Mount Fuji

A Colour A Day: Week 43. 11th -17th January

Jo Volley writes…

This week we have seven colours new to the Winsor & Newton Winton oil range, accompanied with notes by Stephanie Nebbia, artist and Colart Global Fine Art Collective manager.

Dioxane Blue – PV23, PB29. Strong transparent violet, dark almost black in mass tone with a beautiful bluish Ultramarine hint in the undertone. The range from the deep violet to the blue leanings makes it very versatile.

Phthalo Yellow Green – PY74, PG7. Bright opaque green with a strong Cadmium yellow like temperature with an added Phthalo depth of hue. Possesses many qualities of a Cadmium green bright/mid green.

Azo Brown – PY74, PV23. Golden tinge to this warm brown which although not organic has the madder like quality of madder brown which comes from the gentle charring of madder lake. Has the advantage of being lightfast with the same versatility.

Phthalo Deep Green – PG7, PR177. Dark almost black mass tone with a cool red shade in the undertone, reminiscent as a dark version of the historic Alizarin green lake and the toxic Cinnabar greens with the same transparency. Has the same potential and versatile offered by Hooker’s green – also a combination of pigments – with a strong tinting strength.

Azo Yellow Green – PY74, PG7, PR101, PY42. Warm Indian yellow tone with a Phthalo green tinge and although not an earth colour contributes to this family with a brownish ochre warmth making an excellent and versatile earth yellow. Reminiscent of haematite and goethite ochres which I find very evocative.

Quinacridone Deep Pink – PB29, PV19. A deep dark crimson mass tone reminiscent of the historic Alizarin rose with a blue/violet temperature undertone.

Dark Verdigris – PY74, PB29. Deep green with an Ultramarine tint similar to copper corrosion derived greens but stable and unlike early versions does not blacken. A colour used frequently by Watteau where he mixed genuine Ultramarine with actual copper Verdigris as well as featuring in Flemish School painting and early Italian oil painting.

Colours read from left to right:

Dioxane Blue
Phthalo Yellow Green
Azo Brown
Phthalo Deep Green
Azo Yellow Green
Quinacridone Deep Pink
Dark Verdigris

A Colour A Day: Week 42. 4-10 January

Jo Volley writes…

This week we have more earth pigments collected and manufactured by Ruth Siddall who says of them;

‘These are a series of British earth colours derived from some of the geological formations of southeast England. Ashdown Orange, Galley Hill Gold, Galley Hill Red and Road Works Red are all from the Cretaceous Wealden facies and all were collected in and around Bexhill in East Sussex. These strata expose terrestrial deposits which include fossil soils (palaeosols) as well as ochre-stained sandstones. The Road Works Red was procured from some kindly municipal workmen who were digging up the road outside St Mary Magdalene’s Church in Bexhill. River Ching and Walton-on-the-Naze clays are both derived primarily from the London Clay deposits of the London Basin. The River Ching flows through Higham’s Park in NE London, once a landscape garden laid out by Humphry Repton in the 1790s. The lake in the park is Repton’s construction, and the banks of the Ching which flows alongside the lake, are largely ‘made ground’ which mixes the London Clay with the overlying Ice Age Woodford Gravels. Here in NE London, the London Clay is dark grey and the clays from the Woodford Gravels is pale brown. At Walton-on-the-Naze, London Clay underlies a spectacular sequence of Ice Age strata. Again largely of continental origin, red beds dominate the sequence here. The red ochre from Stone Point, extracted from a thin horizon of red sandstones is possibly very recent in age and certainly Holocene. The pigments derived from these geological strata required a lot of processing, including washing, levigating, grinding and sieving to extract a suitable pigment.‘

All pigments are bound in gum Arabic on W&N watercolour paper and read from left to right:

Walton-on-the-Naze London Clay
Ashdown Orange
Galley Hill Red
Galley Hill Gold
Road Works Red
Stone Point Red Ochre
River Ching Ochre

A Colour A Day: Week 41. 28th December- 3rd January

Jo Volley writes...

This weeks colours are seven beautiful Japanese pigments, gifted to me some years ago, but unfortunately their pigment identity is unknown to me. As with all the colours I make from pigments they are bound in my preferred choice of medium, gum Arabic, which is the hardened sap of certain varieties of the acacia tree which grow exclusively in the Sahel. It has a long, complex and sometimes a very brutal history and apart from its value to the artist it has been used in foods, medicine and cosmetics for centuries.

My favourite new fact about gum Arabic can be found in Dorrit Van Dalen’s wonderful book, Gum Arabic. The Golden Tears of the Acacia Trees, Chapter IX: Intangible Tears, where she explains its chemistry.

‘Gum Arabic is a complex polysaccharide composed of four sugars – galactose, arbinose, rhamnose and glucuronic acid, plus calcium, magnesium and potassium salts. These constituents are linked to each other in myriad ways, with a ramification of elements within the molecule. This is why gum Arabic dissolves so well and produces solutions of very low viscosity: the many ramifications allow it to hold much water. Solutions of gum Arabic in water become viscous only at concentrations of 30 per cent gum or higher.

Around the turn of the century it was discovered that the molecules of gum from Acacia senegal and Acacia seyal has another permanent element that had not been noticed before or that had been seen as an impurity. Chemists found that a protein that makes up just 2 or 3 per cent of the molecule explains the property which makes especially hashab, gum from Acacia senegal, so valuable: its emulsifying capacity.

In 2019, Peter Williams, professor of Polymer and Colloid Chemistry at Glyndwr University, explained to me the significance of the find. the protein that distinguishes gum Arabic from other gums is hydrophobic: it tries to get away from water, but close to oil if there is any around. The carbohydrate part of the protein, however, is hydrophilic and uses its ramifications to stay in water as much as it can. Now imagine a glass of water with some gum Arabic dissolved in it. Add some oil (Coca-Cola-flavoured, for instance) and see what happens: each molecule of gum wants to wrap one arm around a molecule of oil, and another round a molecule of water. Like couples on a dance floor, the new combinations will fill the glass evenly. So the protein component give the gum molecule amphiphilic characteristics: it likes to be near water and oil.’

Kordofan gum Arabic

All colours are bound in gum Arabic on W&N watercolour paper and read from left to right as a rainbow and dedicated to our Key Workers.

A Colour A Day: Week 40. 21st-27th December

Jo Volley writes…

This weeks colours are accompanied by Marge Piercy’s poem Colors passing through us.

Purple as tulips in May, mauve
into lush velvet, purple
as the stain blackberries leave
on the lips, on the hands,
the purple of ripe grapes
sunlit and warm as flesh.

Every day I will give you a color,
like a new flower in a bud vase
on your desk. Every day
I will paint you, as women
color each other with henna
on hands and on feet.

Red as henna, as cinnamon,
as coals after the fire is banked,
the cardinal in the feeder,
the roses tumbling on the arbor
their weight bending the wood
the red of the syrup I make from petals.

Orange as the perfumed fruit
hanging their globes on the glossy tree,
orange as pumpkins in the field,
orange as butterflyweed and the monarchs
who come to eat it, orange as my
cat running lithe through the high grass.

Yellow as a goat’s wise and wicked eyes,
yellow as a hill of daffodils,
yellow as dandelions by the highway,
yellow as butter and egg yolks,
yellow as a school bus stopping you,
yellow as a slicker in a downpour.

Here is my bouquet, here is a sing
song of all the things you make
me think of, here is oblique
praise for the height and depth
of you and the width too.
Here is my box of new crayons at your feet.

Green as mint jelly, green
as a frog on a lily pad twanging,
the green of cos lettuce upright
about to bolt into opulent towers,
green as Grand Chartreuse in a clear
glass, green as wine bottles.

Blue as cornflowers, delphiniums,
bachelors’ buttons. Blue as Roquefort,
blue as Saga. Blue as still water.
Blue as the eyes of a Siamese cat.
Blue as shadows on new snow, as a spring
azure sipping from a puddle on the blacktop.

Cobalt as the midnight sky
when day has gone without a trace
and we lie in each other’s arms
eyes shut and fingers open
and all the colors of the world
pass through our bodies like strings of fire.

Colours are from the Liquitex Soft Body Acrylic range on W&N watercolour paper and read from left to right:

Bright Aqua Green
Vivid Orange
Scarlet
Naphthol Crimson
Yellow Orange Azo
Permanent Light Green
Permanent Dark Green

A Colour A Day: Week 39. 14th-20th December

Jo Volley writes…

‘I’m only happy when I’m trying to create something new’: words by Henry Levison inventor of Liquitex acrylics paint. Levison was a colour chemist who ran Permanent Pigments, Cincinnati, Ohio, which had been milling colours from 1933. Acrylics were first developed as a solvent-based artists’ colour in the early part of the C20 and by 1955 Levison had perfected a commercially viable water-based acrylic. The Permanent Pigments went on to be called Liquitex.

Henry Levison inventor of Liquitex.

Colours are from the Liquitex Soft Body Acrylic range on W&N watercolour paper and read from left to right:

Quinacridone Burnt Orange
Quinacridone Blue Violet
Indanthrene Blue
Parchment
Bronze Yellow
Prism Violet
Muted Violet