Ideal Recipe For Naples Yellow?

[Ptahmassu Nofra-Uaa]

George, thank you for sharing your recipes with us. I would like to broach your recipe catalog, if I may. I recently purchased Rublev Naples Yellow pigment for the first time and would like your feedback regarding mixing and medium(s). As we all know, each pigment possesses its own unique chemical makeup, and each may be utilized in manifold ways depending upon the needs and/or desires of the individual artist. I am looking for a very creamy, buttery texture in my Naples Yellow, and would be very interested in your experience with this (Rublev) pigment, if you can offer it. Can you cite a recipe from experience, including the ideal process for blending with the choicest mediums?

Each of us has our own favorite recipes and procedures for working with pigments; however, I find that listening (or reading) the experiences of other artists can only enrich our creative experience and guide us in new directions perhaps previously unexplored. Yours would be very valued, as well as that of other community members here. Thanks!

[George O'Hanlon]

I am looking for a very creamy, buttery texture in my Naples Yellow, and would be very interested in your experience with this (Rublev) pigment, if you can offer it. Can you cite a recipe from experience, including the ideal process for blending with the choicest mediums?

I cannot say there is a "favorite recipe" for Naples yellow (genuine lead antimonate), but different results can be achieved by grind the pigment in different types of vegetable drying oils (I assume you are referring to making oil paint). Typically, however, Naples yellow has a tendency to make a long, somewhat stringy paint when ground in alkali-refined and raw linseed oil of low acid value. This is simply a characteristic of the pigment in oil. If you grind it in walnut oil or safflower oil, you will get a somewhat less pronounced stringiness that may approach what you are seeking. You can make it more buttery by adding fillers such as chalk, clay or rheological additive.

[John Kennedy]

You might want to try to mixit with a 1:1 mixture of poppyseed oil and epoxide oil. Poppyseed oil dries much slower but is less yellowing and good for lightcolors, such as naples yellow, and the epoxide oil is fast drying and low in viscosity, which will make it brush out easier. You can add oderless thinner or oil of spike to thin your mixture to your desired consistency. If you want it to dry faster and glossy when painting use a bit of canada balsam thinned down a touch on the brush and mix on your palette before painting it on your substrate.