What's Different about Rublev Colours Oil and Watercolor Paints?

Rublev Colours* artists’ paints are made in the United States by Natural Pigments, including Artists’ Oils, Watercolors, and painting mediums for professional fine artists.

Rublev Colours are different from other commercial artists’ colors. One reason is we use natural and historical pigments like those used by the old masters. Another is we make them as they did before modern artists’ paint manufacturing—without synthetic, modern additives.

For example, Rublev Colours Artists’ Oils are formulated to maintain the unique characteristics of each pigment in oil. What you find in each tube is unique due to the pigment inside, giving you new choices of texture, opacity, consistency, tone, and hue. With Rublev Colours, you experience the transparency of yellow ocher, the pale coolness of green earths, and the crystalline glitter of blue azurite.

Color Particle by Particle

The particles of natural pigments are larger and more varied than pigments in modern artists’ oil colors. When we remember how crystalline pigments, such as azurite, malachite, and lazurite, were used in old masters’ paintings, it is easy to understand how these beautiful surfaces with broken lights were obtained. An examination, for instance, of azurite particles under the microscope reveals the beautiful mass of blue and blue-green crystals, reflecting light in all directions and thus, of course, enhancing the visual effect.

Rublev Colours Artist Oils

No Additives

Rublev Colours do not contain additives, such as fillers, driers, and stabilizers—simply pigment and paint binder. For instance, we use linseed oil in Rublev Colours Artists’ Oils, sometimes with a small amount of heat-bodied linseed oil. Stabi­lizers, such as stearates and waxes that diminish the individual effects of pigments in oil, are not added. Due to individual pigment characteristics, you will find different consistencies from color to color. Some colors brush out long, others short and buttery, and others are thixotropic.

Single Pigment Colors

When you see a pigment name on our label, you get just that—one pure pigment. For example, Rublev Colours Vermilion is not a hue but the actual historical pigment—pure red mercuric sulfide. In a tube of Rublev Colours Green Earth, you will not find a mixture of pigments but the real thing—green earth. And Rublev Colours Naples Yellow is pure lead antimonate. You won’t even see the word “genuine” used to describe Rublev Colours because all colors are simply that—genuine.

All our earth colors have outstanding lightfastness, and most others are permanent when used full strength. Rublev Colours offer an extraordinary range of tinting strength and an immense diversity between opacity and ­transparency.

* Rublev Colours is a registered trademark of Natural Pigments LLC.