Ordering

Ultramarine blue. Oh, baby.

Look at the powder. Very, very finely ground, and it looks like it’s glowing, like someone crushed the deep end of a swimming pool on a summer afternoon and tipped it into a jar. It’s so fine you must be careful not to breathe it in. It gets into your lungs and does damage. Mask up. Gorgeous things can still bite.

There was a time when the real version of this blue was literally worth its weight in gold. Ground-up rock, crystal, carried a very long way. Then the French put out a bounty. Someone, anyone, figure out how to make ultramarine. Sort it out. And a Frenchman did. That’s why so many tubes say French ultramarine blue. It’s a little tip of the hat, painted onto every tube, to the man who found a way to make it without the mountain.

If you want one blue, get ultramarine and you’ll be fine. That’s the only blue you really need. Everything after that is a footnote. Weird analogy coming: ultramarine is the Plato of the blue world, and every other blue is a footnote to Plato.

The footnotes are lovely, mind you. Cerulean is your chill blue, the one lying in a hammock. Pacific blue is a grey blue I lean on a lot. Phthalo green is always a banger. French turquoise, similar to ultramarine and synthetically made, is a wonderful, wonderful colour that I warmed to more and more every stroke. And ultramarine into a brilliant magenta gives you an ultramarine purple, more vibrant than a royal purple, not as dark, with more pop to it. Great combo.

Is ultramarine still my favourite? For years, yes. Best colour the world has to offer, I’d say. These days I’ll admit a soft spot for baby blue. Me and Snoop Dogg, apparently. Love can shift. That’s allowed.

Yellow is the primary colour that wants to be used the least. Raw, bold, primary yellow is a lot. It’s the guy at the party who’s had three drinks and found the karaoke machine. On its own I’ll mostly use just the reds and the blues, and the yellows splice into everything else, into greens, into mustards, into skin.

So I dance between two yellows. Iridescent gold, and Naples yellow.

Naples yellow is much more of a tan than a yellow. Is it the best colour? That’s a stretch. Is it the best yellow? Definitely. Hands down. No other shade comes close. If you’re looking at your art wondering why it lacks that little kicker of realism, that natural, beautiful feel, drop the yellows completely and dive into Naples yellow. Without changing anything else, the whole picture settles, like a room when someone finally turns off the fluorescent light and lights a lamp.

Here’s a trap that catches people. Someone on Facebook asked me: doesn’t paint no longer have cadmium in it? Aren’t they all safe now?

You’d think so. It’s not. Unless it says cadmium-free, it’s probably full of cadmium, for the yellows and the reds. For blues, they typically use cobalt. If it says cadmium, cobalt or manganese on the packet, it contains that heavy metal, because that’s what makes the colour so beautiful. We haven’t got around that yet.

And then there’s the unsung hero I keep coming back to. Neutral grey.

Titanium white is the most exciting colour of all, my key colour. Neutral grey is the second most exciting, and I swear they get more exciting after that. Neutral grey contrasts with saturation and lets everything else stand out. It doesn’t want the spotlight. It holds the ladder while the reds climb up and wave. A real team player. Where would we be without a bit of neutral grey? Lord only knows.