One of the first assignments in art classes is to do a painting using only hues mixed from the three primary colors of red, blue and yellow. I suppose its a useful exercise but unless you are as naturally gifted a colorist as a Cezanne or Matisse the resulting painting is predictably a disappointing collation of muddy and/or garish oranges, greens and purples.
Fortunately, for most of art history, beginning with the cave paintings of Lascaux and Altamira, artists worked using pure pigments (their palette was limited to red and yellow ochres and black). 20,000 years later the various shades of ochre and other mineral colors remain the workhorse colors of icon painting.
Today was spent in the company of malachite green, used as a highlighting color on the landscape and architectual elements of the triptych that I'm working on. Natural malachite is too expensive for my budget, but the colorists at Kremer Pigments manufacture an imitation of that warm greenish pigment that is both affordable and beautiful.
Mixed with a little bright yellow ochre and white, I think it is a superlative highlighting color, which, once you start looking for it, you notice in many Muscovite icons of the 14th and 15 century.
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