Instrumental colour mixing to guide oil paint artists

Abstract

Painters use a creative but time-consuming process to mix differently coloured pigment paints in order to obtain an intended colour. During the past decades it became technically possible to achieve this task also using instruments. However, their high prices have prevented painters from making this choice. Very recently, a new generation of colour instruments became available at much lower prices, making this an affordable approach for both professional and amateur painters. We selected one such instrument, and tested its ability to help painters in mixing pigment paints to achieve a desired colour. Our approach started by choosing a limited set of pigmented oil paints from an artist line of a commercial brand (Van Gogh line from Royal Talens). We applied these paints in a range of well-chosen mixtures to determine the spectral properties of each pigment paint. Using a spreadsheet program and an optical model we were then able to create any desired colour by calculating the optimum mixture of pigment paints. In this article, we test the accuracy of this method for use by artist painters.