Picking The Right White
The first time you wonder over to the oil-paint rack in the art store looking for a white, you might be bemused at the options.
Most will be cheap so you can experiment, but you might find the occassional one that is obscenely expensive (but still worth having in my opinion). And there’s a specific reason for that. So let’s break this down.
Oil paint is made up of a pigment and a binder.
To make a “white”, manufacturers will mostly use either zinc or titanium dioxide. They are assigned the ATSM pigment codes of PW4 and PW6 respectively.
It’s almost certainly going to be the case that your newbie starter-kits will be packaged with Titanium White.
There is a third pigment, PW1, and that is assigned to Lead Carbonate AKA Lead White (Or in French: Blanc D’Argent / Silver White). It’s also known as Flake White, as the Lead is flakey in appearance when it’s been processed to it’s white state, prior to binding with the oil, and another name is “Stack Lead White” as it derives from a process of manufacture known as the “Dutch Stack Process”. It’s this one that commands the heavy price tag and is relatively hard to find, though worth tracking down. It’s prohibitiveness in availability and pricing is entirely due to its toxicity due to lead-content, and the surrounding legal prohibitions.
This is strange if you think about it. Cadmium is also toxic, and yet all serious paint manufacturers feel compelled to have it in their range and are willing to accept the legal risks, which they then compensate for in the form of a higher cost/retail price. They’ll also typically offer either turpentine or a turps-based medium (for very cheap), and that’s pretty bad for you as well.
Somehow, lead is singled out for exceptionally harsh treatment in the art-supply world, and there’s only a couple of paint manufacturers who have it in their product range. The legal constaints are the sole reason for the heavy price tag. Lead is a very common metal on planet Earth and there’s no real difficulty in procuring it. It would be way easier for me to find than cadmium, that’s for sure. There are some extra steps in processing it safely, but it is also a metal that has a long and established history of use in humanity: Everything from weapons to tableware to plumbing to electronics. A lot of old houses still have a chunk of flash lead roofing and it can still be bought at the hardware and electronics shops.
Why would you use a toxic pigment when there is a safer and cheaper alternative within the same colour range? Because of it’s physical properties.
Lead as a metal is known for its low melt point, and high durability and malleability. It binds well. It lasts, it resists cracking due to the nature of it’s atomic bonding structure (I’m not a chemist so don’t ask me to go into detail on this). As far as white pigments it’s quite receptive to the normal temperatures we humans work and live in. In painting terms, it is “weaker/less intense” than Titanium. That sounds like a bad thing but it’s not, as it allows more control in colour-mixing and blending. In comparison to the other major white pigments, it also appears warmer, in that it edges more towards the yellow side of things. We humans seem to have evolved to be happy in this part of the light spectrum than the cooler side and perceive it as more organic. In addition to this, it was the main white that western artists used until the 1920s, when Titanium White became available on the market. Thus when you are looking through your art history books and all the old oil paintings you want to emulate, you are looking at paintings made with Lead White.
It’s quite funny to think about all the panic that ban-happy government bureaucrats have stirred up over lead-white, when the old portraits and landscapes hanging in the corridors of power that they walk through have lead in them (not to mention the various fittings in much of their antique property and the circuit boards of numerous electronics all around them).
This is where the term “toxic” needs to be analysed.
It’s toxic to ingest. You do not want to eat it, drink it, inhale it or get it onto your skin or in any open wounds. This is why you don’t want to eat while painting, get paint on your clothes, or sand-back any painting that used lead or cadmium. It’s a menace if it’s airborne. But in paint form it is bound in oil. When it is in the tube it can’t hurt you. When it dries to a hard film on the paint surface it also can’t hurt you. If it could, then so could the lead that sits in old electronic circuit boards, on the roofs of old houses or hanging from old paintings that you saw in a museum (or may have at home). Surely you aren’t trying to inhale or eat those are you? Learn how to handle toxic materials carefully and you should be okay. People like to point to doomed artists like Vincent Van Gogh but that man had a lot of problems and also did a number of things that we would regard as reckless (like lick the tip of his brushes to make a sharp point). You can contrast him with the Rennaisance painter Titian, who lived to 98 years of age, painting with Lead White his whole life, in the era before paint tubes, modern safety gear and industrial processes, and who ultimately died of the Black Death.
Titanium White, PW6, is fine to use if you prefer. Most artists do. By comparison it is brighter, “whiter”, and more intense and “cooler” that Lead Carbonate. It tends to dominate other colours that it gets mixed with more. Many traditionalists argue that it doesn’t look as good when making skin tones and other organic visual effects. I generally agree with that camp, however I think its possible to achive a satisfactory result with Titanium White and there are artists out there proving it. I just ask that you not knock Lead White until you try it.
Zinc White, PW4 is only selectively used in its own right as it is a pretty weak paint. Typically for atmospheric effects like smoke or whatnot. You will more commonly see it mixed with Titanium white or other paints in varying amounts to give readymade colour options for people who have money to burn and can’t be stuffed working out how pigments and mixing work.
This is where you need to beware of various trade-name gimmicks like “Flake White Hue” or “Transparent White” etc. You may well be buying stuff you already have but unmixed or mixed to a different ratio. “Flake White Hue” in this case is not flake/lead white at all, but a combo of titanium and zinc allegedly tinted to look like lead white. Imo it doesn’t really come close. And here again it’s important to remind you that it’s not just the appearance, but the feel of it (ie its weight and physical manipulation properties) and how it blends with other colours.
Michael Harding put out a convenient blend called Foundation White that I admit to using (despite my standard apathy towards blends), which has a mix of PW1 and PW6. It’s a good economical compromise between the two in both quality and price, and I’ve found it quite handy for painting a base layer confidently and quickly.
The lead-white variant Cremnitz White also deserves a mention. This is a historic name derived from the type of white paint that originated from the town of Klagenfurt, with the lead coming from mines in the vicinity of Kromeriz, Czechia (which was known as Kremnitz during the time of the Hapsburgs). You’ll see descriptions applied to it like “creamy, ropey, stringy” and that’s essentially how it is. For techniques where you want to show more brushwork or texture, it’s amazing stuff.
Finally, the type of oil can vary. I use linseed oil based paints but safflower oil and walnut oil are both offered as alternatives for those concerned by Linseed Oils reputation for yellowing with age. They are compromised by disputes over their binding properties and their drying times. Linseed oil is tried and tested by the centuries and that’s why I like it. It’s also the binder that’s used in nearly all my oil paint tubes, so I always know what I’m dealing with.
Paint away, my fellow RWNJs.
In this painting currently in progress I have used Titanium white for the car and lead white for the skeleton. Can you see a difference?
Another painting in process, currently at the “grisaille” stage (a fancy French term for grayscale). This one has only utilized Lead White, but with Foundation and Flake-white forms for the flatter tones and Cremnitz White for the textured sections (such as the wall and driveway).
My collection of whites. On the furthest right with the faded label is MH Foundation White.
The two on the left I pretty much never use. Titanium White is used only occasionally.
This is my trusty old copy of the MH Oil-paint Material Data Sheet, as found on the back of their brochure when you see their products in art supply stores. Its a dry list of all their paint names, the pigments they contain, opacity, drying times etc. I studied it alot over the years and it’s been indispensible. Not every company is as upfront and “transparent” (geddit) about all the information on their paint range.