One of my favorite things to do in the studio besides painting is filling tubes with oil paints. As of late I have been interested in using Cobalt blue as my primary blue.  (being inspired by looking at paintings by Monet and other Impressionists)  For the past couple years my palette has been mostly Phthalo blue, Magenta, Lemon yellow and Titanium white.

One day I did an experiment with 3 different cobalt blues to compare the quality of colour when mixed with titanium white.  A tube from Pebeo, Winsor & Newton and Georgian Oils. I found the W&N and Pebeo to be very close in tinting strength even though the Pebeo was $8 versus W&N being $30.  I also noticed the contents of what made up the Pebeo version of cobalt didn't actually contain cobalt which was a happy surprise since cobalt does pose a potential health hazard. (though only apparently in dust form) So I thought why not mix my own Cobalt Hue which is basically finding the right amount of Ultramarine Blue, Phthalo Blue and Titanium white.

Below you can see my 200 ml tube of mixed Cobalt hue.

First blog post, stay tuned for more stuff here!