A Little Dab'll Do Ya - Managing Your Phthalos

On my oil palette, I usually include a phthalo color.  Why?  Because phthalo blue and its cousins, phthalo green and phthalo emerald, possess high chroma and a high tinting strength.  It has such a high tinting strength, in fact, that one little tube will last years.  It really only takes a speck to make a difference in your paint mixtures.

Phthalo is the painter's equivalent of nitroglycerine.  You should probably need a permit to use it.

When I tell the students who've not used it before to add just the tiniest bit, they usually scoop up  a three-month supply on their brush.  The results are disastrous, of course.  Unless you're skilled enough to use a single hair of your brush to pick up the phthalo, you're better off using a knife.

For those of you who have trouble managing phthalo, I include the following illustrations.  The first photo shows a pinhead's worth of phthalo emerald on the knife.  The second photo shows that pinhead's worth mixed into white.  The third photo shows a second pinhead's worth mixed in.  It's pretty dramatic.

By the way, I've set up a coupon that will give you $1 off my $10 online video course, Plein Air Essentials - Oil Supplement.   This course includes not just several mini-videos but also a 30-minute oil demonstration.  The coupon code is PAEOS and is good only until July 21.  Go to this link for the course.