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| "YInMn Cliffs with Sunflowers" 9x12 oil / plein air YinMn Blue, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Hansa Yellow Light, Hansa Yellow Deep, Titanium-Zinc White AVAILABLE! - $300 |
How often does a brand-new color come along? For blues, not very often. The last useful blue for artists, phthalocyanine blue, was created in 1928, But as luck would have it, some scientists stumbled across a new one in 2009 while engaged in research on semiconductors: YInMn Blue.
It's a clumsy name, to be sure. It's composed of the symbols of the components: the rare-earth elements yttrium (Y) and indium (In), plus manganese (Mn). Someone should have a contest for coming up with a better name. Perhaps get rid of the uncommon capitalization, throw in another vowel to make it easier to pronounce, and add an “O” for the other component, oxygen: Yinmino Blue.
It's an expensive pigment not because yttrium and indium are “rare”—yttrium, for example, is 400 times more common than silver—but because they are expensive to mine. The start-up costs for a rare-earth mining operation can edge up to a half-billion dollars. And this is why a 37 ml tube of YInMn Blue from Gamblin lists for $75. (You can get your tube here: https://gamblinstore.com/yinmn-blue/)
How does this color compare with other blues? As primarily a landscape painter, I enjoy a blue that is easily greyed. YInMn Blue fits that need perfectly. In fact, the first time I added a bit of it to a dollop of titanium-zinc white, I immediately got a grey. My initial thought was, “Oh, I must not have cleaned my brush thoroughly.” But then I took up a “known clean” brush and got exactly the same results. Although YInMn Blue looks very intense right out of the tube, it does grey down quickly, making beautiful, soft blue-greys.
YInMn Blue also possesses a weak tinting strength. If you're used to the tinting strength of ultramarine blue and cobalt blue, you'll be surprised how easily YInMn Blue gets lost in a mixture. But as a plus, if you have a heavy hand and tend to add too much color to a mixture—a real problem with something like pththalo blue—you won't have that problem with this blue.
Finally, the color plays well with an earth pigment palette. Earth pigments make mixing the predominantly muted colors of the landscape a snap. (Other than flowers and garishly-painted manmade structures, there's very little rich color in nature.). YInMn Blue is a fitting companion for yellow ochre and burnt sienna. For my test paintings of some of our Southwestern cliffs, the blue cooled the burnt sienna gently, giving me just the right “tweak” on coolness.
I've included here some of my test paintings and color swatches—all of which are, of course, at the mercy of my camera and your monitor. You'll want to make your own tests and see the results with your own eyes.
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| Masstone/Undertone/Tint You can see how the tint of YInMn Blue is distinctly greyer than the other two. |
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| Color Chart Out-of-the-tube colors are at the top Tints of YInMn Blue on the left Other two rows show what happens when you mix YInMn Blue with Yellow Ochre and Burnt Sienna + tints of same mixtures |
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| "YInMn Cliffs" 9x12 oil / studio YInMn Blue, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Titanium-Zinc White AVAILABLE! - $300 |
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| "YInMn Sky" 9x12 oil / plein air YInMn Blue, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Titanium-Zinc White AVAILABLE! - $200 |
