Old Holland Paint

This post actually has nothing to do with the above painting from Rockewell Falls, under the bridge in Hadley, NY.

A couple of posts ago I was lamenting the yellowing of the Zinc white in the Old Holland brand of oil paint.
Well - I went to the OH web site and contacted the people who speak English there and sent them a scan, describing my disappointment. I've loved OH paint forever! I was heartbroken.

They took my issues directly to their master paint fellow in their factory and he had the answer immediately. Within 24 hours my questions had been answered, my problems solved - and I'm so very relieved!

It turns out that the pigments in linseed binder -paint- they make are meant to be in light. The first question he asked me was, "Was I by any chance storing them in the dark?" And - yes - I had been. The samples in question had been stored in complete darkness for years.

So I put tape over half of the yellowed sample that I'd sent to them and then taped the whole page in a south facing window for maximum light exposure. It's been there now for a month and the swatch has indeed begun to get back to where it was when I made it - a beautiful pure white. The titanium which had also yellowed is almost pure white again, the zinc I think is about half way there. The paintings I had stored are also returning to their original state. Yea!!!

My complete faith in Old Holland paints has been more than completely restored and I'd recommend them to anyone serious about color. At first they may take some getting used to because the color is so saturated and so pure that it needs to be applied more thinly than some other brands. But it is so gorgeous it is more than worth the trouble!

Speaking of paint, I've had a couple of artist friends of mine ask me recently about my pigments and choice of paints. So in my next post I'm going to write about brands, pigments, colors I use and don't use and why and how I came to those decisions. So - stay tuned..... : 0 )