This is a colour that I have long worked with and it has formed part of my basic palette since for 40 years, since I was 11 years old. I am familiar with this pigment, whether it is an oil, acrylic, or watercolour. Despite this level of experience and relationship with Sienna, there are times it still escapes and surprises me. The CCC 2020 is one of those times where I have been reminded of the complexity of this colour and the changes in its innovation that have influenced it. In its mass tone, the Siena in these examples has presented as nearly black. In its undertone, it appears to be a soft yellow and somewhere in its mid-tone, it has a rust appearance.

Burnt Sienna PR101 is a synthetic organic earth replacement and is a transparent synthetic iron oxide. I found it difficult to achieve any depth of colour, it takes many layers to achieve saturation. Despite the many times I have used this colour, my practice of using it is predominantly as a glazing colour. I would often overlay Burnt Sienna over a Crimson to give warmth or over Cadmium Red to provide brilliance and richness to the base colour

The decision for the company and its scientists to develop an alternative replacement has had a marked effect or difference between their Burnt Sienna and their competitors. The decision was largely a consideration of the traditional samples of the original Sienna pigment. This original pigment possessed a high level of transparency and was often used for glazing, but it also was crucial to the resulting technique of groundcover and creating a warm monochromatic painting, over which further glazes would be laid. The original pigment samples of the natural ochre no longer possess the qualities of transparency they did hundreds of years ago from this region. When the quality of the pigment declined, Winsor and Newton decided to develop a synthetic pigment that would emulate the original Burnt Sienna inherent qualities.

I don't know what to say about light red other than just to say I love it! It's like a burnt orange that is muddy. It looks like the red earth that’s dried on the side of the outback roads. It has a heaviness and presence but contrarily a weak tinting strength. After applying many wet layers over an existing dry layer to achieve the pigment’s mass tone, comparative to Burnt Sienna, it barely reaches its mid-tone. Light Red has a gentleness and a sureness that makes it very easy to handle and manage on the paper's surface, particularly in the watercolours.

Light Red is PR102 and is identified by W&N as a semi-opaque pigment. It is a natural iron oxide (possibly is closer to the Burnt Sienna of many competitors’ companies in terms of its opacity). I worked on this grid sample very quickly, likely due to its opacity. Intensity of the colour can be reached relatively quickly with this pigment, that said, for the darker square samples, where I tried to achieve the greatest mass tone and saturation of the colour, I spent much more time without any significant result.

I’m hesitant to say that a particular colour is a favourite but, since I’ve been working in Lake Mungo observing its Gol Gol layer, this particular pigment has become one that I feel represents this place most aptly. Venetian Red is an earth red PR101. It is very opaque, has staining qualities, and its chemical description is an inorganic synthetic iron oxide. These attributes generate a sureness, certainty, and reliability that this colour will ensure a performance each time as expected. My love and connection for this colour come in with the richness of its depth, which looks like a very dark layer of the Gol Gol Layer. But it is the undertone, when it is most diluted, that takes on the appearance of the pink sand dunes of the Mungo Lunettes. This colour physically represents the mixture of sand, silica, gypsum, and red clays of this unique place. This pigment is everything between each crevice on the sand dune that looks like the tonal gradations of the gridded painting. If there was a colour that I could attach to a place and if I was to select one colour red out of all of the reds before me, it would be this one.

I will also note that in the glass palette the pigment unusually forms a layer of saturation with a halo that is a stain around the outside of the dry particles. The water container is still holding its colour, with very little pigment settling occurring as compared with many other red earth pigments.

In this example of Indian Red, the pigment demonstrates its opacity and consistency in reflecting its disclosed chemical origins as a Synthetic Iron Oxide. It is an inorganic pigment PR 101. In full saturation, this colour pigment covers every aspect of the surface. It provides good, even coverage and allows the texture of the paper to be visible. In its undertone, Indian Red possesses a subtle coolness.

This is a lovely colour that has a very pink undertone with its pigment particles, which appear to be so small that they easily stain each crevice as the brush glides easily across the surface of the paper. It has, however, an unpredictability that can be quite difficult to manage. Despite this, it is also a convincing colour. When Brown Madder is placed with a brush on the surface it makes its mark. As each brushstroke touches the surface, the particles of colour stay behind. If the artist’s hand is not fluid or is unsure, those marks will be left behind, to tell the artist’s story of apprehension and unsureness.

Brown Madder is identified as PR206, a transparent and staining coloured pigment. It is an organic quinacridone pigment. It is a colour that could be a regular inclusion on the artist’s palette as it performs in its own right but can take the role of the primary red to create some interesting mixes with other colours.

This colour looks very unlike what is expected when initially squeezed from the paint tube. Described as a red pigment, Potters Pink has its own particular characteristic that is not exhibited by any of the other red pigments. In the glass palette, it is soft, gentle, and has very little depth and in the jar of water, it settled to the bottom quickly, leaving the water virtually clean and free of any colour residue.

When working with Potters Pink, the wet colour seems weak and insignificant. It has a slight heaviness and definiteness when applying the colour to paper and it is this behaviour that the artist must trust. Feeling where the colour is will allow you to see where it will settle and when it settles and dries, it will be seen.

Potters Pink can achieve the most subtle and softness of presence always to a point where there is virtually no pigment colour. It can be applied with many layers of dry and wet applications (as I have done) to achieve a greater depth that has a beautiful coolness and a slight violet tone.

This is a colour that constantly surprises me as to how it could be used on the palette in the process of painting. One significant inherent quality of this pigment in watercolour is its ability to granulate and create an even, mottled appearance. There is no other red in the spectrum that has this same ability.

Blood red in its mass tone, with a very high tinting strength, Perylene Maroon provides great versatility. Its inherent quality is its high transparency and its very strong staining ability. It is particularly useful for glazing and it's a colour I incorporate into my regular palette as it provides a beautiful orange and can add depth to any of the red it is combined with. It appears quite clear in the water jar, suggesting that the pigment particle has a higher mass weight. In the glass palette, it possesses its own unique luminosity. In the dried colour mass area of colour on the glass palette, the dried state sample appears virtually black.

Despite its intensity, it was difficult to achieve darkness or blackness on the painted samples, even after multiple layers. It persistently maintains its redness rather than reaching black. It was also quite difficult to manage in watercolour with achieving consistency in the mid-tone. I found the tone of the squares (particularly in the most diluted examples) similar in its behaviour to the other transparent colours, where its staining properties with each brushstroke left a residue. The artist’s hand had to be quick, to not leave a mark.

Perylene Maroon is a particularly useful earth red as its transparency combines beautifully with other opaque reds available. The water container evidences the intensity of this pigment with strong colour dried in rings as the water evaporated. Perylene Maroon’s beauty of colour lies in its depth and ability to reflect light and give out colour, as well as provide great variance in depth of intensity for the artist.

It is surprising that Caput Mortuum Violet is described as a red earth pigment by George Field and is classified as such by Winsor & Newton, until working with it and seeing its colour unfold.

On the glass palette in its mass tone, it looks dense and flat, resembling runny milk chocolate more than the colour itself. But its undertone is soft blush and looks like the monochromatic shadows of the dunes at Mungo in the winter sun. The addition of water to the paint mixture exposes the reason for its classification. It is a heavy particle and, as soon as it hits water, its tinted. The wet colour is quite different from the dry sample results.

Caput Mortuum Violet is PR 101, so its classification is the same as Burnt Sienna, Venetian Red and Indian Red in the Winsor & Newton Professional Watercolour range. It is opaque, very permanent, and has the unique behavioural properties of granulation and staining. It is synthetic iron oxide or inorganic origins. Its ability to granulate was not as obvious in the mass tone but was best seen in the mid-tone range. It appears that the colour was almost sprayed to the surface of the paper.

It is a heavy red pigment, and it has presence. The shallow glass palette was saturated with colour that was intense and deep but, on the other hand, in the glass water container it is virtually clear as the weight of the pigment in the water vehicle has settled very quickly to the bottom of the container.