…is an earthy colour that on first appearances looks alot like Burnt Sienna. The main difference is that it’s pinker in colour and it’s fully opaque where burnt Sienna is semi opaque.

I haven’t used this colour much but found I had some in my acrylic kit when I grabbed a few random colours for some abstract play. Vermillion, light red ochre, carbon black and Australian yellow green + white is what I grabbed and thought I’d make the study about vermillion, but it ended up being more about the red ochre.

The opaque quality of this colour gives great coverage and gives a very different effect than semi transparent paints, kind of looks more like a gouache when dried, I think…I need to explore that abit more.

I liked the colour so much I did a little skin study with it using just the red ochre and white, with a touch of pre mixed grey for interest.

What I noticed about the opaqueness is that it gives a great illusion of dark, such that you can’t get with semi transparent and transparent colours.

I thought I’d better check my observations with a quick burnt sienna study…

even though the semi transparent burnt sienna is a darker colour than the opaque light red ochre, the darker values feel to me like they are in the red ochre painting not the burnt sienna, but my eyes are telling me that they look like they are in the burnt sienna painting. Is my pre-concieved bias interfering I wonder…

to test this theory I will convert the image to grey scale…

hmmmm…. the more surprising difference is in the lighter parts - there’s more variation in the light side of the burnt sienna painting than I thought and less in the light side of the red ochre one.

fancy that!

Also, I recorded the process of the dingo dreaming, for the record: