Page:Cyclopedia of Painting-Armstrong, George D (1908).djvu/68

60 is made by dropping a mixture of Brazil wood through a funnel onto a slab. The drops are dried and mixed into a paste with gum water. It is sometimes called Brazil wood lake. Scarlet lake is made from cochineal, so also are Florentine lake, Hamburg lake, Chinese lake, Roman lake, Venetian lake and Carminated lake.

Whites. The most important group of painters' colors are the white pigments. White is the basis of nearly all opaque painting designed for the laying and covering of grounds, whether they be of woodwork, metal, stone, plaster or other substances. It should be as pure and neutral in color as possible, for the better mixing and compounding with other colors without changing their hues, while it renders them of lighter shades, and of the tints required; it also gives solid body to all colors. It is the most advancing color; that is, it comes forward and catches the eye before all other colors, and it assists in giving this quality to other colors, with which it may be mixed, by rendering their tints lighter and more vivid.

White is the nearest among colors in relation to yellow, and is in itself a pleasing and cheerful color, which takes every tint, hue and shade, and harmonizes with all other colors, and is the contrast of black, added to which it gives solidity in mixture, and a small quantity of black added to white preserves it from its tendency to turn yellow.

The most important of the white pigments is

White lead, which may be obtained either pure or mixed with various substances, such as sulphate of baryta, sulphate of lead, whiting, chalk, zinc white, etc. These substances do not combine with oil as well as does white lead, nor do they so well protect any surface to which they are applied. Sulphate of baryta, the most common adulterant, is a dense, heavy, white substance, very like white lead in appearance. It absorbs very little oil, and may frequently be detected by the gritty feeling it produces when the paint is rubbed between the finger and thumb.