Interference Abstracts

Artwork – Van Gogh Specialty watercolor and black paper.

Recently, I picked up a Royal Talens Van Gogh Speciality Palette set which comes with a Black Watercolour Pad (A4/8.3 x 11.7 in) and 12 paints in a cool black palette. Even the interior of the palette is black. I wouldn’t like that with regular colors because it could mess with your sense of color. But These paints are all metallic or interference colors, which in essence means shiny! and you don’t usually mix those.

The colors are Silver, Graphite, Light Gold, Deep Gold, Copper, Bronze, Interference White, Interference Violet, Interference Blue, Interference Green, Interference Red and Interference Yellow.

I haven’t had much chance to play with these, but I did a couple of abstracts just to see how the colors look and these are what I came up with.

The paper has a really nice texture. The scans, of course, are not showing all the shiny but I think these look very interesting even without it!

The colors are semi-opaque so you can paint light over dark. It does take a bit of work to pick up a good amount of the interference colors but that’s the nature of interference colors!

And what are interference colors? At a glance, they look much like iridescent colors, with an opalescent shine. But in the right light and on the right paper, an interference color will ‘flip’ from one color into it’s complimentary color. In other words, if you look at Interference Red, it is red in one light, but move to another light and suddenly the color is green.

Have to admit – most of the time, with any brand of interence colors I’ve seen, the ‘flip’ is rarely seen. It’s more obvious with white paper, but even then the light has to be just right.

The important thing is though – the colors are purty!

The set also has a small (tiny) brush that will work in a pinch, though it wouldn’t be much good for large paintings.

Bekki Page reviewed the Van Gogh Speciality Palette & Van Gogh Black Watercolour A4 Pad at Doodlewash earlier this year.