Description
Madder brown is based on the wonderful quinacridone magenta pigment with a bit of red iron oxide in there, just toning down the chroma a bit and bringing an earthy warmth and richness to the hue.
In masstone it is like a turbo charged transparent red oxide, with the crystal clear transparency of the quinacridone allowing the white ground to bounce light back up through the paint film, giving a 'glow' to the paint,
Not sure where the 'brown' element of the name comes in, as to my eye it is a deep red, but I suppose it is brown in the way a richly polished mahogany wood is brown.
It makes really fantastic fleshy tints with white, reminescent of the tints you get with an Italian burnt sienna, but with a cooler edge, really good for portraiture. An earth-based version would be Italian burnt sienna combined with a little purple ochre.
Plenty of tint power, a genuinely useful tube of paint.
I have never tried a quinacridone based paint I haven't been impressed with.
Technical Overview
Pigments - PR202 & PR101
Vehicle - Linseed Oil
Opacity - Transparent
Tint Power - Average
Munsell - Hue 5 R - Value 3 - Chroma 10
Michael Harding Oil Paint
