Cryla - The Range

Old Masters Colours

Metallic Colours

Historically there were a number of colours that were considered essential by the old master painters. Over the years many of these colours have been phased out of common use, as the pigments used to create these colours were found to be unsafe or non-permanent/lightfast.

Daler-Rowney has recreated a selection of essential colours used by the old masters. Using blends of permanent, safe, modern pigments, these hues have been recreated to match the original pure pigment colours produced by Daler-Rowney in the early 20th century. These historical hues in the Cryla Artists’ Acrylic range allow artists to explore colours used by the old masters in a permanent, safe acrylic form.

Within the Cryla Artists’ Acrylic range there are 8 metallic colours: Pale Gold, Rich Gold, Copper, Bronze, Silver, Pewter, Black and White. These colours conform to the same exacting standards as all the other Cryla Artists’ Acrylic colours and have the same heavy-bodied characteristics.

All the metallic colours contain imitation metallic pigments and genuine metallic pigments. Genuine metallic pigments are not stable in acrylic colours, as they tend to tarnish in a relatively short period of time. Coated mica flakes are therefore used to give the impression of a genuine metallic pigment. The titanium-coated mica flakes used in Cryla Artists’ Acrylic give the colour a brilliant lustre similar to genuine metallic colour.

Primary Yellow

White light is shone onto the surface, the blue light is absorbed, the green and red light is reflected to the eye and we see yellow.

Primary Magenta

White light is shone onto the surface, the green light is absorbed, the red and blue light is reflected to the eye and we see magenta.

Primary Cyan

White light is shone onto the surface, the red light is absorbed, the green and blue light is reflected to the eye and we see cyan.

If we take this theory further and look at black and white you can see that white is all light and black is no light, therefore:

White White light is shone onto the surface, all light is reflected to the eye and we see white.		Black White light is shone onto the surface, all light is absorbed by the surface and none is reflected back to the eye and we see black.

Now we will apply this theory to mixing colours. If we wish to create a green colour, we would mix Primary Yellow and Primary Cyan together in equal quantities. The Primary Yellow in the mix will absorb the blue light, the Primary Cyan in the mix will absorb the red light, so the only light reflected is the green light and hence we get a green colour.

This also works if you mix all the combinations of primary colours. i.e. Primary Yellow + Primary Cyan = Green, Primary Yellow + Primary Magenta = Red and Primary Magenta + Primary Cyan = Blue. These three mixed colours are called the secondary colours.

All colours therefore can be mixed from these three primary colours by varying the amount of each colour that you put in the mix. For example, if you wanted to create an orange colour you would mix Primary Yellow and Primary Magenta but not in equal quantities; you would need more Primary Yellow in the mix. In this mix all of the red would be reflected, all of the blue would be absorbed and some of the green would be reflected giving an orange colour.