Making Casein Paint: Cadmium Yellow

One of the “features” of the paint rack I made recently is being able to see at a glance what paints I have, and which ones are low or missing, at least for the gouache and casein paints that I was able to hang there. It became apparent that I needed a few more caseins, so here I am making a new batch of Cadmium Yellow (light shade.) The picture above shows a few of the materials I use to get started.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to wear gloves and a mask when handling pigments, especially cadmiums. It’s not really something to be scared of, you just have to be careful. You don’t want to breathe in any of these tiny particles. Even being extra careful, I easily get some pigment on my hands, as you can see. I like to mix the powder first in a small container, like the metal jar here, to which I add my liquids. This helps keep the pigment from flying into the air.

I dump the mixed paint (pigment and casein medium) from the jar onto my grinding tile, and start to mull the paint. This particular batch of cadmium yellow is quite lumpy, so it takes a bit longer to mull than some pigments do. Sometimes no mulling is required at all; I just have to use a spatula to mix the paint and medium. To help with the mulling and to make the paint looser, I added a little bit of glycerin. For this particular batch the ingredient ratio is 2 parts pigment, 4 parts medium, and 1 part glycerin.

After a few minutes of mulling, the paint is smooth enough to scrape into a tube. These tubes are 45ml in size, and I used about 2 tablespoons of pigment to fill approximately one and a half tubes, one tablespoon at a time with the ratio above. I crimped the bottoms of each tube with a pair of needle-nose pliers, and made up some labels. The paint swatch above shows full strength paint, diluted paint, and yellow mixed with titanium white. I also used an ink marker to test the opacity. Now I have plenty of yellow to add to my collection of paints. By the way, you can see how I make the casein medium in the articles section of my website: LINK HERE.