Jenny Aitken
For Jenny Aitken, teaching painting is an absolute passion her main aim is for students to be encouraged, informed and creatively enthused. She began tutoring and demonstrating ten years ago, and now runs online courses and art holidays around the UK and in Italy and France.Since graduation in Art & Art History from seaside university Aberystwyth, she has exhibited all over the UK and won many awards. She was elected an associate member of the RSMA in 2021, and won the Topbond Marine Award in 2022.She is currently represented by several galleries, including The Harbour Gallery in Cornwall and Peter Barker Gallery in Rutland. You can also view and purchase daily studies, paintings, prints, calendars and cards from her own online gallery on www.jennyaitken.co.ukJenny is a regular contributor to The Artist Magazine, and an online tutor, with a series of 25+ modules on painting in oils and acrylics. She also produces shorter painting videos on YouTube.Jenny lives in Derbyshire, not far from the beautiful Peak District.You can shop Jenny’s recommended products below…
Learn to paint outdoors through 8 fun, simple projects by Jenny Aitken.
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Diarylide Yellow is a synthetic organic Lake that replaces uric acid, which was made by warming the urine of Indian cows fed on mango leaves. This modern, organic equivalent matches the beauty of the original colour, used for centuries in Mughal miniatures, but it has greater tint power and reliability. When brushed thinly over hued backgrounds, it presents a vibrant and warm mustard yellow. Please note that our Indian Yellow is not made with animal waste.
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Inorganic – No. 113 is an obviously beautiful mid-blue. The discovery in the 1820s of a Sodium Sulphosilicate compound, which had appeared as a mysterious blue deposit on soda-ash furnaces, was a liberating moment for financially challenged artists everywhere. Up to then the only available version of this compound was the often-unobtainable Lapis Lazuli ore, mined in Afghanistan. Ultramarine has a high tint power, and our chosen shade produces strong green shade blue hues and makes wonderful violets with Magenta and the red Lake colours. It is also useful in greens and greys. The only chemical weakness is a recorded sensitivity to atmospherically borne acids, which can bleach it out. Ultramarine Blue is one of the more difficult paints to make, as it forms an intractable runny syrup when first ground into oil, which must then be stabilized with a small amount of wax.
Inorganic – Neutral Grey is a blend of Lamp Black and Titanium White. I formulated Neutral Grey because a number of artists requested I have a colour on the Munsell scale. My formulation is similar to Munsell scale 5.
Reknowned for her techniques for painting light on water, Jenny Aitken delivers perfect guidance to the intermediate artist on how to paint light in plein air and much more.
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Organic Pigment – Scarlet Lake belongs to the family of Naphthol Red pigments. This Lake is organic, warm, and possesses high tinting power.
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Organic – Copper Phthalocyanine Green probably ties with Phthalo Blue and Deep Purple as the strongest pigment in the range. Atomic Tint Power, add it with great care! Ferocious acidy blue-green hues and blue undertones come to prominence in mixes with yellows. In common with the Blue, it displays, on curing and when used virtually unmixed, a certain tendency to show surface bronzing. The ruination of many a student’s work, use with great caution! Always check in a good light as it can silently destroy a painting till seen in a true light when it is too late! This colour, otherwise known as the embalmer, has been the ruination of many a student’s work as it tends to invisibly leach into all other colours on the palette till one stands back and sees in a good light what has happened, caution!
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Inorganic – This name was given by English manufacturers to smalt, a cobalt-based pigment that was used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a less expensive alternative to Lapis Lazuli. Unfortunately, smalt tends to fade into a light grey, as some Veronese skies demonstrate. But the introduction of Ultramarine Blue made the original smalt formula obsolete, and so Michael offers a completely reliable substitute blend that evokes the aerial effects of the great Venetian decorators.
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Titanium White No. 1 is the most brilliant white in my range, suitable for crisp, cool, opaque, light shades. If you want a powerful mixer that lightens , then this is it. Although not subtle, this white is the most suitable for a bright, fresh palette. It forms a strong and durable film when cured. PW6 is an inorganic pigment.
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Organic – An absolutely beautiful warm red with a very unique nature when mixed with or glazed over whites it produces a truly shocking shade of pink.
Added after much demand, this very permanent popular pigment capable of making completely exciting pinks with a vivid undertone Michael is providing artists with Quinacridone Rose. This is a modern organic colour perfect for vivid still life painting of flowers, fruit or in portrait paintings. This unique colour makes very exotic pinks that may appeal to the Plein Air painter for skies, fields, flowers and sunlight to name a few. Michael has always been a great fan of quinacridone colours for the use in his own paintings and find them to add a difference that cannot be achieved through other pigments, it gives me that burst of colour he enjoys!
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Inorganic – This is a version of Burnt Umber that has heavier and more red-brown undertones than the raw umber variant. This is the colour in its presentation from the last two centuries, invaluable for underpainting and showing a range of sandy pinks in hues.
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Organic – Bright Yellow Lake is an arylide organic lake pigment. It has an incredibly high oil content and transparency, with an enormous tint power that shoots through mixes with a pervasive range of bottle green undertones. Beginners should handle this paint with care when adding it to other paints. It can heighten the Phthalo Lakes without making them opaque, and when it is made itself opaque with the addition of white, the results are almost luminous.
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Organic – After many years Michael Harding was able to find a variety of this pigment that had a reasonable drying speed. It may interest some of you that Michael has PV 23 samples which he made in the late 1990s that still have not dried!! Deep Purple has tremendous use in all aspects of painting but should be used with caution by new artists as it has a tint power only matched by the Phthalocyanines. However, please do not be daunted by this description as when combined with whites it produces remarkable shades. Also, its slight addition to transparent yellows, such as Indian Yellow, can result in some extraordinary results that one can only describe as dark yellow which as a concept can be a little strange.
Organic, Natural Earth – An impure, amorphous Carbon in Calcium Phosphate, Ivory Black is no longer made from burnt ivory scraps but from charred animal bones. It is denser in shade and cooler than Lamp Black, with stronger tint power. Ivory Black, the blackest of the blacks, is the most frequently used black in the range.