Susan Lyon & Scott Burdick
Susan Lyon and Scott Burdick are contemporary American artists known for realistic and expressive figurative paintings. Both studied at the American Academy of Art in Chicago and later became internationally recognized painters and workshop instructors.
Susan Lyon is known for colorful mixed-media portraits and figurative work with an impressionistic style, while Scott Burdick is celebrated for classical oil paintings, portraits, and travel-inspired scenes. The couple often travel, paint, and teach together, drawing inspiration from cultures and landscapes around the world.
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Inorganic, Natural Earth – Raw Sienna is powerful to use as a ground tone and for underpainting. Its origins date back to the 17th century, and it’s one of the indispensable Earth Iron Oxides! As the name suggests, the best grade comes from central Italy, where I acquire my 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 – Introduced at about the same time as Ultramarine, Cobalt Aluminate is a synthetic, inorganic pigment. It is more greenish-blue, with a heavier, more mineral appearance when seen as a dry pigment. The hues formed from it are correspondingly heavier and greyer. But it has a certain shade that the less expensive ultramarine cannot quite match. The paint film, when cured, is quite soft.
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Inorganic – Viridian is about the fastest curing colour in my entire range, along with Stack Lead White. This hydrated variant of Chromium Hydroxide, introduced in the mid-19th century, is a valued support colour used for influencing greys in underpainting. The vivid blue undertones apparent in thin layers are soon eclipsed in thicker applications. Landscapists and some portraitists still prefer it to the more brutal power of the Phthalo Greens. When combined with reds, an interesting range of blue-greys results. Placing it as local colour in the proximity of vermilion can also produce some interesting complementary effects.
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Refined Safflower Oil is bright, clean, and one of the highest in colour for oil, a favourite for my Titanium White No. 1.
Safflower oil is a pale, slow-drying oil that can be used to brighten and thin oil paints.
As it is a paler yellow than linseed oil, paler pigments (whites and pale blues especially) maintain their brightness when mixed with safflower oil.
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Inorganic – Cadmium Sulphide is a ‘tangy’, bright, high-tint power yellow. It’s an inorganic pigment that lightens and increases the opacity of warm mixes without overthrowing them. The Cadmium range of pigments was introduced into production between 1840 and 1890, as costs permitted, and it has proved the most artistically reliable of all the metal compounds discovered in the 19th-century.
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Inorganic – This is a strong, deep orange with high tint power and opacity, yielding surprisingly pinky hues in mixes with Titanium Whites.
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Inorganic – Manganese Ammonium Pyrophosphate is a bold, heavy Violet that was first made in Germany in 1868 as one of the mid-19th century wave of synthetic inorganic metal salts that prompted a change in artists’ palettes. Manganese Violet has mild, reddish overtones that do not cut through mixes and that some find useful when making reflex or shadowy greys. Its average tint power allows it to be added without greatly lowering the tonality of the result.
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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.
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Another of our versatile, high-coverage, natural colours, Lavender (No. 243) is useful in myriad applications.
Gamsol is the safest solvent that allows oil painters to utilise all traditional painting techniques without compromise.
Primary Uses for Gamsol:
Thinning oil colours. A little goes a long way; stiff oil colours relax immediately when a little Gamsol is added. Be careful not to thin oil colours too much with solvent alone, this can compromise the ability of the paint to form a paint film.
Modifying painting mediums. Gamblin's Galkyd line of painting mediums is formulated with Gamsol, so they readily accept Gamsol as a thinning agent. Note: Gamsol should not be added to painting mediums made with natural resins (dammar, copal, mastic). They require strong solvents such as turpentine.
Studio clean up: brushes, palettes, palette knives, etc.
How does Gamsol achieve this level of performance and safety? Most solvents available to artists come from the industrial paint industry where solvent power and cheapness is prized. Gamsol is special: it is made for products and processes that come into more intimate contact with the body such as cosmetics, hand cleaners, and cleaning food service equipment.
Gamsol is a petroleum distillate but all the aromatic solvents have been refined out of it, less than .005% remains. Aromatic solvents are the most harmful types of petroleum solvents.
These facts are detailed in the MSDS for Gamsol, this document shows that it has an Exposure Limit Value higher than most solvents available to artists.
All of these factors have lead to Gamsol being used widely in oil painting classrooms; in those classes there are no solvent odours, only the wonderful smell of oil colours.
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Inorganic – Yellow Ochre is a higher-keyed and more green-gold shade of manufactured Iron Oxide. Its hues yield mustardy yellows quite close to Genuine Naples Yellow Dark. No. 119 possesses an almost viscous texture and is a lovely colour for flesh tones, landscapes, and non-figurative works.
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Inorganic – My Cadmium Red is a powerful, orange shade red with the usual cadmium characteristics of high tint power and opacity. This red presents warm, almost fiery hues when mixed with a more transparent white.
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Inorganic – Venetian Red is synthetic Iron Oxide, a heavy red that yields fruity, fleshy hues and makes great sonority when mixed with the Yellow Lakes. Venetian Red is a most favoured staple for many portrait and landscape artists.
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Inorganic & Organic mix –Another blend to supplement the sea-green range, this is a powerful mixer, which landscapists often find indispensable. The addition of Titanium White and Phthalocyanine green and blue hue gives it strong covering power, which shows through over large areas of application.
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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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Inorganic – This is Titanium Antinomy Chromium Oxide, a synthetic, inorganic compound which Michael began to use to make a solid, mid-range substitute Naples Yellow whilst seeking a source of genuine Lead Antimoniate. Though Michael now has one, many artists want me to retain this beautifully golden paint, which makes bronze-like hues and works well with the low earths.
A deep, expressive brown combining PR202 (Quinacridone Magenta) and PR101 (Iron Oxide). This rich, dark red-brown delivers excellent lightfastness, high oil content, and dependable coverage. The transparency and vibrancy of quinacridone merge with the weight and grounding of iron oxide, making it a beautiful choice for botanicals, portrait shadows, and atmospheric landscapes.
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Inorganic – This is a fantastic colour with an incredibly small pigment particle size that gives it great, clean transparency, ideal for glazing. Transparent Oxide Brown is one of my favourite colours for all-around use in my paintings.
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Cadmium Green (No. 412) is a vivid colour created from pigments PY35 and PG18. With excellent lightfastness and opaque transparency, it adds depth to compositions. Its average drying speed and linseed oil binder make it a versatile choice for artists seeking reliability and vibrancy in their work.
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.