I used to have Buff Titanium but I don’t anymore. Its light tan color is useful and convenient because it’s common in nature, but I didn’t like the opaque, chalky way that it mixed. It is basically white, after all. Still, many artists like it. Jane Blundell talks about using it for sand, along with Goethite Brown Ochre. Claire Giordano uses buff titanium for desert/canyon scenes, as a base for sandstone rocks. It works really well, and while working one of her Capitol Reef scenes, I actually went so far as to put another tube of Buff Titanium in my cart… but then I challenged myself to make some light tan mixes with colors I already had, just to see if I might like them better.
Mix Comparison
These all seem to be pretty decent hue matches, and they’re all transparent! To varying degrees, they are also granulating.
- DS MANS + DV Indian Red + DV Cobalt Blue: One of the warmer/browner mixes; it’s hard not to use too much Indian Red, as it easily overwhelms the MANS. There is a bit of floating red-brown granulation which seems apropos for sandstone.
- DS MANS + WN Cobalt Violet + DV Cobalt Blue: A light-valued mix because it’s difficult to add ANY pigment without overwhelming the Cobalt Violet. There is floating violet granulation in this mix which is very interesting.
- DV Raw Sienna + DV Cobalt Blue: A very easy and convenient mix. Granulation is subtle, but there is a little bit of floating blue.
- DV Raw Sienna + DS Indanthrone Blue: A bit harder to find the right tan balance here; it tends to go brown or gray and too dark. Very smooth with no visible granulation.
- DS MANS + DS Transparent Red Oxide + DV Cobalt Blue: A bit strange, but very interesting. All three components granulate and the very-granulating TRO helps the other components to also granulate more than they do in other mixes. As a result it dries in a somewhat patchy way, some spots browner, others grayer, which feels fairly interesting and naturalistic. This is a complicated and challenging mix, but also one of my favorites.
- DS MANS + Quin Burnt Orange + Cobalt Blue: Tends a bit too much toward greenishness.
General Strategy
- Buff Titanium is a grayish color, so essentially what you need to do is mix a primary triad or complementaries.
- As Buff Titanium is slightly on the yellow-brown side of gray, I find it’s best to start with an earthy yellow-orange and gradually mix in a violet-blue. When starting with a triad, mix up an earthy yellow-orange as the first step.
- Starting with earthy colors is easier than using brights.
- For color harmony, I tried to stick to color options that I otherwise wanted to use in the same painting anyway (in this case, I already knew I planned to use Cobalt Blue in the sky, and one or more earth oranges in the canyon.)
- I usually like strong colors, but I found that when mixing a delicate, light color like buff – especially with more than two pigments – it is actually useful to use low-strength colors that can be adjusted gradually, such as MANS. Cobalt Blue, too, was a lot easier to use than Indanthrone Blue, which has a tendency to take over.
The Painting
All in all, the colors I ended up using in this painting were:
- MANS
- Quinacridone Burnt Orange
- TRO
- Indian Red
- Cobalt Blue
- Phthalo Turquoise (sky only)
- Indanthrone Blue
I used the MANS/TRO/Cobalt Blue for my initial buff mix. That said, I do think my initial layer was somewhat painted over, so in the end, it probably doesn’t matter what I used. But I’m happy I didn’t use Buff Titanium, as my experience of that color is that it’s easier to reactivate and make subsequent layers smudgy.
Conclusion
In general the orangey DV Raw Sienna was the most convenient base for mixing up a buff dupe; I found this to be true in previous desert and winter palettes as well. It easily makes buff with almost any blue, whereas yellower earths, like MANS, need multiple mixers.
Still, in this particular case I decided the MANS mixes were more exciting to me, especially the granulating mix with TRO and Cobalt Blue. I like any excuse to use TRO, especially in an environment where red oxide is naturally found in the rocks.
I used to think light tan was a hard color to mix, but I found it easier than I thought! I feel this confirms my feeling that I don’t necessarily need to devote a palette slot to buff… though we’ll see if I feel differently when painting in the field!