The Votes are Pouring In!
It's time for the big reveal!
Parading on the palette today we have everything from spooky-sounding cadmiums to a rare Molybdate, a lively Benzimidazolone, and a refined Pyrazoloquinazolone. ✨
We're pleased to say every orange paint received at least one vote-- so here is to our fellow painters who love paints as much as we do!
Here is a bit more about each paint in the contest:
1.Gamblin Permanent Orange, PO62. This lovely Benzimidazolone Orange has high lightfastness and leans slightly toward yellow-orange. We would nominate this in general as an exquisite overall autumnal orange, so much so that we chose to feature it in this week's Pigment Spotlight on Benzimidazolone Orange. We were delighted to find several of you agreed! As an orange for autumn, this one is extremely versatile.
Williamsburg Cadmium Orange, PO20. This is one of my (Melissa's) favorites when it comes to an any cadmium orange, and personally received my vote. There is something almost friendly about this particular cadmium orange. It's an enchanting, hard-to-describe middle-orange color. I was pleased to find that a few others also chose this lovely cadmium variety to represent October!
Michael Harding Cadmium Orange, PO20. The winner! This super high-chroma cadmium orange is an exceptional choice for the first Octobery-Orange contest! It also looks smashing with black, which is also a plus this time of year. Incidentally, though the names and brands off the voting card, this one also happened to receive Jonathan's vote! Well done!
Old Holland Coral Orange, PO67. An orange for the most refined colorists, the subtlest note of desaturation adds a bit of class- along with its incredible name, which was hidden from the voters. It is almost the spiritual sibling of the Permanent Orange (with PO62 as the yellower version and PO67 the redder version) in that it is just lower than the highest chroma oranges while still being a very bright orange color. Bravo!
Old Holland Cadmium Orange, PO20 (or PR108). Old Holland's Cadmium Orange is a knockout, and we love how red-orange it is for a cadmium orange. As an aside, there is some confusion on the pigment code, whether PO20 (via the Old Holland site) or PR108 which is listed on Blick, but since the two pigment codes meet in the land of red-orange, we won't pursue that here. Quite a few painters selected this redder cadmium orange as the quintessential October Orange. With a color just a touch redder than Michael Harding's, it received the runner up award!
RGH Artists' Oils Pyrrole Orange, PO73. There aren't many lightfast orange pigments out there, so we included this very red-orange contestant, PO73. Blazing in chroma, it pushes farther into the red-oranges than most of the other October Oranges.
Rublev Orange Molybdate, PR104, And now for a orange that's truly spooky! While it has a buttery consistency with good opacity, we wouldn't recommend it due to its being extremely toxic. This orange is a lead chromate, which makes it the rarest of the bunch-- the orange you may never have heard of, and of course we had to try it.
So there you have it!
Congratulations to Michael Harding's Cadmium Orange as this year's winner, and Old Holland Cadmium Orange, the runner up-- and a big round of applause to all who voted!
