A J Ludlow Anthraquinone Crimson Professional Watercolour

Anthraquinone Crimson is just one of the bright and exquisite Professional Watercolours from A J Ludlow. Being based on a single pigment with excellent permanence and light fastness, ensures that this watercolour’s properties are exceptional. As with all our fine-art materials, Anthraquinone Crimson watercolour is lovingly handmade in the UK by a skilled artisan from the best ingredients and finest pigments.

Anthraquinone Crimson professional quality watercolour is supplied in a 15ml glass jar, because:

• The watercolour’s wet mass tone can be seen through the walls of the jar;
• The colour can be easily transferred from the jar to the palette with a palette knife.

But more importantly, there is no need for unnecessary additives or formulation changes to make processing in our colour manufacturing workshop easier, allowing the Anthraquinone Crimson watercolour made by A J Ludlow to be at the highest pigment concentration and the pigment’s unique properties to be uncompromised. Anything less would be at odds with the brilliance and performance demanded of a professional quality watercolour range.

This Professional Watercolour is prepared using a synthetic blue-shade red organic complex, from the anthraquinone-type class of light stable and high-performance pigments. This pigment has been selected for its bright and intense blue-shade red colour, high tinctorial strength, excellent light fastness and transparency. It therefore affords a transparent watercolour (as can be seen in the figure 1a below).

Figure 1: Assessment of (a) the opacity/transparency and (b) staining power of A J Ludlow Anthraquinone Crimson Professional Watercolour*.

The Anthraquinone Crimson watercolour does not lift out completely (as can be seen in figure 1b above) and so has a propensity to stain the watercolour paper.

This watercolour has a structured consistency, but is easily transferred from the jar to the watercolour palette using a clean spatula or palette knife. As with all the Professional Watercolours from A J Ludlow, once water is added, this watercolour has excellent flow and is a joy to paint with.

Anthraquinone Crimson is a very useful watercolour and is often found on the modern watercolourist’s palette because it is used as a good shade alternative for the fugitive natural anthraquinone lake pigment derived from the madder root, Alizarin Crimson ( C.I. PR83). Because of its good light fastness, it is often referred to as “Permanent Alizarin Crimson” and can be used on the artist’s palette as a cool primary red. It can be used to create a wide range of rich purples and browns and is often used as the red component in painting Caucasian flesh tones (see figure 2).

Figure 2: "Rifleman John (Jack) McMillan, 2RUR" watercolour painting by Andrew Ludlow

Pigment Details: 1-Amino-4-(4-amino-9, 10-dioxoanthracen-1-yl) anthracene-9, 10-dione / Colour Index Pigment Red 177 ( C.I. PR177)

Footnote:

*Details of how each watercolour is tested are given in the May 2021 ARTicle “Testing and Assessing the Properties of Watercolours – Part 1 ” (see also Part 2 of the ARTicle, which was published in June 2021).