SIGNATURE SET – RAÚL GARCÍA LATORRE – SCOTTISH TARTANS PAINT SET

A pattern that has to be painted thread by thread

A tartan is not a print but a woven cloth in which the colored stripes of the warp and the weft cross regularly. On a figure a few centimeters tall such a pattern cannot be got around in any way: it is painted from the base through the horizontal and vertical bands to the thin dividing lines that arise where the stripes overlap. A painter therefore needs a set of clean tones that keep their saturation even after deep thinning and do not go muddy when they are mixed with one another.

Eighteen tones and why precisely these

In the box there are white, a light gray, a warm gray and black as tools for lightening and subduing. The color bands are covered by a lemon and a deep yellow, a saturated orange and a deep red, three greens in graded saturation from pastel to deep, and with them a blue-green, a ducat blue, a deep blue, a light Prussian blue and a blue-violet. An earthy brown tone and a shade for shaded flesh deal with what lies around the cloth itself on a historical figure, that is the face, the hands and the terrain of the base.

The painter's own palette

The line carries the name of a Spanish figure painter, after whose own palette it was composed. This is not a random selection from the maker's whole range: the shades are chosen so that smooth transitions can be mixed from them without going gray, which is essential with a checked pattern, because every overlap of stripes is meant to be somewhat darker than the bands beneath it.

Working with the set

These are water-thinnable acrylics with a finely ground pigment and a matte finish when dry. They are applied with a brush in several thin layers. For thin lines it pays off to thin the paint more than seems necessary and to lead the stroke in one movement. It is good to seal a finished pattern with a varnish, because wear shows first on the raised parts of the cloth.