Ócar - Irish Red Ochre - 40ml

So pleased to be able to offer this paint, the pigment is sourced in Ireland, collected by hand, an iron rich red ochre.

As authentic as they come.

Prior to a description of the paint itself, this is an excerpt from the pigment producer - off the ocar.ie website;

"Formed over 60 million years ago, as the Antrim lava fields weathered, Irish red ochre has stained the hands of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, medieval manuscript illuminators, 19th Century iron ore miners and five hundred generations of Irish artists.

Ócar comes from an ancient time, of fracturing continents and volcanic eruptions. It has survived between layers of basalt, through extremes of heat and ice over many millennia. Our micro-business works with care and respect for the unique geology of our region. We source red ochre only from quarry spoil.  Carefully processed by hand to a particle size of less than 30 micron."

Wow!

To the paint, in masstone it is dark iron red colour, buttery in consistency.

Spread out with the palette knife it has a semi-transparent nature and the ground shows through, giving those lush, rich orange browns you can see in the swatch above. You can tell a lot of work has gone into the pigment sieving as th paint is so smooth and dense and has really good tint power.

Once white is added, the tints are not hot like a calcined umber, nor violet tinged like an Indian red, just gently warm, soft, fleshy hues.

To be honest, this is an absolute banger for the portrait palette and may well be my new favourite earth, it is such a good 'base' to work off in any direction.

The images show an ochre band in basalt cliffs near the source of this pigment and the hand belongs to the producer!

Really exceptional in my opinion.

Technical Overview

Pigment - Hand collected ochre from quarry spoil

Vehicle - Linseed Oil

Opacity - Semi-opaque

Tint Power - Medium