Can You Say Yttrium?

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Orange and Blue II 12 x 16” Oil John Hulsey

Modern color science has done it again! You may not have noticed it, but a new blue pigment was accidentally discovered by chemist Mas Subramanian at Oregon State University in 2009. It is the first new inorganic blue pigment discovered in over 200 years. It is made from Yttrium, Indium and Manganese, and has been available for industrial purposes since 2017, where its remarkable qualities and infrared reflectivity are extremely valuable. Called YinMn Blue, it wasn’t approved for artist use until 2020. After painting using an oil version of it from Gamblin, I found that the color itself is not that remarkable for general work and can be closely approximated by mixing other common and far less expensive blues. I used it in a mix to create the decorations on the white bowl in the painting above. The tube color tends toward the red side of the color wheel, somewhere between Ultramarine and Cobalt in temperature, and si…