One tube with the tinting strength of a dye, a history measured in decades not centuries, and three habits that separate the painters who use it from the painters it uses.

PV15 is not a separate mineral - it is ultramarine blue that has been baked until the chemistry flips. Here is what that means for how you mix it.

Most red ochre is opaque. One version is not - and it changes everything about how you glaze warm darks.

Why the most expensive pigment in history still earns its place on your palette, and the three mixes that prove it.

The most powerful yellow on your palette is also the easiest to misuse - here is what it actually does in oil, and the three mixes that make skin glow.

PV23 is the most powerful pigment on the palette - one knife-tip too many and every color you mixed becomes its background.

Why soft light on skin is a warm cream - not white - and how a 3,500-year-old pigment does that job better than anything else on your palette.

Color mixing isn't guesswork. Two reliable methods get you to any oil color you want.

You don't need a doctor's anatomy to paint - you need the artist's. Here's why it sets you free.

If there is such a thing called a "normal way of working" then this is the process of initial drawing of the portrait