What is the difference between Ultramarine Blue and Ultramarine Blue French? Is it worth it to buy Ultramarine from a premium brand? And was it really worth more than gold? All this and more.

This is an oil paint comparison article where we gathered a handful of premium ultramarine paints in the studio. There is also another article. focusing on the pigment itself and how it behaves in oil painting.

Literally translated over the sea, these blues are just as deep. Synthetic Ultramarine Blue is the modern version of the historical Lapis Lazuli. When we think about what we are grateful for, the invention of artificial ultramarine makes our list.

Modern Ultramarine Blue is identified as pigment code PB29, and to learn more about the pigment, you can also check out our article. Here we take a look at a handful of paints out on the market that are made of this important pigment, such as Blockx, Old Holland, Michael Harding, Vasari, Rublev, and M Graham. For this comparison we just happened to pick these paint colors-- there are many good ultramarines available to painters. The best advice we've heard is to get lots of advice from different sources, so this article is not meant to be definitive. Here we'll explore some of the various handling qualities of these paints, as well as explore their tinting strength and different binding oils.

For this particular comparison, we chose a handful of paints that all happened to have very high tinting strength, so the tinting comparison doesn't show the dramatic differences that are sometimes noticed between something like student vs professional lines (the student lines are not shown here).

The tinting strength across the paints here was very high. Old Holland and Rublev had a very slight advantage. A variation was noted in Vasari and Blockx as seeming to have a bit less intense tinting strength, however all of the colors shown here were strong tinters.

Here's a quick overview of the paint comparison panel. The columns compare different tubes of oil paint, which are labeled at the bottom.

Row 1: Thinned. Row 1 is the paint color thinned with a bit of Rublev Oleogel. This of course could have been done with a drop of linseed oil to achieve a similar result.

Row 2: Masstone. This is what the color looks like in masstone when spread with a palette knife. It's fairly imprecise and can allow for some variation in pressure, however, it shows what the color might look like in practice right out of the tube.

Row 3, The "C" Shape - Approximate Tinting Test The daub here shows the color mixed approximately 50-50 with Williamsburg Titanium White. This is the only part of the panel that gestures at a true tinting test, though any visual approximation as a method is fairly imprecise. For context, when comparing expensive pigments, the tinting test becomes more important. Painters tend to put a lot of focus on the tinting test as it can be an indicator of value for money (pigments are expensive, fillers are cheap). The semi-circle daub is the only place on the panel that gestures at the tinting strength.

Row 3-5 Undertone comparison. These rows primarily explore the hue capabilities of a paint. To do this, we mixed varying amounts of the color with white in a way that is aimed at showing which direction the hue veers through the color space at roughly similar lightness levels. Please bear in mind these rows aren't a tinting strength comparison, as different ratios of pigment and white were mixed to achieve somewhat similar values. We didn't belabor the values matching exactly. These rows explore a paint color's undertone is capable of doing when mixed with the same color of white.

Consistency: Do you prefer a short and stiff ultramarine that you can cut into with a palette knife or a more flowing one that lends itself to transparent glazes out of the tube? The paints ranged widely in consistency with Old Holland and Michael Harding being on the stiffer side.

Choice of Oils: The natural strength of linseed oil, which forms stronger paint films, may be more useful for the lower layers of a painting. Linseed oil has a natural yellowing effect though. For the top-most layer safflower, walnut or poppy would possibly be acceptable (though be sure to understand the risks).

Depth of color: One of the things that a person might want to look for in an Ultramarine is its depth in terms of the value scale. Finally, some limited palettes require a fairly deep ultramarine to make dark mixtures, so a higher quality version may be desirable. Sometimes student brands or budget brands will dilute their paint with fillers, which makes it hard to really get the depth that is possible with this pigment.

Consistency is notoriously difficult to describe without trying a paint. However we've grouped the paints we tested according to some generalizations.

Thicker consistency

Old Holland and Michael Harding had stiffer consistencies and formed peaks

In-between consistency

Blockx and M Graham had a different feel, due to the different binding oils. Both had a bit of a bounce to them.

Flowing consistency

Vasari had a more melting consistency, while Rublev had a lot of flow and extra oil separation.

Some of the ultramarines have a bit stiffer handling. The degree of medium that each paint would require to become flowing or brushable is one of the many variables in making a paint selection.

The stiffness out of the tube comes down to personal preference as paints can be modified to be more brushable or more impasto depending on the needs of a particular painting session. Any modification may have tradeoffs though.

Instead of having to modify the paint heavily with medium, it may be convenient to choose a consistency that one prefers straight from the tube.

Old Holland Ultramarine Blue is a luxurious ultramarine. A color with a bit of heft to it, this ultramarine has decent to strong tinting strength. As an aside, when dried in masstone, the difference between Old Holland Ultramarine and Old Holland Ultramarine Blue Deep (not shown here) is difficult to see, however in tints their two Ultramarines change significantly. This is the version that is the regular ultramarine (that is, Ultramarine Blue is more blue hued as opposed to indigo). Their Ultramarine Deep is more indigo.

This paint, the regular Ultramarine, felt much thicker and chromatic than some of the other brands, however these differences were evened out when the paints dried. This paint was as transparent as the others when thinned. Old Holland's Ultramarine Blue seemed slightly more chromatic than Vasari in tints and a bit more matte out of the tube than Vasari or Blockx French Ultramarine Blue Light.

Both paints which were bound in alternative oils (M Graham and Blockx) had a springy-ness to them. In the M Graham, the paint behavior was rather long. The paint could be coaxed into becoming a bit stringy when pulled up with the palette knife. More about each paint below.

We first learned about Rublev Ultramarine Blue (Green Shade) from the Natural Pigments Painting Best Practices Class. There, George and Tatiana talked about how they make this paint differently from other brands because they allow the pigment to rest in between millings which is a more time-consuming process. Perhaps it is due to ultramarine being hydrophilic, so it doesn't really want to mesh with the oil. Most brands denote Green Shade to mean what we call regular ultramarine (the least purplish kind of deep middle blue) and separate it from the Ultramarine French naming structure, however within the Rublev line specifically, they make the Green Shade with linseed and the Red Shade with walnut oil.

This ultramarine blue has some remarkable qualities. Out of the tube the color feels more notable, but when dried it was similar to the other ultramarines on the panel. Out of the tube it felt so deep that it actually seemed capable of opacity, which also lent a gem-like quality to areas with a thinner application.

This paint consistency could be described as smooth or it could be described as a bit gooey. Even though the paint has a lot of slip in its consistency, the color still has some pull under a palette knife. This color does have an incredible stringy (some could say ropey) behavior, but it kind of plops or drips off of the palette knife. We have never seen this exact same quality before in an ultramarine. It takes a bit of work to get it to incorporate with Williamsburg Titanium White. Even though it is not the strongest tinter, when applied thickly it has a lovely deep value. It is nice to feel that perhaps it does not contain additives.

There are also differences among these brands of texture and viscosity. Old Holland Ultramarine Blue tends to be stiffer while Rublev Ultramarine Green Shade is ropey, and Vasari makes paint that is very loose.

While very deep, the Rublev can sometimes have some excess oil that comes out. On the webpage, they say that "Some separation of pigment and oil may occur in Rublev Colours Artist Oils and is a natural process when no wax or stabilizers are added to paint to prevent this from occurring," and we have found this to be true of this color.

Rublev makes this particular ultramarine in a special way that takes longer than usual out of linseed oil. They have formulated it to be ropey and stringy, aka "long". Many ultramarines are "short" but this one has a slightly different behavior.

Rublev also demonstrates that ultramarine blue has a hard time "wetting" in oil, and they show the differences between making paint from ultramarine in linseed oil and walnut oil. This video from Rublev, shows the differences between their ultramarine green shade and ultramarine red shade. In Rublev only, they make their green shade in linseed oil and red shade in walnut oil. They mention that the behavior of the red shade will remind painters of ultramarines in other brands since walnut oil makes a more buttery paint.

There is also new information on lightfastness. While this is fascinating for Ultramarine in general and focuses on the mixing white one chooses to use with it, this information is also possibly relevant for choice of binding oil. Golden researched their Williamsburg colors with white paints in a variety of binding oils, which gives an insight into how ultramarine reacts in blends with white but also may hint at its lightfastness reactions with different binders. While this was not expressly the topic of the study it opens up new lines of inquiry.

Good Lightfastness in an Area the Needs It- But Some Surprises

In the current (read here old and under revision) lightfastness designations, Ultramarine is ASTM I, which is the category for excellent lightfastness. However, some research that Golden just performed on Ultramarine in various mixing whites contained a few curve-ball scenarios where Ultramarine didn't perform as well as was thought. Particularly lithopone in safflower oil did not do well.

Part of the issues open up a wider discussion about why many of the blue-purple pigments that were tested didn't do as well as expected under artificial exposure scenarios, such as QUV and Xenon exposures, even though the same paints performed closer to expected under natural sunlight. It appears that in natural sunlight Ultramarine did very well, but we we bummed to see that it had any anomalies.

For more information on emerging research on Ultramarine's lightfastness please see Golden's research on pigments in various white paints. More detail may also be found in the article on ultramarine as a pigment, available here

Thick, chromatic and a high tinter, we quickly fell in love with Blockx French Ultramarine Blue Light. This paint truly excellent in handling. This color created enchanting transitions when being mixed with Titanium White. We’ll keep an eye on whether this one resists yellowing over time more than the rest. Bear in mind Blockx Ultramarine Blue contains poppyseed oil. Since blue is a color which can show the natural yellowing of linseed oil, this version in poppyseed oil that yellows less could be a good candidate for careful use in uppermost layers only. A true gem of a paint.

There are a lot of different choices within the ultramarines but in terms of hue it's hard to go wrong with any of these colors. The main differences we found have to do with consistency, and unfortunately brands don't disclose their additives.

How Impasto do you Wish to Paint?

Our main tip beyond the binding oils, which is an important choice, has to do with the relative impasto quality of the paint right out of the tube. Here's where it is helpful to have an idea of your preferences as well as the application for which you're going to be using the paint. When it comes to some other colors, we'd also caution against using safflower or poppyseed oil in impasto-- impasto has its issues anyway.

Will You Be Plein Air or Working in a Studio?

For example, if one is using this color for plein air, some of the more loose consistencies may be less satisfying -- for example managing a paint with loose oil during a plein air session is sometimes not too much fun. Paints that have a lot of excess oil can cause minor disasters if a palette is held at an angle, unless the paint is mitigated before it's applied to the palette.

However the consistency is a very personal choice and the same paints which might be more challenging in a plein air setting may be the more stunning, gliding paints for glazing or studio painting.

These middle-blue ultramarines were all gorgeous.

In practice most artists do not make a big difference between Ultramarine Blue and Ultramarine Blue Deep. However when we started swatching paints, we saw that there was often a noticeable difference in undertone. This naming convention of adding the words “Deep” or “French” to the title held pretty steady with the colors we sampled— the Ultramarine Deeps were closer to violet — that is, they were a little more indigo colored or denim colored. When we examined these naming conventions across brands, the differences between these two shades were noticeable enough that we separated them out and decided to do another separate panel of tests on the Ultramarine Blue Deeps or sometimes called Ultramarine Blue French hues.

Sometimes the hue differences are not so slight, and we found this to be especially true when a brand pushes the difference with a paint blend that includes ultramarine violet, PV15.

We were very surprised to a see a wide variety of differences between these ultramarine colors. The “Deep” or “French” colors quickly distinguished themselves different in hue and tinting strength, so we were inspired to do a whole extra panel on Ultramarine Deep and Ultramarine French colors (article on Ultramarine Blue Deep to follow in the future-- a preview of that panel is displayed here). The French or deep Ultramarine shades are blues that lean more indigo, and in some cases halfway to ultramarine violet. Sometimes blends actually listed the pigment Ultramarine Violet PV15.

Ultramarine Green Shade?

Paintmakers vary a lot in how they apply the term "green shade" to ultramarines. We could take it to mean "not the red shade" or the slightly-less-indigo-one.

However manufacturers get creative and as an example of this, Rublev uses the term Green Shade to denote both the hue of the pigment and the binding oil for their ultramarine. More on the naming of their version specifically below. The pigment for the green shade should be less indigo than the red shade.

More notes on Ultramarine Blue vs. Ultramarine Blue French

In short, Ultramarine French is usually- but not always!- more toward Indigo than a true blue. Sometimes people describe the more indigo shade as being "redder." Unfortunately there is no way to tell by looking at just the pigment code as they share the designation PB29.

The differences in a paint's undertone are not always clear when a person is standing in an art materials store or looking at swatches online. Furthermore the name space is a bit confusing because sometimes a brand will name Ultramarine regular as Ultramarine Light.

What About Ultramarine Blue Light and Ultramarine Blue Deep?

Sometimes Ultramarine Deep is the same as Ultramarine French. Unfortunately there is no tried-and-true way to determine the leaning of the pigment without trying it, since each brand varies.

We noticed that a number of European brands went with the naming scheme of Ultramarine Blue Light to denote the regular, less-purple middle blue shade, and used Ultramarine Deep to denote the more indigo (red shade) of the pigment. Here are a few Ultramarine Blue Deeps on Paint List.

A couple of European brands combined the terms Ultramarine Blue Light with the name French. Blockx has a French Ultramarine Blue Light, which is PB29. And then there is Old Holland, which does something totally different. Their French Ultramarine Light Extra (combines the terms ultramarine light and the word French)-- names a color blend that contains both ultramarine PB29 and cobalt blue PB28.

And then there is Schaal, who actually is French, who has Bleu outremer foncé. Foncé means deep.

In sum, the more melting paints were Rublev and Vasari, the ones that made ribbons that crested and fell when pulled with palette knife were the Blockx (poppyseed oil) and the M Graham (in walnut). And the paints which were able to hold a peak were the Old Holland and the slightly softer Michael Harding. All of the paints featured here were good tinters with deep masstones The variety in binding oils may be an important factors in choosing an ultramarine blue.