Work with titanium white

One of the two types of whitewash, most commonly used in modern painting - is white titanium. They surpass in some of their qualities other popular types - lead and zinc.

Prehistory: lead

White paint has been used by artists since ancient times. In the first century BC, the Roman historian Pliny described the process of creating white leaden sawdust with the use of vinegar. Subsequently, in each major European country, its own technology for the production of lead white was developed. They are widely used in painting, icon painting, for technical needs. However, lead is an extremely toxic material. The damage caused to leaden whites by professional artists and builders, as well as the poor who were engaged in their production, can not be counted.

Zinc

There were alternative dyes - bone whites, made from bones of lambs, whitewashed from chalk, egg shell and even pearls. But they were all extremely rare, complex in production, and therefore expensive. Because of this, artists continued to use poisonous lead. More common types - kaolin, antimony, sulfurous, lead-tin - still did not reach the production volumes of lead white.

This continued until 1780, when two French chemists, Bernard Courtois and Louis Bernard Gueton de Morvo, began looking for a less dangerous paint. Their choice fell on zinc oxide, on the basis of which a weakly toxic white was obtained. The problem was their price. Zinc white cost four times more expensive than lead, so many artists have remained faithful to the old material.

Titanium

At the end of the 18th century, the Englishman William Gregor and the German Klaprot discovered a previously unknown metal, which later replaced lead in the mass production of white. But before the beginning of the twentieth century, titanium was considered useless, not worthy of anything metal. Only in 1908 European chemists found it to use - titanium dioxide began to be used in the production of a new type of whitewash. Since 1920, in Europe, a massive production of titanium white was established, almost completely displacing lead from the market. Up to Russia, innovation only reached the thirties of the last century. Thanks to this fact, researchers are able to distinguish genuine works of the beginning of the century from falsifications: careless copyists do not take into account what the Russian avant-gardists wrote mainly with the use of lead whites, later replaced by titanium ones.

Comparison of different types of whitewash

• Toxicity . Lead white is extremely toxic, and is currently used exclusively in artistic paints. The International Association of Labor Protection prohibits the painting of walls of living quarters with the use of lead white. Male painters up to the age of eighteen and women of any age are forbidden to work with lead. Zinc white is slightly toxic, does not pose a threat to life, and titanium can be written without any harm to health.
• Coating capacity (hiding power) . Zinc white has the lowest covering power, so they are successfully used in classical painting by glazes. Titanium white coatings do impractical, as their hiding power is much higher (2.7). But they are perfect for a more dense painting a la prima - this pigment well covers other colors.
• Shade. Zinc whites have a slightly warm tone, titanium - cold.
• Persistence. Zinc white, especially with a large thickness of the paint layer, eventually cracked. With titanium whitens this does not happen - one of their varieties is so strong that it is used for painting spaceships. Lead white is also very durable - it is they who are responsible for the preservation of the work of the old masters.

Other features of titanium white

Over time, the work, written in titanium white, can acquire a bluish tinge. In oil painting, this white is worth using with caution. They are not recommended to mix with some other paints: azure, cobalt, cadmium. When mixed with them, the effect of bleaching may occur, and fragile colorful joints are formed. Titanium white turns yellow with time. Dioxide of titanium, when mixed with organic pigments , may discolor over time. It is not recommended to cover work using titanium white with oil kopal varnish - darkening is inevitable.

Because of all these shortcomings in the middle of the twentieth century, artists refused to use titanium whites. Their production was suspended. But other whitewashed titanium - acrylic, gouache or tempera produced at the same rate. They successfully continued to be used by many painters. White titanium oil also did not stay long in oblivion - their high opacity, nontoxicity and relative cheapness returned them to the counters, and today everyone can in practice determine whether it is acceptable for him to use them.