MITRA Forum Question Details

​​Our experts at Golden will weigh in soon...but my first question has to do with your palette....what are you painting on? From the photo it looks to be a piece of white marble/ceramic...or perhaps a very white piece of paper? In any case, my theory is that you are witnessing the formation of some type of green copper carbonate around the periphery of your copper-containing metallic mica paint.....This could certainly happen if your substrated is something like smooth marble or even a buffered peice of tissue/blotter paper. BUT it is my understanding that these particular mica paints do not contain copper....so it is confusing to me as well....hopefully Golden will have some insight into this phenomenon.

​Hi! The Bronze is indeed one of the few Iridescents where we add a pigment in along with the mica-based Iridescents (the other two include Iridescent Bright Gold, which has Nickle Azo Gold and Quinacridone Red, and Iridescent Silver, which has Carbon Black). Because of that you can definitely get separation, especially in a wet and very fluid condition, where the pigment has time to settle out. We even call a little attention to this in its description on our website

http://www.goldenpaints.com/products/colors/iridescent-colors/heavy-body-iridescent-colors/iridescent-bronze--fine

where we mention that "it also creates a verdigris effect when used as a wash." So while you stumbled on this by accident, it is also something that others have used on purpose and to beautiful effect.

We hope this helps but if you have other questions please feel free to ask.

Sarah Sands
Senior Technical Specialist
Golden Artist Colors

​Thanks so much Sarah for your insight on this...so this appears to be a separation of the finer pigments from the mica flakes, creating an optical green effect. Very interesting!