With thousands of hours of paint research all on one page, the Golden Artist Colors Tint and Glaze Poster contains valuable comparative information about colors as they transform through tint and glaze mixing. It's a comprehensive reference that every painter can use.

Here's how the poster was developed. The Golden laboratory wanted to create a systematic representation of paints drawn out to consistent tints (mixtures with Titanium White) and glazes (mixtures with clear medium). This exploration started with research on a few dozen colors conducted for the "Subtleties of Color" article in Just Paint 21.

A few dozen colors turned into several dozen and finally 100 colors, each mixed precisely to create five tints from a 10:1 to a 1:10 paint-to-White ratio, and four glazes from a 1:1 to a 1:50 paint-to-medium ratio.

These 900 paint mixtures were then drawn out to a precise thickness on test cards. From there Golden took spectrophotometer readings over White, and for the glazes and masstone Black. The 900 mixtures, plus the original 100 colors, became 1,500 unique color readings.

Those readings have been translated into a 26" (41 cm) tall by 39"(99 cm) wide chart that includes the color names in English, French, German, and Spanish, as well as the pigment ID numbers and ASTM lightfastness ratings — along with the range of tints and glazes created by Golden. The Neutral Gray masstones were added over White and Black, making this a complete reference of the standard colors available in Golden Heavy Body colors.

To overcome the limitations of regular four-color process printing, Golden found a special six-color process that elevates the richness of the printed spectrum in the Orange and Green range. While it's impossible to duplicate the unique color quality of a Cobalt Blue or a Cadmium Orange without using those pigments, Golden believes this printed version comes closer than could be imagined in a printed color chart.

Golden Artist Colors is the first to admit the chart isn't perfect, but they think this tool will be extremely helpful to artists everywhere.