Plein Air Landscape Paints: Cinnabar Green

Cinnabar green is warm green, a great color for painting sunlit grass and foliage. Looks chromatic, but it is actually pretty delicate and natural-looking. Here is an example (light green on the background).

Ann’s Apples, September 2023, Sandwich, NH

Cinnabar green has nothing to do with the actual cinnabar, a toxic mercury sulfide, that was used to make Vermilion. Yes, the one famous thank to beautiful Chinese carved lacquer vases. Cinnabar green was initially based on copper arsenic, also toxic and very fugitive. Mainly due to its poor light fast qualities, copper arsenic was replaced with a mix of chrome yellow (this one is toxic, too) and Prussian blue in the early 19th century.

Warm green color of cinnabar green paint.

Nowadays, different manufacturers’ formulas for cinnabar green vary greatly. The one I have is by Rembrandt and composed of 3 pigments: PY154 (benzimidazolone yellow, not sure if I can pronounce it), PG7 (phthalo green), and PY42 (yellow iron oxide, also know as yellow ochre).

Cinnabar green by Rembrandt

Opacity: semi-opaque

Tinting strength: average to high

Lightfastness: high, will not fade

Drying rate: not fast-drying

Hazardous: not really, but do not eat just in case

Price: 40 ml tube is about $14 at Jerry’s Artarama

Cinnabar green out of the tube (applied thickly and thinly) and mixed with lead white.

Interestingly enough, historically authentic green cinnabar paint, composed of two pigments, chrome yellow (PY34, lead chromite) and Prussian blue (PB27, ferric ferrocyanide) still exists and is sold by Natural Pigments. That one is more expensive and is in fact toxic, since it contains lead. I have never used it, however, would be interesting to compare.