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Are you confused about the oil paint tubes marked ‘umber’ this and ‘umber that. Here is a brief description on the several umbers used by artists. It will help you understand the umbers.
The simple answer is that some umbers tend to green and some tend to the red tones. It will be easier for you to understand the umbers by keeping that in mind.
The most common umber is of course Raw Umber. It has a green cast and a very dark tone which is excellent to replace black. I rarely use pure black, preferring to use Raw Umber. The umbers by the way were originally mined from Umbria, Italy and that is how they got their name. The inherent minerals are predominantly iron oxide and manganese oxide. Manganese oxide is a very dark, almost black mineral that leans to the green hue. When umber is calcinated or heated at a very high temperature it is called burnt umber and takes on a more reddish cast. Burnt umber is a beautiful color for deep shadows and for the shaded side of tree bark in a forest painting. The bark of the remarkable mesquite tree requires both raw umber and burnt umber when being painted accurately.
Caravaggio and later Rembrandt used the umbers extensively when their paintings went from light to dark and then to very deep darks of backgrounds. The siennas are also important for your pallette. There is a raw sienna and a burnt sienna. As you can imagine the raw sienna is a yellow cast and the burnt sienna has a distinctive reddish cast. It is interesting by the way to do some comparison between the raw sienna and yellow ochre. I tend to use yellow ochre more myself.
The best way is to experiment but if you want a very dark shadow with almost no reflectivity use the raw umber. If you want a shadow with a little more life to it use the burnt umber. Also, when you tint these with white some very beautiful shades can be created. For many years house painters would use the umbers to tint white and create lovely shades for home interior walls. if you can understand the umbers this will give you an excellent foundation for your pallette and color mixing. For example if you are after a warm grey you will always start with raw umber first and then carefully tint with white, then cobalt blue and a touch of black. I will often add just a touch of cadmium red to warm up the grey further.
