I tend to get into anything that allows me to obsessively buy and collect things. This is my favorite reason for making paints. Sure, there are better reasons (quality control, cost, feeling of superiority), but just looking at a shelf full of color is like opening up a new box a crayons, every time you look at it. I will do some paint making demos later, but for now, I think some background information on pigments would be helpful. To begin with, everyone used to make their own paints. Some pigments came from local minerals/organic materials and others were sourced in. Depending on where you lived, there were variations in these 'earth' pigments. This, combined with the natural light of your geographic location, really flavored the palette of an artist. Eventually, these traditions built up into painting methods (bistre vs. grisaille...for the under paintings). As time went on, these methods managed to influence the demand for certain pigments and ultimately, the development of synthetics. Synthetic pigments can mean several different things. Sometimes they are chemically identical, just lab made, and other times they are chemically different, with different properties (luminosity, lightfastness, opacity). Generally, the reason for the later was because the original pigment was ridiculously toxic. Of course, most pigments are heavy metals and should be treated as a small python; sure it is little and cute now... but keep around it for 20 years and it will eventually injure or kill you. Those heavy metals build up in your liver and other filtering organs and eventually bad things will happen. And that's not even talking about the carcinogenic pigments. So please, handle with extreme care.
One of the more toxic pigments, Vermilion, is a great example of the evolution of pigments and the breadth of choices for the modern artist. Originally, Vermilion was ground Cinnabar, HgS. It is a Mercury compound and so it is crazy toxic. So now, you can only really get 'Vermilion' or 'Vermilion Hue' and generally it is made with Cadmium (not too much of an improvement). The funny thing about Vermilion, is that everyone made it a little differently in the past and these color choices are still influencing the modern formulations. The more you grind down Cinnabar, the bright and orange it becomes (it also becomes more susceptible to fading). It starts out kind of Rose Madder-y, and then it goes, well, Vermilion---French Vermilion anyway.
Most of our modern ideas on the 'correct' hue of a color stem from the French aesthetic of the color. I am not really sure why, but I just think that bright colors are just better at attracting attention than their duller versions. In general, French painting embraces very bright, vibrant, jewel tones (just check out any Impressionist piece), though it may be on top of a grisaille under-painting in older paintings (like a Fragonard). Bearing this in mind, if you are buying pigments and paints from a French company (Sennelier being the main one), you are going to get much, much brighter versions of the same 'pigment' than you get from other makers. Just look at this:
Two different examples of the 'same' pigments. These are Sennelier's (L) and Sinopia's (R) versions of Green Chrome Oxide and Venetian Red Earth. Crazy, right?
So I buy different colors from different companies. I use Italian sources for my earthy colors (in bistre tradition), French for my jewel tones, and English/Japanese/American for things in between.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermilion
Be even more obnoxious with grisaille:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grisaille
Now make them loath you with bistre:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bistre
Okay, woo them back with Fragonard:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Honor%C3%A9_Fragonard
And everything is forgiven with Impresionists:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressionism
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