"gritty" yellow ochre (problem?)

[Craig D]

I bought a tube of W and N yellow ochre that is quite dry and feels
gritty when mixing up with my palette knife.
Does anyone know if I just got a bad tube or is this a characteristic of the brand for this paint.

Thanks for any info

Craig

[stephen]

No, i think you got a bad tube, i once got a large tube of W&N white that was very dry and hard compared to the others ive bought. But it should still work, just add alittle medium to it too loosen it up.

[arttorney]

In my experience yellow ochre is often really oily on top, like a bunch of oil squirts out on the palette first when you really wanted paint. Maybe the people at the store had a problem with this tube leaking oil and opened it up and poured out the oil leaving you the grunge. The gritty situation sounds bad. Winsor and Newton generally at least gets the pigment ground up nice and fine. It is possible there is an air leak and the tube partially dried out before you bought it.

If you get another tube and a bunch of excess oil seems to be in it, then squish some of the dry tube into the resulting oil puddle and see if it mixes up into proper paint.

[Craig D]

Thanks guys
I wouldn't have been concerned so much with the dryness but I can feel "sand" under my palette knife. I'm going to assume it's just a bad tube but may avoid W and N for this colour.

Craig

[Elwell]

You may well have a bad tube, but W&N's yellow ochre does tend to be gritty. It's especially noticable if you use a glass palette. It's simply a characteristic of the natural pigment they use (their YO is also a bit darker than most brands). If you don't like it, switch to another brand, or try their yellow ochre light, which is brighter and smoother.

[Craig D]

Thank you Tristan