In art, earth colours are tertiary colours. These can be made of several types of warmer pigments such as yellow ochre and umber, both of which contain metal oxides obtained by mining.
Earthy paint mixes have been produced by applying binder such as egg and oil to the artist pigments of Raw Sienna, Burnt Sienna, Raw Umber, Burnt Umber. In addition, Indian Red, Yellow Ochre being, Red Ochre, and Brown Ochre are consistently referred to as earth colours.
Those tertiary colours include all of all three primary colours red, yellow and blue and are all considered warm colours.
Return to the art glossary
Return to entries beginning with E
