Raw Sienna

For thousands of years the Sienna region has produced this beautiful and useful pigment. It is more transparent than Yellow Ochre, and of a delicate loved by artists. Valued in its own right as a superior color when mixing skin colors its greatest use is actually as the raw material for making Burnt Sienna. The Sienna is heated in a simple process developed in Italy at the time of the Pharoahs. Depending on the time in the furnace the process produces a wide range of colors from light oranges (sometimes called ‘half burnt’) to the fiery deep orange we are familiar with.