Occasionally an interesting job comes along; in this instance just a little limewash order but the colour had to match a rather bright green nylon fabric, the colour is close to a bright green apple. It was certainly not within the capabilities of my standard stock of pigments: yellow ochre, red oxide, raw umber, etc. I have green but it needed some very bright yellow so I ordered Yellow pigment coded name 4G from Rose of Jericho.  It wasn’t a yellow I have used before but I knew I needed the brightest most lemony yellow they had.

The pigment worked perfect as the picture shows.

The skill with matching colours is being able to sense what pigment you need to add to get nearer to what you want with the added obstacle of limewash drying a few shades lighter than the wet colour, a bit of red? more umber? a touch of yellow, maybe it needs some black.  This is not so much a problem when trying to match a wet sample of limewash although it is possible to get a very close match with a wet sample only for it not to match up with the original when both are dry. In this case it is only two pigments Green and bright yellow. I once saw recipe with 6 pigments in it which seemed excessive to me. I personally think three is enough. The classic Cotswold yellow is ochre is really only two: yellow ochre and raw umber.  Not Burnt umber which is too warm a colour.