Raw Umber is one of many earth tones made from PBr7 brown. This is usually a very low chroma brown with greenish undertones.
There are two “flavors” of Raw Umber: a very dark brown, and a light brown. The very dark version is more modern, while the light version is more traditional and may be found more frequently in older books and guides. Some brands have both options.
Experiment Results
For this experiment, I used one of the modern, dark Raw Umbers, from Da Vinci.
Hue: Cool brown from a deep “dark chocolate” brown to a cool beige. The lighter tones look good for things like dry grass shadows and sand, which I find difficult to color match. The granulation, most evident in the upper midtone, has a warmer, slightly more orangey hue than the background/dilute color.
Tinting Strength: I found this slightly low for my liking, but it’s not the worst – better than Daniel Smith’s Raw Umber (see below).
Gradation: Fairly even gradation for granulating color.
Granulation: I wrote “when wet, looks more granulating.” I actually loved the big granulation I saw when the color was wet, but a lot of it disappeared in the drying. Odd.
Opacity: This one looks extremely transparent to me.
Glazing: Near-black dark brown.
Lightfastness
Maybe there’s some very slightly cooling in the exposed side (on the right). It’s almost imperceptible.
Color Mixes
My overall feeling is that Raw Umber mixes most nicely with other earth tones, where it lends granulation and subtlety. With bold smooth colors like Red Rose Deep (PV19), it just looks like awkward grayish granulation sitting on top of a pale version of the other color.
Comparison to Other Brands
Daniel Smith – Raw Umber
Daniel Smith’s Raw Umber is more granulating than DV’s and lower tinting strength. I wrote “difficult” because I found it hard to rewet and get a good masstone. The dry paint is very hard and wetting it makes it tacky. It is possible to get a near-black very dark brown masstone, but it seems to like to hang out in midtone and if you try to get a masstone, the masstone doesn’t spread but just sticks to itself. It is also difficult to get a pale, dilute tone. I hope you like mid-tone.
The granulation is really pretty if you can manage it.
Compared to DS’s Raw Umber, Liz Steel feels that DS’s Van Dyck Brown is “more interesting,” FWIW.
Schmincke – Green Umber
This is an example of the “light brown” variant of Raw Umber.
The hue is similar to the dark versions, it simply does not get very dark.
I won’t dispute that many things in the world are light brown, but personally I’d rather dilute a dark paint than devote a pigment slot to an intentionally low-tinting, weak, pale paint.
What Others Say
I love my warm browns, so it took me a long time to be willing to put this color on my palette, but I have to admit that it is an incredibly valuable color for landscapes as well as to establish the underlayers for fur and feather patterns for animals.
Denise Soden, Color Spotlight: Raw & Burnt Umber
Raw Umber is a neutralised yellow. You could create this hue by mixing a purple and a yellow but that’s quite a fiddle. The Daniel Smith and Da Vinci versions are wonderful and dark so they add a dark cool brown to the palette. I find Raw Umber really wonderful for shadow colours, skin tones and in landscapes.
Jane Blundell, Mixing with Raw Umber
This warm, earthy brown will create a soft green when mixed with a blue such as Cobalt or Cerulean.
David Webb, Painting in Watercolor: The Indispensable Guide (2016), p. 35
My Overall Review
The darkness and low chroma make this a reasonable base color for things like tree bark, and many people love it for that. For me personally, I think the tree bark in my particular area tends toward a bluer gray, not one with green undertones; I prefer mixing browns with blue + earth orange. I also don’t love Raw Umber texturally; every version I’ve tried has been a bit too hard and difficult to rewet.
Favorite version: The dark variant is more interesting to me than the light variant, and Da Vinci is way better than Daniel Smith.
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Da Vinci – Raw Umber, 8ml tube: Da Vinci Paints