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My main watercolor palette is the ideal palette for me. I put a lot of work into it. I need to actually use it more, but looking at this picture you can see that it has gotten some good use. Some of those pans were never full because I bought tubes and poured the pans myself, but still, everything has at least a dent in it.
This palette is also 100% heavy metal free! No lead, no cobalt, no nothing. A lot of people who care about using toxic pigments still use cobalt because it's very hard to do light blues without cobalt. I looked into every single pigment of each color myself.
This palette also has the sap green I prefer, some good picks for skin tones and also some other carefully chosen additions. This is all non-toxic but also has the shades and tones I need. This was A Project.
A local watercolor company makes all natural watercolors using local honey as a base, and then puts lead in it. They present their products as so natural, and they are because lead is natural. How watercolors are presented as so naturey and then are so often full of heavy metals breaks my brain.
Some people consider worrying about lead in watercolor paints to be hand-wringing, but watercolors get everywhere, yo. When I work with them I have my paper, brush holders, two waters, mixing wells, etc. It takes over my space and some always gets on my desk. It's totally unlike working with pens or markers. I no longer have pets, but yeah, cups of leady water around pets or kids? No thank you.
My pick for a light blue is a turquoise based paint. It's highly granulating, but I started with Daniel Smith watercolors so I'm used to granulating. For some people, it's a completely unacceptable replacement for cobalt.
Any, the pans in my self-made palette:
* Daniel Smith Ultramarine Blue
* Daniel Smith Cerulean Blue
* Daniel Smith Sleeping Beauty Turquoise
* Sennelier Forest Green
* Daniel Smith Prussian Green
* Daniel Smith Primatek Jadeite
* Daniel Smith Pthalo Green
* Cotman Sap Green
* Daniel Smith Primatek Fuschite
* Daniel Smith Rose Madder
* Daniel Smith Quinacridone Magenta
* Cotman Indian Red
* Daniel Smith Burnt Sienna
* Daniel Smith Sepia
* Daniel Smith Raw Umber
* Daniel Smith Buff
* Daniel Smith Yellow Ochre
* Daniel Smith Naples Yellow
* Daniel Smith Jane's Grey
* Daniel Smith Neutral Tint
* Daniel Smith Primatek Amethyst
* Daniel Smith Primatek Sugilite
Anything Primatek is literally what is says on the tin. The Primatek Amethyst is ground Amethyst. The Jadeite, one of my favorites, is a blend of jade and nephrite. It's gorgeous. I really need to get around to going single pigment paintings with my Primateks.
Next up is the Da Vinci Earth Friendly Palettes. They are sets designed by Denise Soden to be heavy metal free! One problem, the colors don't re-wet at all. I don't know what binder they use but I hates it.
Lemme explain: Let's say I am painting something and I have a certain mix to make a skin color or the dress that will take up a lot of the real estate on the paper. But, if I pause and come back the paint I mixed will dry out. With pretty much any other brand, just add water and work it back to life and I have the exact color I was using before. Da Vinci paints don't. You can work it forever, it wont go back the way it was. Da Vinci are considered good paints, so I assume fans of the brand have no problem with this and just roll with having to re-mix paints. It drives me nuts. Even if you don't take a break, if the paint starts to dry around the edges you are done.
Also, it don't seem to mix right with other brands. My main palette is a mix of three brands and they all mix/blend fine. Most watercolor brands do mix no problem. I don't know what they do different, but it drives me nuts. But, other people find Daniel Smith watercolors unusable due to how granulating they tend to be. It's not that Da Vinci is bad, it's just that it's not for me. I keep the paints around for a few specific uses since they are very smooth.
I bought both the main palette and the travel one for two reasons. The travel one has different colors so having both is the full range. Also, having non-toxic supplies is extra important when you are traveling for a variety of reasons. I've used the travel one a bit, but as you can tell the main one... has gone mostly un-used.
Next: Dot Cards My Precious:
Dot cards are watercolor sampler sets. They are lentil sized bits of the watercolor on watercolor paper. I've wet each dot and did a gradient next to it. That is a lot of paint. I've done whole projects from these dot cards. One was a free promo card. I bought the larger one, but considering how much paint that is, it was a steal. Having access to so many paints is amazing. Also, a lot of those are Primatek so it's like literally bronze, literally sodalite, ect.
As you can maybe see, I've scraped off every drop of the sugilite and fuschite Primateks, which is why I wound up buying tubes of them.
Those are the nice and well-researched parts of my collection. For my Finetec and Watercolor Confections sets I don't know the pigments. Both have claimed that they are non-toxic, but that term doesn't have a set definition. I keep both carefully separate from my other paints. I am not really concerned about the WC paints anymore. They did release MSDS another other info. I think they wanted their mixes kept under wraps and were confused as to why people in other countries wanted exact breakdowns.
First, my Watercolor Confections palettes. They are arguably gouache and not watercolor. They were trendy for a bit because they have coordinated sets of multi-pigment paints. It's very easy to work with and all the colors in the palettes go together. I have two.
One is Pastel Dreams, aka easy mode for making pride flags.
The other is Complexion, the skin color set. I got it because, yay, easy mode skin colors? Yeah, have a story about me being an idiot:
I grabbed it because premixed skin colors seemed awesome. I got it home and could not get them to do the colors I expected. Then I remembered that Watercolor Confections is a Korean company. These are Asian / Pacific skin tones. I am just used to everything, including camera sensors and editing software, being 100% designed around white skin it didn't occur to me this might be designed around other skin tones. I was trying to use them to color in drawings of Bertie Wooster and it just wasn't working. It's not impossible to paint white people with this set, but it tends to wind up look stylized and not realistic. You can do very realistic Asian and African skin tones with them, though.
I have since learned to mix skin colors myself with single pigment paints and four entries on my main palette are for skin tones.
Anyway, here is what I use them for:
And here is my swatch sheet for pride flags:
I haven't made any buttons since before the pandemic started, but I made and distributed about 100 pride / pronoun buttons in The Before Times. I've also sold a dozen or so d20 pride flag pins. (I sell d20 pins, but the others mostly went to various Queer groups. My lettering is terrible, I know.) I do use Da Vinci or Daniel Smith Primatek for a few flags, but making a coordinated rainbow out of single pigments is beyond me. I've tried a few times. The smooth Da Vinci colors looks way better for the bi flag than any other of my test swatchings.
Nope, none of those are dupes. I just have a few variations on bronze-y.
I have some sparkly watercolors because they were a huge trend at a point. Pictured are the Finetec ones that I use. I also have a Kuretake Gansai Tambi set that Ican will de-stash.
I have long since de-stashed everything that I know has heavy metals in it, and also a lot of others where I couldn't track down the info. So, this is a bit of an add stashdown post, I've already put a lot of work into this collection. But when I was decluttering stuff I came across a lot of my swatching and self-made color guides and was like, okay, I've put a lot of work into all this. I need to finish pins and do more things.
This palette is also 100% heavy metal free! No lead, no cobalt, no nothing. A lot of people who care about using toxic pigments still use cobalt because it's very hard to do light blues without cobalt. I looked into every single pigment of each color myself.
This palette also has the sap green I prefer, some good picks for skin tones and also some other carefully chosen additions. This is all non-toxic but also has the shades and tones I need. This was A Project.
A local watercolor company makes all natural watercolors using local honey as a base, and then puts lead in it. They present their products as so natural, and they are because lead is natural. How watercolors are presented as so naturey and then are so often full of heavy metals breaks my brain.
Some people consider worrying about lead in watercolor paints to be hand-wringing, but watercolors get everywhere, yo. When I work with them I have my paper, brush holders, two waters, mixing wells, etc. It takes over my space and some always gets on my desk. It's totally unlike working with pens or markers. I no longer have pets, but yeah, cups of leady water around pets or kids? No thank you.
My pick for a light blue is a turquoise based paint. It's highly granulating, but I started with Daniel Smith watercolors so I'm used to granulating. For some people, it's a completely unacceptable replacement for cobalt.
Any, the pans in my self-made palette:
* Daniel Smith Ultramarine Blue
* Daniel Smith Cerulean Blue
* Daniel Smith Sleeping Beauty Turquoise
* Sennelier Forest Green
* Daniel Smith Prussian Green
* Daniel Smith Primatek Jadeite
* Daniel Smith Pthalo Green
* Cotman Sap Green
* Daniel Smith Primatek Fuschite
* Daniel Smith Rose Madder
* Daniel Smith Quinacridone Magenta
* Cotman Indian Red
* Daniel Smith Burnt Sienna
* Daniel Smith Sepia
* Daniel Smith Raw Umber
* Daniel Smith Buff
* Daniel Smith Yellow Ochre
* Daniel Smith Naples Yellow
* Daniel Smith Jane's Grey
* Daniel Smith Neutral Tint
* Daniel Smith Primatek Amethyst
* Daniel Smith Primatek Sugilite
Anything Primatek is literally what is says on the tin. The Primatek Amethyst is ground Amethyst. The Jadeite, one of my favorites, is a blend of jade and nephrite. It's gorgeous. I really need to get around to going single pigment paintings with my Primateks.
Next up is the Da Vinci Earth Friendly Palettes. They are sets designed by Denise Soden to be heavy metal free! One problem, the colors don't re-wet at all. I don't know what binder they use but I hates it.
Lemme explain: Let's say I am painting something and I have a certain mix to make a skin color or the dress that will take up a lot of the real estate on the paper. But, if I pause and come back the paint I mixed will dry out. With pretty much any other brand, just add water and work it back to life and I have the exact color I was using before. Da Vinci paints don't. You can work it forever, it wont go back the way it was. Da Vinci are considered good paints, so I assume fans of the brand have no problem with this and just roll with having to re-mix paints. It drives me nuts. Even if you don't take a break, if the paint starts to dry around the edges you are done.
Also, it don't seem to mix right with other brands. My main palette is a mix of three brands and they all mix/blend fine. Most watercolor brands do mix no problem. I don't know what they do different, but it drives me nuts. But, other people find Daniel Smith watercolors unusable due to how granulating they tend to be. It's not that Da Vinci is bad, it's just that it's not for me. I keep the paints around for a few specific uses since they are very smooth.
I bought both the main palette and the travel one for two reasons. The travel one has different colors so having both is the full range. Also, having non-toxic supplies is extra important when you are traveling for a variety of reasons. I've used the travel one a bit, but as you can tell the main one... has gone mostly un-used.
Next: Dot Cards My Precious:
Dot cards are watercolor sampler sets. They are lentil sized bits of the watercolor on watercolor paper. I've wet each dot and did a gradient next to it. That is a lot of paint. I've done whole projects from these dot cards. One was a free promo card. I bought the larger one, but considering how much paint that is, it was a steal. Having access to so many paints is amazing. Also, a lot of those are Primatek so it's like literally bronze, literally sodalite, ect.
As you can maybe see, I've scraped off every drop of the sugilite and fuschite Primateks, which is why I wound up buying tubes of them.
Those are the nice and well-researched parts of my collection. For my Finetec and Watercolor Confections sets I don't know the pigments. Both have claimed that they are non-toxic, but that term doesn't have a set definition. I keep both carefully separate from my other paints. I am not really concerned about the WC paints anymore. They did release MSDS another other info. I think they wanted their mixes kept under wraps and were confused as to why people in other countries wanted exact breakdowns.
First, my Watercolor Confections palettes. They are arguably gouache and not watercolor. They were trendy for a bit because they have coordinated sets of multi-pigment paints. It's very easy to work with and all the colors in the palettes go together. I have two.
One is Pastel Dreams, aka easy mode for making pride flags.
The other is Complexion, the skin color set. I got it because, yay, easy mode skin colors? Yeah, have a story about me being an idiot:
I grabbed it because premixed skin colors seemed awesome. I got it home and could not get them to do the colors I expected. Then I remembered that Watercolor Confections is a Korean company. These are Asian / Pacific skin tones. I am just used to everything, including camera sensors and editing software, being 100% designed around white skin it didn't occur to me this might be designed around other skin tones. I was trying to use them to color in drawings of Bertie Wooster and it just wasn't working. It's not impossible to paint white people with this set, but it tends to wind up look stylized and not realistic. You can do very realistic Asian and African skin tones with them, though.
I have since learned to mix skin colors myself with single pigment paints and four entries on my main palette are for skin tones.
Anyway, here is what I use them for:
And here is my swatch sheet for pride flags:
I haven't made any buttons since before the pandemic started, but I made and distributed about 100 pride / pronoun buttons in The Before Times. I've also sold a dozen or so d20 pride flag pins. (I sell d20 pins, but the others mostly went to various Queer groups. My lettering is terrible, I know.) I do use Da Vinci or Daniel Smith Primatek for a few flags, but making a coordinated rainbow out of single pigments is beyond me. I've tried a few times. The smooth Da Vinci colors looks way better for the bi flag than any other of my test swatchings.
Nope, none of those are dupes. I just have a few variations on bronze-y.
I have some sparkly watercolors because they were a huge trend at a point. Pictured are the Finetec ones that I use. I also have a Kuretake Gansai Tambi set that I
I have long since de-stashed everything that I know has heavy metals in it, and also a lot of others where I couldn't track down the info. So, this is a bit of an add stashdown post, I've already put a lot of work into this collection. But when I was decluttering stuff I came across a lot of my swatching and self-made color guides and was like, okay, I've put a lot of work into all this. I need to finish pins and do more things.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-13 01:10 am (UTC)From:I have some metallic watercolor pencils and markers, which are fun to use for mixed media. In my experience, many creations are improved with a little bit of glitter. :)
no subject
Date: 2022-04-13 01:55 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2022-04-13 01:36 am (UTC)From:As a mineralogist, I have my doubts about the "amethyst" color, though: I'm quite convinced ground amethyst is white, not purple. (Mineralogists refer to this as the streak and, uh, unless I missed something quite important, all quartzes are white when you make them into a fine powder.) So this paint has to be something else...
no subject
Date: 2022-04-13 02:51 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2022-04-13 03:59 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2022-04-14 03:30 am (UTC)From:I love your main palette - and I'm very impressed at the lack of heavy metals. I know that's a common *thing* in pigments in general, and that a lot of people do pretty much give up on alternatives.
But ah yes, the "all natural!" designation being completely true... and completely meaningless straying into deliberately misleading in terms of what people think they're looking for.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-14 06:16 am (UTC)From:It's so nice knowing that getting paint on my hands or desk is no big deal.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-15 03:09 am (UTC)From:I'm shuddering just thinking about the number of "this is the paint water" "this is my tea" jokes that are out there. Not a great mistake in any case, extra not great when dealing with super toxic shit!
(And yeah, watercolors get everywhere.)
no subject
Date: 2022-04-15 04:26 am (UTC)From:Neither of my water cups look like drinking cups, which helps. Actually, I used to use the sort of jam jar that I used as a primary cup for a few things. But I literally can't make myself use those jars for food-things now. My brain has imprinted that shape as not-food. I don't understand just using a mug.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-16 03:17 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2022-04-16 03:47 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2022-04-16 06:37 pm (UTC)From:You made me go and check my watercolor palette. :D
I've never thought about the toxicity of my paints - the general attitude in the circles where I learned to paint has always been "it's all toxic lol, deal with it (and don't drink your paintwater)". But you know what? I think I'll replace the two cadmiums on my palette. If nothing else, it's a good excuse for a trip to the art store ;D
No cobalts, interestingly, at least if I can trust the pigment codes. Then again, I've always tended toward prussian blue, and as handprint.com tells me, that one is non-toxic. Despite technically containing cyanide! Chemistry is wack.
I just wish there was better choice in the local art stores, though. It's all either Umton (local brand), White Nights, and maybe Van Gogh or Cotman if you're really lucky.
I think building watercolor palettes ought to be classified as a separate hobby aside from painting, it takes so much time and research.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-16 07:41 pm (UTC)From:I'm lucky that local stores carry a lot of brands and that most major US brands are either local or somewhat local. I've heard some good things about White Nights, but I don't think that's carried here.
A lot of people are blase about the heavy metals. I did a wet-on-wet class that involved splatter techniques and it was all lead paint. By the end most of them had the paint all over their hands and arms. I think outside of watercolor circles the idea of getting hands covered in lead white is kinda alarming. Every hobby carries some level of risk, but I really don't think this needs to be accepted by everyone. It is harder if you want super transparent pigments for painting flowers. I saw a lot of hand-wringing about how only cobalt blue looks right for shading snow in landscapes, but I did some test Snowy Cabin paintings and I was fine with using the turquoise. But even if I 'needed' cobalt for one thing I could put it in a separate case and not have it on my main palette.
Yeah, I think the cobalt blues tend to literally be called 'cobalt blue' or 'cobalt blue light'. Prussian blue is a different pigment from what I recall.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-16 08:40 pm (UTC)From:I'd love to talk pigment if you're in the mood! When I started to buy "real" watercolors after years with a no-name brand set, I got absolutely obsessed with palette building. I balked at the prize of pre-built sets, and all the watercolor tutorials online said you only really need a few paints... well, I don't think I've saved much in the end, but I learned a lot. :D
As for paint toxicity, watercolors are comparatively very safe - there's very little actual pigment used. Unless you really do drink your paint water, and do it regularly, I don't think there's much of a risk.
On the other hand, when you do have alternatives, why not use them? I know it's a badge of honor among certain people to goose yourself with turpentine or spray fumes ~for the art~ or whatever, but I'd rather avoid messing my body up if possible. That way I can do art longer :P (...you can probably tell I've had this talk before XD Although I'm preaching to the choir here.)
no subject
Date: 2022-04-16 10:04 pm (UTC)From:None of those Primateks really need to be on my main palette. I just love them.
A few of those colors are there just to mix skin tones. I used to have a chart of all the skin tones I could make, but I can't find it. The Rose Madder, Quin Mag, Naples Yellow and Sepia are all there for skin tones. I tried to use other browns as a base for darker skin tones, but only using sepia as a base looked right.
Yeah, it is good to avoid being too precious about exposure to anything. I get seeing getting messy as a badge of honor to get over that... but also with what I do I don't feel like I am missing anything with my palette. I am pretty darn happy. For my tastes at least, this is a very nice palette with lots of extras. Like, I'm a bit embarrassed by how nice it is considering that I am not very good at using it :)
no subject
Date: 2022-04-21 12:39 pm (UTC)From:Yeah, I agree that too much simplicity might end up making life harder unnecessarily. I resisted so long before buying a Sap Green, and now I can appreciate how much easier it makes my life.
Same goes for mixes containing white, btw. I struggled for the longest time mixing bright blues, then I caved in and bought a blue+white mix (Royal Talens Van Gogh Cerulean Blue, PB15+PW6), and breathed a sigh of relief. (Not sure what your thoughts on that are, I know white is a no-no for a lot of watercolorists.)
I do like the idea of limited palettes, though! There's something really cool on using a limited set of tools and still getting great results. Although partially it's because I'm bad at color matching, and less choice = less chance to get it wrong.
...hypothetically, anyway. In reality, well. I amaze myself sometimes. XD
no subject
Date: 2022-04-21 08:18 pm (UTC)From:I've done a lot of art stuff where I was taught that it's better to do things the hard way, which in watercolor is no white and no convenience colors. But anything that gets in the way of getting stuff done can be self-sabotaging. I wouldn't want to even think about mixing skin colors without my Naples Yellow or Sienna. If what art training I had was less purist I might have a lot more done and getting stuff done helps more than anything.