Watercolor Half Pans

Spatter or drop a brushload of Buff Titanium into a moist wash and enjoy the pigment displacement, it is especially effective used that way to make clouds in the sky. Unique to DANIEL SMITH, Buff Titanium resembles the ecru shades of sand and antique lace and simulates the porous texture of an eggshell. It is a most welcome neutral, with its’ semi-transparent to opaque, non-staining properties. Pre-mix Buff Titanium with Quinacridone Rose or Perinone Orange for subtle hues and matte surfaces ideal for the velvety petals of your favorite flowers. Mix with Indigo or Van Dyke Brown to create slate-colored shadows and soft feathers. Glaze a dried landscape with a misty, atmospheric mood.

Cleaner, more transparent and brighter in chroma than Cadmium Yellow Light, this is a high-tinting, organic pigment. Hansa Yellow Light is considered the ‘perfect yellow’, offering more control when mixing. Painters admire the purity of this primary pigment and ability to adjust its temperature while avoiding a gray from a hidden complement. Think of a yellow pepper.

Cadmium Yellow Medium Hue, a mid- toned, slightly red yellow is perfect to add heat, energy and a focus in any painting. Mixed wet into wet with Cerulean Blue you will have a vast array of textured greens in various tones depending on the color balance and amounts of water, from dusky shadow greens to vibrant spring greens. It disperses beautifully in water for smooth, rich washes.

Hansa Yellow Medium is a high-tinting, organic pigment. Considered the ‘perfect yellow’, Hansa Yellow Medium offers more control when mixing. Painters admire the purity of this primary pigment and adjust its temperature while avoiding a gray from a hidden complement. Think of a yellow pepper.

Kissed with a touch of orange, this is a pure chroma color with high-tinting, organic pigments. Hansa Yellow Deep is considered the ‘perfect yellow’, a fact which offers more control when mixing. Painters can admire the purity of this primary pigment and adjust its temperature while avoiding a gray from a hidden complement. Think of a yellow pepper.

Pyrrol Scarlet is permanent, semi-transparent to semi-opaque and medium staining, this fire engine red is cleaner than Cadmium or Permanent Red. It is a modern synthetic-organic pigment. While close in value to its Perylene cousin, it disperses more evenly and is less granular.

Permanent Alizarin Crimson blends pigments to produce an exceptionally lightfast red with true Alizarin Crimson character and versatility. Like classic Alizarin, it is vibrant, medium staining and very transparent, with the undeniable advantage of permanence. Try a rich and bold application or a blush of crimson color in a light wash, we know you’ll love this beautiful shade.

Quinacridone Rose, with its red-violet color, lends itself to fabulous purples. Try with Indigo for deep dusty purples, or Indanthrone Blue for rich, clear purples. Quinacridone Rose can be mixed with Quinacridone Sienna or Burnt Orange in dilute wash states to create fleshtones or convincing sunsets. Highly durable and extremely transparent, all the DANIEL SMITH Quinacridone colors excel in vivid clarity and intensity.

This exciting blend mixes Quinacridone Rose and Ultramarine Blue. The blue settles as the rose floats, creating a vibrant, dimensional purple. For those artist artists who always mix their own purples, this unique, otherwise unattainable separation is worth exploring. Juxtapose Rose of Ultramarine with pure Phthalo Blue for fun and effect.

Water frees this amazing three-pigment blend to perform miracles. Watch and wait as Anthraquinoid Red floats, Ultramarine Blue settles and Viridian grays the resulting violet color. Selectively blot and lift a surface wash to expose delicate blue-greens. A description of the fascinating light and dark washes can never match a personal experience! Use Moonglow in shadows and as a silhouette pigment and enjoy its reaction to salt application in background washes. Its neutral tinting property makes it effective with almost all the DANIEL SMITH watercolors. Try introducing the Luminescent Interference pigments to areas of wet, damp or dry Moonglow. Look to Undersea Green as a companion pigment. And try a Moonglow sky and long shadows on sunset snow scenes.

A smooth gray-mauve in light washes, Shadow Violet displays a fascinating granulation when used more thickly. Deep warm violet in mass tone, it reveals a slight orange glow in thin applications. Its transparency makes it a great choice for glazing and it’s ideal, of course, for conveying the subtleties of shadows.

DANIEL SMITH Indigo formula mixes Indanthrone Blue with Lamp Black for an extremely lightfast, intense dark that closely matches true Indigo. Transparent, yet high in tinting strength, this Indigo leaves a gentle faded blue denim stain when blotted from a damp state paint. Blueberries, blackberries and plums are a few subjects to play with using this technique. Use Indigo wherever dusty purples are desired. Indigo evokes a feeling of atmospheric depth used for expressive, moody skies. Try flowing short strokes of Indigo into water, add touches of Sepia and Quinacridone Burnt Orange to create branches and birch trees. Historically Indigo, used since the early Egyptian times, has been a very important blue dye in fabrics as well as art materials, though not lightfast like DANIEL SMITH’s Indigo Watercolor. Natural Indigo is a deep blue colorant named anil. It is obtained from the sprigs of the indigofera plant. In the late 1600’s, the major source of indigo was the French West Indies, where large crops of indigofera was grown and harvested just before the plant bloomed. Once picked, the plant was processed in vats where it was water filtered, then dried into cakes for export.

Sodalite, with a distinctive deep blue color is one of the components of Lapis Lazuli and very rare. DANIEL SMITH Sodalite is the finest quality and deepest blue that comes from Greenland and the flanks of Italy’s Mt. Vesuvius. In watercolor, the inky color of this semi precious stone granulates as it dries, layering a blue-black textural surface on a smooth blue-gray undertone. Low staining, lightfast and semi-tranparent, Sodalite creates a three-dimensional quality as it dries.

Ultramarine Blue plots cooler and bluer than the more saturated French Ultramarine. Temperature aside, both blues have equal permanence, lightfastness and transparency. Ultramarine Blue is slightly less granular in concentrated washes. For less saturation, sedimentation and cost, use Ultramarine Blue straight, for vibrant crayon-like color or mixed with a cool red for dark, effective neutrals.

For cool, clean staining shadows and reflected light on windows, super staining, super transparent Phthalo Blue is a popular pure chroma organic pigment. Mix with Hansa Yellow for luminous greens.

A superb mixing color. Think of Cerulean Blue as a cleaner, brighter, and slightly warmer alternative to the Cerulean Blue Chromium. A bit less green, it’s a truer blue that will be a versatile component of any palette.

Beautiful on its own, and especially so when mixed with a transparent pigment, this sky blue inorganic pigment is granular and medium-light in value. Highly permanent and extremely low-staining, Cerulean Blue creates exciting granulation and settling washes. A drop of Cerulean Blue into a damp wash such as Burnt Sienna creates a halo effect around the more dense Cerulean. This is especially effective when Quinacridone Gold or Quinacridone Burnt Orange are used in the moist underpainting. This technique is great for rendering lichen and Spanish Moss. Add Buff Titanium, Undersea Green and touches of Lunar Black – each a DANIEL SMITH exclusive – and the creative fun truly begins! For a misty landscape or that dusky quality on eggplant, grapes and plums, think Cerulean as a mixer.

A predictable non-staining teal blue with muscle and the presence to stand alone, but when used in a glaze or wash it blends with incredible ease. Because of it’s slight granulation you can achieve multi-layers and tone on tone effects to delight and surprise with each addition or stroke.

The fabric of the night sky glides off the brush in this heavenly shade. Granulating lunar black floats above a phthalo undertone, perfect for capturing a moonlit sky. Inky as midnight, or diffused as the moon on water, semi-transparent Lunar Blue lifts beautifully, leaving behind a mere shadow of itself. This moody watercolor is sure to delight.

Phthalo Green Blue Shade is a black-green. Concentrated to diluted states, it is a transparent and super staining green. Organic and absolutely lightfast, most artists find this color indispensable. The slightly bluish shade can be readily modified with yellows and reds. Creates luminous, effective darks or clean glazes.

The craggy peaks of the Cascade Mountains that divide lush, western Washington from the dry, high plains of the east, inspired this unique green. From damp evergreen forests, and alpine meadows to the drier, sunnier open forests, our Cascade Green showcases a million shades of green found in those environments becoming a versatile addition to our artist-preferred greens. As you brush it on, subtle variation from dark to light adds the illusion of depth. Straight from the tube, this rich, mid-range green is cool, dark and mossy. In washes, it has a stunning clarity. In any application, it has excellent lightfastness.

The hue we love with the permanency we need. This non-fugitive formulation creates deep forest shadow-green mixed with French Ultramarine and mossy golden-greens and green-browns when mixed with Burnt Sienna or Quinacridone Sienna or Burnt Orange. Sap Green mixes well with most pigments and leaves a stained residue when lifted. In the French Ultramarine or Quinacridone mixtures mentioned above, squeegee or knife areas to reveal the Sap Green stain and to create blades of spring-shiny grasses within deeper or mossy passages.

We bring you an unusually beautiful Serpentine pigment from the land down under. This Australian green-color serpentine is of a variety called Stichtite. A soft stone used cross-culturally for carving amulets used to ward off harm, our newest PrimaTek has no comparison in any known paint palette. This surprising, semi-transparent paint is a good green that develops granulation with specks of burnt scarlet – a great addition to your landscape and floral palette.

PrimaTek Green Apatite Genuine Watercolor lets you create a beautiful range of greens – fresh yellow-green to deep olive – with a single tube. This sedimentary color is a dark, almost brown, olive green in mass tone. In washes, the brown settles out of a vivid natural green, creating memorable texture and contrast.

If you want to add atmospheric or emotional punch to your work, then squeeze some transparent Perylene Green onto your palette. It exhibits an almost black mass tone that spreads to a beautiful blue/green wash without producing mud – a color perfect for delineating shadows or creating moody landscapes, ominous horizons and stormy seas. A medium-staining pigment with intensity and softness, Perylene Green is highly soluble and easy to use. It glazes under or over other colors ~a very cool color~ allowed one of our more demanding artist/testers.

An artist’s favorite, this exciting medium to high staining green blends French Ultramarine with Quinacridone Gold. The inorganic, sedimentary French Ultramarine settles and granulates while the organic, transparent Quinacridone Gold floats into a golden halo. Concentrated, this will remind you of warm sea kelp. Apply with Moonglow, Ultramarines and Quinacridone mixtures to color-coordinate and lend atmosphere to various passages. Undersea Green is beautiful touched damp or drybrushed with Interference Gold. Use Undersea green into autumn leaf paintings.

A warm honey-bronze color with lustrous sparkle provided by very fine films of iron oxide. The fibrous, fairly fragile Bronzite stone from Brazil is occasionally used in jewelry but excels as a watercolor pigment. It’s a warm golden-brown in mass tone – somewhere between ochre and sienna, but distinctly different – that lets down into pale washes of soft, always warm, sandy beige. In a wash on cold press or rough paper, the brown settles out of this intriguing special-effect color.

DANIEL SMITH Raw Sienna Light has more golden yellow tones than our Raw Sienna. This Sienna is a granulating color too, but a bit smoother in washes and is non-staining rather than low staining. Washes suggest sunny wheat fields, dried savannah grasses and other sunbaked landscapes.

Yellow Ochre works especially well with other transparent pigments. Try mixing transparent, medium-tinting Yellow Ochre with equally transparent, medium-tinting Viridian. Somewhat neutral, Yellow Ochre reacts beautifully with Cerulean Blue when spattered into the damp paint. While traditionally Yellow Ochres tend to be opaque or whitened in other brands, our DANIEL SMITH Yellow Ochre is transparent, a property beloved by watercolorists!

Bring a natural glow to your palette with this stunning sienna earth tone. Subtle granulation and delicate transparency make this watercolor especially useful for portraits and landscapes. This low staining pigment is very workable and has excellent lightfastness.

Found in iron deposits nearly worldwide, Goethite (Brown Ochre) is named after Johann Wolfgang Goethe, the German philosopher, poet and mineralogist. Our unusually pure pigment is mined in Russia, south of Moscow. Rich and warm, DANIEL SMITH Goethite is a dark tea color in masstone and washes out to a rich, warm tan. In washes, it displays intriguing granulation, with pools of light and dark in every brushstroke. Like all colors derived from the earth, it is lightfast and permanent – a lasting connection to the planet and the creative forces of nature.

Artists choose Indian Red for architectural renderings, old brick and other subjects where a flat (matte) granular surface is desired. The opacity and density intrinsic to Indian Red make this grayed earth brown a useful asset. One coat of this low-intensity pigment covers even a highly saturated passage. Yellow Ochre, Cerulean Blue and Indian Red form an opaque triad, producing grayed, earthlike mixtures common to landscapes. Handling tip: Hit it once and walk away.

DANIEL SMITH Quinacridone Burnt Orange is a brilliant, smoldering orange/sienna color. Add to French Ultramarine and create dramatic sky washes with a gray-blue mix that renders a full value scale. Use Quinacridone Burnt Orange to modify Sap Green in landscapes to achieve rich, mossy greens that coordinate land with sky. Highly durable and extremely transparent, all the Quinacridone colors excel in vivid clarity and intensity.

An earthy red-brown with opaque, sedimentary properties, Venetian Red is great for fall paintings and applications similar to Indian Red. Drop Venetian Red into a wet Lunar Earth wash for exciting results. Venetian Red is medium staining, lifts with some difficulty when dry, but leaves a special warm afterglow when blotted at the damp state.

Everyone’s favorite, Quinacridone Gold replaces Raw Sienna and adds versatility with its glazing and mixing capabilities. It is an excellent low-staining golden yellow pigment that can enhance any mixture. Highly durable and extremely transparent, all the DANIEL SMITH Quinacridone colors excel in vivid clarity and intensity.

A highly transparent burnt orange loves to mingle with the lamp black, settling in beneath it, mixing with it to create tones of cinnamon and tobacco. Fire seems to dance on the walls as its peach undertones nestle in with the black. Incredibly warm and non-staining, you can create stunning effects. Glaze it over the French Ochre for a warm fireside glow or layer it over itself for a rich and glowing red ochre that has no equal.

A beautiful earthy color, DANIEL SMITH Burnt Sienna Light is redder than our Burnt Sienna, more transparent and slightly less granulating. In very light washes, it makes a good, light flesh tone for portraits, and in darker washes, it is a rich red-brown.

This transparent to semi-transparent, rich earth pigment is a traditional palette staple for many landscape painters. Our Burnt Sienna combines with other hues without a loss of intensity or transparency. Subsequent layers (or glazes) do not sully or stain the other pigments these glazes contact.

This rich dark brown earth pigment is popular with artists due to its semi- or semi-opaque qualities. It is lightfast, low-staining, and can readily be lifted to vary its value in otherwise dark passages. Warm Burnt Umber with a little Alizarin Crimson or cool it with blue as your subject dictates.

This familiar rich dark brown earth pigment is semi-transparent with medium tinting strength. An extremely permanent inorganic color, it mixes well with sedimentary Cobalt Blue or Cobalt Violet for granular middle-value grays that evoke mood, lend depth of field and create form or spaces.

Jane’s Grey is a unique color in the market. Most grays, whether Payne’s Gray, Neutral Tint or others, are made with a black pigment, and often phthalo blue is included. Artist Jane Blundell wanted a gray without the often-dulling effect of a black pigment, and without the staining effects of phthalo blue. She wanted a gray that was liftable and granulating to create the lovely look of stormy skies and softened shadows. It will also work as a neutral tint, darkening colors without changing them. Using a gray that is made with palette colors maintains color harmony in an artwork. Many artists mix ultramarine blue and burnt sienna as they work, but no one was making this gorgeous mix as a convenience color, so she did to make it easy to create rich darks with ease.

DANIEL SMITH Payne’s Blue Gray is similar to the bluer Indigo, and like the original Payne’s Gray, it is semi-transparent rather than transparent. Inky blue and non-granulating Payne’s Blue Gray is perfect for painting dark, stormy skies, nightscapes, and for quickly darkening most other colors.

Imagine a transparent black with an expansive value range and pigment particles that react like magnetic shavings attracting and repelling each other. Unique pigment properties make Lunar Black a radically reticulating color. When dry, a Lunar Black wash resembles a marbled moonscape. This mottled stony texture can be successfully glazed. You can even gently paint into a wet-to-damp Lunar Black, dropping into the watery pigment, virtually any combination of favorites. Lunar Black is a wonderful mixer adding exciting black granulation to the mix! Lunar Black is an inorganic neutral black watercolor pigment and a DANIEL SMITH exclusive. Think Black Magic-and re-think black.