Daniel Smith Pt.3

Following up the previous posts on Daniel Smith the question arises are they worth the extra premium UK  and European buyers have to pay? I say this because prices in the USA are lower and in addition DS, through their retail shops and internet site, have regular special offers - lots of them in fact. If we had  similar offers then I'd not hesitate to say yes, although I like Graham and have not tried DaVinci, both highly rated by American artists. What we shouldn't lose sight of is that we have several very good manufacturers in Europe who have been making watercolour paints for a very long time, much longer in fact, and comparing quality and price there is a very good case for sticking to them, certainly on many of the standard colours.  Winsor & Newton, still and for  many years the top rated watercolours by many professional artists, are much more competitive in price here than in North America, where I sense they are losing out to the American makes. At the beginning of this year the new much higher prices for W & N made Daniel Smith  more competitive but almost immediately discounted offers appeared. Perhaps W & N realised the threat these new paints posed which they certainly do.

Previously I have noted that the DS range is split into three or four groups. The standard colours, those that follow most other makes, comprise the biggest number - 100 plus. Standard but still including some unique colours not duplicated elsewhere. The remainder include the Primateks, Duochrome and Iridescent paints. These two latter are for specialist purposes and most watercolourists would stick to the standard colours. What about the Primateks? Here I urge you to carefully  read what Bruce McEvoy of Handprint writes in a very comprehensive review  www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/primatek.html  Essentially Daniel Smith has been gathering mineral pigments from mines all over the World. They don't have pigment numbers and are expensive. 

Here is a further selection of colour swatches. I have added pigment details and will add them to the previous posts. You will note that in many instances the pigments are those in common use by the other makers.

Cobalt Blue Violet  (PV19/PB28)

Duochrome Autumn Mystery

Cobalt Teal Blue (PG50)

Garnet Genuine 

German Greenish Raw Umber (Pbr7)

Green Apatite Genuine

Lunar Blue (PBk11/PB15)

Serpentine Genuine

Undersea Green (PB29/PO49)

Hansa Yellow Medium (PY97)

Quinacridone Sienna (PO49/PR209)

Quinacridone Rose (PV19)

I could go on forever - well almost - but with the other illustrations in Pt. 1 & 2 you should have a good idea of what is available. I am personally intrigued by the number of granulating paints offered. Rui who comments on here is fulsome in his praise of the Lunar colours for their granulation properties and I intend to try some other than black which I already have.  Jan Weeks love Serpentine Green, Moonglow and Cascade Green. Rui likes them  but says you need to be careful what you mix Cascade Green with.  German Greenish Raw Umber is another favourite.

A good source of individual pigment details is; www.premiumartbrands.com/products/watercolour-tubes-15m/  For the complete range try www.danielsmith.com/item--i-G-284-600 If you print this off it runs to 19 pages! The Daniel Smith website, which is a selling site with various other brands and products is: www.danielsmith.com/ There is a mass of information including `peeks' at some DVD instructional videos they sell. In addition if you go onto Youtube `videos',and type in `Daniel Smith Watercolors' you'll get a mass of promotional videos with lots of information. In the USA the wonderful Dick Blick site has very good pigment details, although each colour has to be looked at individually.

Finally quality versus price? Are Daniel Smith watercolours worth the extra premium we are charged in the UK and Europe? As things stand Daniel Smith are the most expensive watercolours in the UK. Winsor & Newton are cheaper, certainly while the special offers continue. It isn't straightforward to compare them as the number of price categories vary manufacturer by manufacturer. Daniel Smith, Holbein and Old Holland have six, Sennelier five, Maimeri, Winsor & Newton, Bloxx, Schminke four while Daler Rowney and Rembrandt only three, although in reality Daler Rowney have only two prices as has Lukas.  Graham and DaVinci are only available from one source, Lawrence of Hove who have a fixed carriage charge on top of the prices but they do offer 20% off for 6 or more tubes. This is further complicated in that manufacturers don't all sing from the same song sheet. Apart from basic colours like the earths, usually in the cheapest category, other colour ratings vary from one make to another. In order to get an accurate picture you must compare them not just by colour, which can confuse, but more accurately by pigment numbers. Some manufacturers Winsor & Newton, Lukas, Sennelier, DaVinci and Rembrandt offer larger tube sizes that are cheaper per ml. This is another factor although personally I think W & N would have been far better with a 21ml or 24ml large size rather than 37ml. The further I get into this the more complicated it becomes so I'll leave it at that and may return to the subject at a later date. 

So are Daniel Smith paints worth the cost? Are they better than the paints from say Winsor & Newton or some of the others listed? They are good but so are most of the other artists quality makes and in the end it comes down to the depth of your pocket and personal preferences. For the average watercolour painter probably not, but they do have a whole range of wonderful, often unique, colours  so I shall continue to buy them, although selectively. For impulse buyers like me they are very seductive. As for the other makes Daler Rowney, Lukas, Rembrandt and Maimeri are very well priced and offer good quality with a choice of around 70 colours. 

Cadmium Orange - Pigment Orange 20 (PO20)

Cadmium Orange (Cadmium Sulfoselenide) is an interesting pigment, although not a staple of many artists palettes, especially those restricted to 12 colours or less. Nevertheless Handprint rate it a `Top Forty' pigment.

 A few years ago I was on one of Judi Whittons courses in Cornwall and Judi was demonstrating. In the demo one of the colours she used was Cadmium Orange and she made the comment her preference was Maimeri because  the Winsor & Newton version behaved differently in mixtures.   As it happened I was able to explain that the Maimeri version was `true' Cadmium Orange Pigment PO20 which leans towards red, whereas the W & N Cadmium Orange was actually a `hue' comprising a mixture of Cadmium Red and Cadmium Yellow, consequently with a yellow bias. Winsor &  Newton also have Winsor Orange (PO62). Since then I have explored what is on offer from other makers.

 Here we have four oranges,. Maimeri is the only true PO20 version and notice how it is quite dark, very opaque and shows a red tinge.  The Daler Rowney Cadmium Orange  is strongly influenced by the addition of PY35 and shows a strong yellow bias. Use these for mixing and you get a totally different result. There are several other mostly newer oranges, two of which are shown. Apart from being transparent they are a different shade. The main drawback of Cadmium Orange as offered by Maimeri is that, being a Cadmium, it is toxic and quite opaque. I rather like it but some think it dull.  The main alternatives seem to be Perinone Orange (PO43) and Pyrrole orange (PO73). We also have PO36, PO71, and PO62. None are identical in hue or colour to PO20 but are transparent or semi-transparent.

What is the situation with leading makes?  Daniel Smith do not offer a `true' Cadmium Orange at all having discontinued this one in 2006. Why I wonder? Not having received replies to two previous e-mails to DS I doubt I'll bother to ask them. Smith list a Cadmium Orange Hue, a mixture of three pigments comprising two yellows and an orange, Permanent Orange (PO62), Pyrrole Orange (PO73), Transparent Pyrrole Orange (PO71), Perinone Orange (PO43) and finally Mayan Orange (PR N/A), mostly transparent or semi-transparent. Spoiled for choice! Which to choose is the dilemma? 

Looking at other leading makers Rembrandt follow Rowneys path with an identical PO20/PY35 mixture as do Sennelier (Cadmium Yellow Orange). Graham have Cadmium Orange PO20 as have Da Vinci who also list `Orange' and `Orange Deep', PO73 and PO36 respectively and finally Benzimida Orange (PO62).

This gets heavier when we look at Scminke the leading German firm. Scminke have  four paints listed as PO20, Cadmium Orange Light, Cadmium Orange Deep, Cadmium Red Orange and , would you believe Cadmium Red Light! Their Cadmium Yellow Deep is the same pigment mix as the Rowney and Rembrandt Cadmium Oranges! They also offer Translucent Orange (PO71) and Chrome Orange (PO62). The PO20 mixtures range from a light orange to a deeper reddish version.

I'll confine the rest of my summary to those companies that offer true PO20 - Cadmium Orange paints. Art Spectrum have one but they call it Cadmium Yellow Deep. Lukas and Old Holland Cadmium Orange while Bloxx list Cadmium Yellow Orange and Cadmium Red Orange.

 Finally Holbein. They miss out completely except for including PO20 in several mixtures notably the two Jaune Brilliant paints. Charles Reid likes the Holbein Cadmium Yellow Orange but this is PR108 - Cadmium Red.

What to make of all this? Despite Orange being a secondary colour, easily mixed from red and yellow (which red and yellow?), as you can see paint manufacturers list a whole range of alternatives with the newer pigments appearing in an increasing number of paints. 

The mixing compliments of Cadmium Orange (PO20) as listed by Bruce McEvoy of Handprint www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/mixtable.html are Phalo Blue (PB15), Prussian (PB27) and Cerulean (PB35/36). I have mixed very good neutral greys using Phalo Blue (PB15-3) Green Shade but with some trial and error first.

Mineral Violet - Pigment Violet 16 (PV16)

This wasn't a planned post but has arisen as a result of my experiences with two tubes of Graham Mineral Violet purchased from T.N.Lawrence  & Son of Hove.

I actually bought these paints in the first half of last year and somewhat later  decided to make a swatch of the Mineral Violet, only to find initially only liquid emerged and that the tube was less than half full. When contacted Lawrence were most apologetic and replaced the tube very promptly.

As I am a paint junkie I have far too many paints and the Graham paints, apart from two colours, were not brought into immediate use. Very recently I decided I must do something with them and prepared an alternative palette which included paints from Daniel Smith. The paints were sqeezed out into the wells with no problems until I came to the Mineral Violet. I noticed immediately that it seemed somewhat congealed and what emerged from the tube was a thick mud-like brown substance. Not a trace of violet anywhere!

I decided to contact Lawrence once more as these paints are not cheap. The response was immediate. I received an e-mail from Martin Lawrence which said  "...it does appear to be a problem with this particular colour that we have experienced with a number of other paint manufacturers" He also said this had been communicated to Graham and a reply was awaited. Once again the response was immediate. Graham replied:

  "Yes, a couple of years ago we (and other manufacturers) bought a pigment that reacted to the medium.It only happened with the Mineral Violet. We apologize and will replace any tubes that you or your customers have with this problem".

Martin Lawrence replied as follows "I have asked for clarification as to whether this batch is identifiable. As we haven't had any other problems reported for some time, I hope that our current stock is ok. It looks as if we must have replaced the first tube with another tube of the same batch. We will send out a replacement tube tomorrow".

Assuming the tube arrives and is ok then the response from Lawrence (and Graham) could hardly be bettered. I find Jacksons equally good in handling any rare problems and Lawrence are in the same league.

As for Mineral Violet PV16 it isn't a particularly popular pigment, correctly called Manganese Violet. Handprint rate it a `top forty' pigment and make no comment about possible problems so it appears this is an isolated instance.

Lawrence www.lawrence.co.uk sell a wide range of art supplies and have a very good selection of watercolour paints. They are the sole UK source of both the highly regarded American makes of Graham and DaVinci. The German Lukas brand is also stocked as is Old Holland. Art Spectrum and others.

Graham and DaVinci, both ranges containing some excellent and unique colours, are rather expensive but Lawrence do offer an additional 20% off  when six tubes are purchased. This makes them more competitive. Both companies have excellent websites with very good colour charts and information on pigments etc. Graham are www.mgraham.com/  and DaVinci www.davincipaints.com/ . Graham paints are easily rewetted, a major plus unless you paint every day. My only experience with Da Vinci is through the Michael Wilcox paints, which they make, but they have since reformulated the paints introducing many new colours made with top pigments. Both are worth serious consideration. I shall almost certainly buy more Graham in the future.

I have only one issue with Lawrence and that is they don't have a similar free postage offer, providing the order exceeds a certain amount, to Bromley, Jacksons and Great Art. Some other suppliers are starting to introduce something similar. The minimum postage charge is £4.99 which adds 83p per tube when six are purchased.  Obviously the more you purchase the lower this figure becomes. Thus the final price can be more expensive compared with Winsor & Newton (and other makes) from the three aforementioned suppliers. In these straightened times, with art materials increasingly expensive, price is becoming a major factor.