About watercolors and pigments, I describe different watercolors: history, pigments and their painting properties.
The image above, the header image for this text, shows various swatches of raw umber. Earth colors often differ radically between manufacturers. Colors with the same name can look completely different depending on who…
Benzimidazolone Carmine (PR176) was introduced in 1960. Daniel Smith was the first to use PR176 in a paint they named Carmine. Other manufacturers followed over time. Today there are a handful of brands that…
Diopside is a semi-precious stone used, among other things, in jewellery. The green variety, chrome diopside, is sometimes referred to as Russian emerald. It often originates from Russia, and its deep green colour can…
This text was revised with new illustrations on January 5, 2026. Green earth is a natural mineral pigment traditionally obtained from the minerals celadonite and glauconite. It was already in use in ancient Rome,…
This is an updated version of the text and images first written on August 5, 2020. It was discovered by accident in the 1920s and produced as a pigment in 1935, under the name…
In the late 18th century, an unknown potter invented a colorant that later became known as Potter’s Pink. The pigment is produced by calcining tin oxide together with various other oxides at high temperatures….
When I read my old articles about different watercolor paints, I often notice that they are unnecessarily sparse with information that could be both useful and interesting for readers. I therefore plan to rewrite…
It may sound strange to describe colours as orange-brown.The reason is to distinguish them from other brownish colours that lean toward yellow or red – those will be treated separately. There are so many…
If you’re interested in watercolor painting and start looking for information on YouTube, chances are you’ll come across someone carefully painting watercolor in small squares. As far as I know, there’s no real term…
