Diopside Genuine
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…
Category: Colors and pigments
About watercolors and pigments, I describe different watercolors: history, pigments and their painting properties.
Terre Verte (Green Earth) PG23
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,…
Phthalo blue (red shade)
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…
Potter’s Pink
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….
Perylene green (PBk31)
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…
Orange-brown favorites
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…
What the Hell Is a Swatch?
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…
Enhancing Granulation
When using granulating colors in a painting and wanting to emphasize the patterns these pigments create, you can’t paint in the usual way. You need to create an environment that these colors enjoy “bathing”…
Vermilion – PR106
Natural Vermilion Vermilion, or as the color is called in Swedish and German: Cinnober (Zinnober), is no longer a watercolor pigment – today it is just a name for an orange-red made from various…
