The title of the book
Cuz maybe I'm always writing a book in my head
I'm just not actually writing it
Today the title of the book is PR206
It's an actual thing
But it's kind of a metaphor
On that last picture that I published The four swatches to the left are from top to bottom I think because the bottom two were on a pallet and I'm not 100% sure which one is which brand I'm only about 75% sure
A Gallo quinacrone Chestnut
Roman Szmal quinacridone maroon
Daniel Smith quinacridone burnt Scarlet
Qor quinacridone burn orange
No they're all pretty much the same color there is difference variation between them and they're reading a little bit pinker on my monitor than what they actually are in person
I'm very attracted to this color
And you might think oh she just saw that color and bought it four times not knowing that it was the same color because they all had different names
But in fact that isn't right
If I looked through all the swatches for a brand I would find that color and I would probably want to buy it but it's highly unlikely that I wouldn't look at the pigment number before I bought it so I wouldn't know it was the same pigment
But it isn't even that
I actually saw that color and I was like I have to have that color and I ordered it from Daniel Smith first quinacridone burnt scarlet
And I was like no it isn't quite right that isn't quite the color I want and so I went looking and I found that the quinacridone burnt orange from qor was the same pigment number so I bought that and I liked that a little better but it wasn't quite right either
So I bought the Roman Szmal
Which is in a pan and it is so far my favorite
It's like the right texture and the right consistency the first two I mean they look like they're the same color now cuz I painted them out with a little more water in them but if you use them full strength they have a tendency to be too much
Also the texture of the Roman Szmal is just better somehow and it's got more of a luminous quality I really really like it
I really hate paint in little pans, though
As I've been putting this travel pallet together I'm like I don't like this at all I don't even really like pallets that have little spaces all lined up hang on just a minute let me take another picture and show you what I do like
This isn't perfect of course but it's got big enough areas that you can slop the paint around because what I really enjoy to do is to paint with these kind of dyads or triads where I'm constantly mixing I can get just pure color of one color but I have enough room to make kind of a soupy watery wash I don't have a lot of room this is pretty small it's like maybe 4x4 or 5x5 or something and I bought it a while back I've only just recently really started utilizing it
So this very carefully planned out palate that I've been putting together I mean it'll probably work but it's not my ideal I don't want a bunch of colors although I am really learning a lot about these paint brands and their different qualities and I am kind of enjoying using the different paints to their advantage within the same system you know like a multi-brand palette
The top color I went back and forth and back and forth about and I'm like you know I'm not going to like that one better but I was going to buy some a gallo paints and it's a small company and they only go live like once a month and they sell out in a few hours cuz they just have what they can make and they're real hot right now
But they had a sale where if you picked out 12 colors to make a pallet you would get 5% off of the paints plus you would get them in a 10 and you would get a brush included and blah blah
But it was so intense and I wanted to get some brushes I was more concerned about getting the brushes it was so intense stuff was disappearing out of my cart as I was trying to shop and so I ended up just saying f*** that because you know I couldn't get 12 because one or the other of the ones I wanted kept disappearing so I did an alternate thing which I won't go into but part of it included buying this little well why not go into it I had thought long and hard about getting this palette that they have that's all they're blues because they have some blues that are unusual and they're all really pretty now I usually do not use a lot of blue in a pallet at all so the idea that there was a whole pallet of blues that I like couldn't decide because they were all so beautiful to me I was like well that's got to be a sign cuz you don't normally really use blue at all well I do but not much I usually have like an indigo or you know one kind of distinctive blue but I never have like ultramarine blue and phthalo blue and that kind of stuff I did have cobalt blue on a pallet fairly recently but that was kind of an experiment
So I got the blue palette and then I'm like well okay but you maybe need some other paints cuz are you really going to do just completely blue things so they had this one little set it didn't have any blue in it it had several of the colors that were in the pallet I was going to pick maybe
Actually maybe not so much maybe I just convinced myself but at any rate it had this quinacridone chestnut
Now you may be saying why is she telling me all of this
I mean okay she's a pigment nerd but what is the point how is this a metaphor
Well part of the metaphor is kind of my weird process but it gets stranger because PR206 is being discontinued
And this happens I don't know how frequently it happens but it's been happening a lot recently because see these pigments the paint companies use them but the paint companies don't use enough of the pigment for it to be produced apparently
So these pigments are produced for like you know car paint and commercial applications industrial applications whatever
But then if people start deciding they don't like orange cars anymore or they don't like yellow cars anymore then they discontinue PO48 or PO49 or PR 149 was it 149 any rate
Quinacridone gold was discontinued so they started making a hue of it mostly with nickel azo yellow and quinacridone burnt orange which is usually what PO 48 is called although qor is using that number that name for PR206
The whole pigment thing is kind of confusing which is probably why people a lot of times a lot of artists end up with like two or three colors that they're attracted to but they think are different colors because they have different names
So PR 206 I heard a few months ago that it was being discontinued but I was like well you know I've got two tubes of it that I'm not really using all that much but then I did buy the quinacridone maroon for my little palette and I liked it so much or have been liking it so much that it's kind of reawakened my desire for this color
So I'm like PR206 is being discontinued so I thought about buying several more of the little pans
but
I really don't like painting with the little pans
So what I did was I ordered the shamincke madder brown that is there PR 206
But then I also ordered their Indian red because I love Indian red and it turns out they have a really beautiful Indian red that uses PR101 and PR206
Instead of just the regular PR101
But then I could not leave that alone because sennelier has a quinacridone gold that uses the nickel Azo yellow which is PY 150 along with PR101 and PR206
Which is of course also being discontinued and just replaced with PY 150 and PR101
And they have a permanent rose madder deep That's of course also being discontinued that's PR206
In Maimeriblu has a version called madder brown or brown madder I can't remember which now and I ordered that too
Now Windsor Newton I'm pretty sure already replaced their brown madder with some other color but for some reason I don't like Windsor and Newton
And I didn't know anything about Maimeriblu except I ended up with some small half pans of their paint and it's just beautiful luminous clear they're all like single pigments and it's just amazing
I used to really like Daniel Smith and they are a very popular brand they are probably at least in America the most loved brand of paint
But thinking a lot of love from the European vloggers that I watch as well and I really I used to really like them but I'm less I'm less into them now
I want to get to know the Maimeriblu a little bit better and they might ultimately be the best I don't know
Shmincke, and they're the ones that made that little case that I switched everything to that I have photographed they are I mean they make those super granulating colors but part of the reason why they did that and it's like a real novelty for them is the thing about schmika I wish this thing would not make me change that every single goddamn time schmincke they are very smooth and they lay down very smooth non-cauliflowery washes and what's so great about them for this pallet the travel palette that I put together is that you could take these very intense colors and you can use them full strength and get the intense colors but you can do a really really watered down wash and it still comes out smooth and looks really nice whereas most watercolors if you dilute them that much they they don't come out so nice or you have to really work to get them to come out nice
So you might say well you know it's a German company and they make a very precision product wow what a shock but it's a really good paint
And the sennelier it's more sensual it's very buttery and it glazes really beautifully and they make particularly nice reds and yellows now the earth tones nobody really says nice things about their earth tones and their blues and greens are they're okay they're not bad but they're not like they're reds and yellows they're reds and yellows are amazing
And the little that I've seen of the Maimeriblu they've got like a luminous quality they're very bright but in a completely different way somehow from the sennelier
I have never liked cadmium colors ever I didn't like them in oils I didn't like them in acrylics I didn't like them in watercolors they're opaque and I don't know clunky or something cadmium red cadmium yellow yuck you know but these they're almost well I mean they are opaque in full strength but if you thin them down they don't seem opaque at all and even the opacity it's different it's got a different quality to it
And it was a Cobalt blue and I'm like that doesn't look like any Cobalt blue I have ever seen well it's not the pigment for cobalt blue it's the pigment for cerulean blue but it doesn't look like cerulean blue either it's somehow a hybrid
And I had to order a separate blue from a gallo because it was too beautiful I absolutely had to have it and it wasn't in the blue palette so I ordered a separate blue and it is a blend of PB15 I'm not sure if it's PB 15: 1 or PB15: 3 and it's going to bother me it's phthalo blue green shade I think but maybe not maybe it's some other phthalo blue has a lot of different variations sorry since I don't use it I have a hard time keeping those straight in my head but it's got some kind of thalo blue blended with ultramarine blue so it's kind of a green blue blended with a more red leaning blue so it's a neutral blue that you could use as your only blue on your pallet and it blends greens or purples either one
And they call it like azzuro or something and I was like I have to have it it's so beautiful it's so beautiful right it's like exactly the same color it's a little bit different consistency and texture but it's exactly the same color as the Maimeri Cobalt
You may have noticed on that picture that the browns all look very similar but they aren't the two on the left are that iron chrome brown which is a little darker and it actually has a different undertone The one under it is schmincke sepia which is a PBR7 brown with black added most browns that you will find in a paint company's lineup from very light almost ochrey browns to very dark browns The vast majority of them are going to be PBR 7s just processed in different ways The two on the right the one on the top is a gallo umber dark and the one on the bottom is DaVinci raw umber
The big swatch above them looks very similar to the PR206 except it's a little oranger it's an earth tone it's Ercolono Red which I think is a PR 101 color PR101 is another one of the colors that's a it might be 101 and 102 they're red earthtones that are I think 101 is synthetic and 102 is natural or it's the other way around it's like p y 42 and 43 One is natural and one is synthetic but they're they're the same like mineral structures and they process them different ways and they make a broad range of everything from orangy to well I think it might actually include some yellowy ones too cuz I think all the Mars ones are 101s or 102s
At any rate the colors that I'm drawn to seem to be remarkably consistent
But it's like I went all in on PR206
A tube of paint lasts a very long time
And of course possible that by the time they come it will turn out that they had gotten the new batch in and hadn't changed the website and that it isn't PR206
But since they only had a very few left in stock I am pretty certain that it's the old one we'll see if it turns out not to be there still pretty colors and they will have had to approximate the color so it'll be similar
So I'll find out which is my favorite PR206
But then I might not be able to get more of my favorite
But then it's unlikely that I'll ever run out of PR206
Anyway there's some kind of message in there about things totally unrelated to art having control over what is available
And I saw this there's this place that I like to buy art supplies online it's called cheap Joe's and I like Joe who does little videos talking about his art stuff and there's somebody I don't know if it's his wife or if it's his daughter or if it's just somebody that is a very dedicated worker but there's somebody who's worked there for a very long time or been affiliated with him for a very long time and she does these like 2 minute art tips and sometimes she talks about you know products that you really should know about and in the process of my color mixing thing I saw a video from her that was talking about helping you mix colors it was like a chart but it wasn't like a wall chart it was like a little flip chart thing that showed you you know when you mix certain colors what you get and blah blah
And I'm like well that's almost useless unless you know what brand of paint it is and it's the same one you use because the colors are so different between brands
Like those PR206s I mean the top one anybody would see that that is very different but the other ones to me seem very different not very very different but somewhat different and if I was using them to mix colors I wouldn't expect to get the same color using those different brands
I mean I bought three of those four colors looking for the PR206 that I wanted
And that's some sort of metaphor for me I guess
So I don't know as I'm thinking of it now I'm not sure exactly how that's a book it probably isn't a book to anyone other than me but that's the kind of thoughts I think kind of the way my brain works and I'm very excited that I'm going to have all these PR206s to play with even though that seems slightly crazy from a painting standpoint I guess
I feel confident that the Maimeriblu and the schmincke we'll play nicely together in a pallet but I don't know about the sennelier
I'm kind of imagining a limited palette of just sennelier
Quinacridone gold
The PR206
They have this color it's called blue violet or violet blue I'm not sure I think it's a PV 16 or 17
But it seems quantitatively different
Quantitatively different what does that mean for a color did I mean qualitatively different hmm
They have a thelo green light that's just amazingly luminous I don't really usually like phthalo green at all at all at all like I never use it but this thalo green light is completely different and they've got a transparent brown
But I could not find a blue I liked
Like at all
They had a phtalo green dark that had a lot of blue mixed into it but I think it was still too green so I'm looking at that and I'm going well those colors they look good together but I don't know if you mixed them what you would get
Of course I guess if you have a pallet of colors that don't mix together to make anything then you'd have to just use those colors to paint with or you'd figure out what colors you needed with it but that's already
Well it's five colors five colors is a good limited palette although I will say that most people when they do a five color limited palette they probably are using colors that specifically mix and I'm sure these would mix I'd find a way to mix them and make something but I don't know what I would make
A broad range of oranges and greens
Anyway I didn't order those other colors
I have paints
I don't have to order a whole new limited palette of sennelier
