Let’s talk about paint

People often ask me what paints and pigments I use to create my color studies and I’m always a bit sheepish about my color kit mash up, which includes watercolor pan sets, tube pigments, even super-saturated watercolor sheets with intense hues. I’m game for using just about anything to custom mix pigments to match the colors I see in petals, leaves, shells, and numerous other bits and pieces from my garden. 

Generally, I shy away from claiming to be a watercolor artist. Instead, I prefer to call myself an attention artist, grounded in the garden, who makes marks in watercolor. Color is my muse, but my practice is about learning to see. I guess you could say I’m a “horticolorist”—and yes, I made that up. 

My go-to supplies:

Prima watercolors are beautifully pigmented and long lasting. The line is called Prima Marketing Confections, and each palette contains 12 colors with quirky (sometimes inexplicable) names, other simply identify colors by number (equally baffling).

Tropicals has an amazing lime green (#16) and a wonderful rose pink (#22)

Odyssey identifies colors by destination (??), Budapest (#83) is a dusky plum I go to again and again; Tokyo is another must have deep pink.

Sennelier French Artists’ Watercolors are “inspired by the original palette of the French Impressionists” and have a honey-based formula that goes on smooth. I appreciate this palette’s range of warm and cool reds, both warm and cool brown, and a wonderful neutral Payne’s grey. 

In June 2020 I collaborated with Art Toolkit to create a signature Garden in Bloom palette (above). Maria, an accomplished watercolor artist, expeditionary traveler, and founder of Art Toolkit reached out and asked me to select eight colors suitable for creating color studies of the natural world. Maria identified the following Daniel Smith watercolor pigmentsthat I’ve come to rely on.

Lemon Yellow – pure clean cool yellow
Deep Scarlet – a warm red
Quinacridone Pink – cool clear pink
Carbazole Violet – a good purple is difficult to mix from red and blue without going muddy
Phthalo Blue – genuine blue, like a summer sky
Cobalt Turquoise – a singular hue, with remarkable granulation
Jadeite Genuine – admittedly a closer match to garden accessories, but a good starting point when mixing garden greens.
Green Gold – a must to capturing spring in the garden.

I think of Daniel Smith watercolors as “dress up” pigments, special and a bit costly. (Most of my other paints are “play clothes” - the one’s you change into after school to romp around in.) You might enjoy experimenting with Daniel Smith “dot cards” – 4 sheets of watercolor paper with generous samples of more than 200 colors.

Viviva Colorsheets are a unique pad of dry watercolor pigments containing 16 transparent colors. You simply wet your brush to pick up color and you’re off to the rainbow races. A little goes a loooong way and the colors are intense!

So there you have it, a brief look at my collection of favorite paints. If you’re looking for a more in-depth discussion, I wrote an entire chapter about this topic in Color In and Out of the Garden.