2025 Birthday Stash: More Crystalline Watercolours

More birthday art gear stash. I was given some cash and spent a big chunk of it on some more crystalline watercolours. I have five new colours: quinacrinone magenta, pyrrole red, orange, pthalo blue (green shade) and royal blue.

My existing nine colours include lots of greens greys and violets. These colours generally include crystals from at least three different primaries, so look great when sprayed with water, with all the separate pigments showing up. Run a wet brush through them, though, and they turn to grey, green or violet. When I’ve painted portraits with dark backgrounds, they’ve looked a bit muddy. To get darks, I need to run the brush through the crystals, and this gives me the greens, purples and browns. To keep the background interesting, I have to include multiple colours but whenever greens, greys and purples run together they create mud.

With these new colours in the squad, I can create backgrounds with, say, reds, blues, yellows and maybe oranges or greens. When these colours run together, I should get interesting secondary mixes rather than muds. Which I’m hoping will make for some better paintings.

I’ve had a go at swatching all fourteen colours. I admit it’s a bit of a mess:

Anyway, I will be having a go with the extended collection soon. But my next post will be a book review.