Art Haul - Daniel Smith!

I've been wanting to get some Daniel Smith colours for a while now and, since I happened to be near a store I knew carried these, I stopped in today and picked up the Essentials and PrimaTek sets (5ml tubes). For those not in the know, Daniel Smith makes some of the most well-regarded watercolour paints on the market today, creating some really unique colours that nobody else does, especially in the PrimaTek line.



Part of the reason I picked up both sets, though the PrimaTeks were the main goal, is that I kind of like unified brand pallets and I was intending to put these into one of my Portable Painter pallets. The Essentials set contains a split primary pallet across the warm and cools and so it's a great launch point for mixing. The PrimaTeks, though, are part of a "historical" collection of colours using some traditional minerals such as amethyst.

I did do a little playing with a moderately terrible attempt at loose florals...


More usefully, though, I did swatch them out for the pallet for future reference.


The bottom six are the PrimaTek colours. The Rhodonite Genuine is fairly close to the Quinacridone Rose, but not exactly. Much easier to see in person than via an iPhone photo. :)

Anyways, of the colours, I really like the Amethyst Genuine and Mayan Blue Genuine the most, though the Jadeite Green and Hematite are very close followers. All four have a texture or sheen that I've never really seen in other colours or brands. I think these will be fun to experiment with.