My Favourite Daniel Smith Primatek Watercolors

In today's video I'm going to be swatching out and taking a look at my favorite Daniel Smith Primatek watercolors.
Materials used in this video:
Baohong Academy Watercolor Paper Cold Pressed 300gsm bit.ly/3iPHCcZ
Escoda Perla Round Size 10 bit.ly/2VOjP4t
Daniel Smith Watercolors: bit.ly/3qTTXAC
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[@CarlosICardenas]

A mineral scientist used special equipment to test the primatek line and found a lot of synthetic color added and a bit of mineral pigment. It caused a lot of conversation a few years ago

[@TristinaDietzElmesArtist]

Thank you for sharing your favorites! I don’t yet have the Kyanite, but love everything sparkly, so this will be on my next DS order. My father was a jeweler and rock hound. The reason “black” tourmaline has a green undertone is because the actual stone is normally just a VERY dark olivine color that looks dark green when held to the light in thin layers, so you’re not imagining things! 😍

[@sonyaoart]

I agree, they are beautiful paints. But I understand why people are upset about DS not disclosing which pigments are in them, makes it a bit tricky to use them in professional work. If I win the lottery though, I'll totally buy them :D

[@colorjunkie]

Because there are some pigments we'd rather stay away from. Cadmiums, for instance. And I have no idea if any of these contain cadmium.

[@keepyourshoesathedoor]

@@colorjunkie I hope there’s no lead or worse. I didn’t think of it. I thought they were lying about the actual properties.😮

[@s.maskell7134]

@@colorjunkie There are mostly no other pigments. They are solely ground stone/minerals in the gum arabic. That is why they are hard to re-wet. When (very small amounts) of re-inforcing colours are added they would be from his own line which no longer has toxic colours. Try not to spread unfounded gossip.

[@CarlosICardenas]

@@s.maskell7134 under the microscope the tests concluded they had a lot of synthetic color and low mineral

[@parleymanderson7527]

@@colorjunkie I understand what you mean but for toxic pigments, it is required that they have to disclose that information. Unless you have an allergy to a pigment, I don't think you need to worry about the toxicity of these colors.

[@hArtyTruffle]

Sodalite and Green Apatite are always in my palette.

[@patti3d]

I use and like bloodstone genuine. I acquired a dot card with some of the primatex paints. I am in love with the kyanite genuine. Love the sparkles! And Bronzite genuine! Lovely reminds me of when the sand sparkles. So I will be buying those two sparkly ones soon. I have Mayan blue and blue apatite and love them as well.

[@magentaindigoart]

I mean, that Sodalite is so beautiful. Tried it 4 years ago and I still need it in every palette because it adds so much texture. I tried to replace it with other granulating blacks and blues but it just granulates in a different and very attractive pattern. I also have Piemontite but haven't used it much yet. My most favourite way to use them is in very wet in wet applications and almost no brushstrokes, just letting the paint move and settle. i hope you find ways to use them!

[@xyz7572]

Sodalite is such a beautiful colour, it’s so sad that the blue part of it is fugitive, otherwise I would use it constantly! It’s so gorgeous, but I like to be able to put up my paintings on the wall and not just have it in a folder/portfolio/sketchbook, and I don’t want all the gorgeous blue/black parts to be just black after a few months if it’s in a sunny room :( (Also, I’d feel awful if I sold any of my paintings and I found out that parts of the paintings started disappearing off of the paper at the buyer’s house)

[@elvenham1]

Over the years, I've gotten most of the Primatek colors. Some I enjoy immensely, and some I have stopped using due to lightfastness or just find too difficult to rewet from a pan. One I haven't seen any comments mention yet is Zoisite - a lovely dark granulating gray-green.

[@DeniseSmithCreative]

I love zoisite, great for shadows in landscapes

[@tdelphia1]

I usually have a combination of jadeite, serpentine, green apatite gen, and (non primatek) perylene green, and rich green gold (py 129) for my greens ((like 3 of them rotating). I always have piemontite and fuchsite on my plein air palette. Piemontite is my red earth, and since I live near lots of glowing glacial lakes (think Diablo Lake in Northern Cascades), fuchsite is an amazing glaze to put a hint of turquoise and some sparkle on water surfaces (it has a definite sparkle to it). The paints are not cheap, but living near Seattle does mean some pricing advantages for DS paints compared to those of you having to buy internationally! I sure miss the pre-pandemic days though when they had a store at the factory in downtown Seattle.

[@LavenderDebs]

I have used green apatite in my little plein-air pallette for as long as I've painted outside. I adore it. Yellows and browns are awesome with its Peek-a-boo of green granulation. Because of my love for this gritty green, I have bought a handful of other PrimaTeks but it is still this one that I will soon need to replace. I do not have sodalite and hear good things about it.

[@starr-starr]

I have a bunch of the greens, they all work well. I also like Purpurite a lot. Piemontite is nice too. I like your colors, like you say, add a yellow and you’ve got a nice landscape palette.

[@derwood206]

I also like Rhodonite Genuine< Sleeping Beauty Turquoise, Piemontite, and Amethyst. I put together a mini Primatek palette and added a few non-Primateks for some mixing colors: New Gamboge, French Ultramarine, Quinacridone Magenta, and Quinacridone Gold.

[@alejandromorales9516]

If you want a cheaper alternative for Serpentine, Daniel Smith's 2 pigment Green Gold (as opposed to the single pigment Rich Green Gold) is very close.

[@keepyourshoesathedoor]

Yeah, but the brown part can be added with PBr11.

[@natlisan]

The only colour's I have from the Primatek range are Jadeite & Amethyst. I currently use Jadeite & Undersea green as the warm green's on my palette. They're both quite interesting in that in their mass tone they're warm. but when you dilute them they separate out. The Jadeite separates out and granulates with a blue-green undertone and the undersea green separates out with a moss green/brownish undertone.

[@flyinghaggertys9362]

I absolutely love Sodalite and Amazonite, and More recently I’ve come to love Tigers eye genuine. I love all the greens blues amd teals in the range , but these 3 are my favorites.

[@janechin76]

Thanks for the swatching :) The granulation of sodalite gen is unlike other granulation I’ve seen before and it’s the first primatek color I fell in love with. Sleeping beauty is too similar to many cobalt turq shades for me, and I regret getting it. Took a while, but kyanite grew on me despite the mica look lol

[@PaintinHiding]

serpentine is my fave too :D and one that's not in this vid is hematite genuine. i use it as a more natural alternative to PBk11

[@priscillawarren9979]

Beautiful colors!

[@cammiluna]

Now I’m considering getting sodalite genuine, thanks! I’m pretty sure the minerals ARE the pigments to most of them (Mayan Blue being one exception) and as of present day, they weren’t given official pignemt code names. The way that some of the colors act differently with lightfastness, rewetting, and the balance of pigment/gum arabic wouldn’t necessarily be that way of the primateks were mixed with common paint pigments. Some of the tougher colors would have been improved a lot if mixed with a quinacridone or something. Probably the most difficult primatek to re-wet or even get a good pigment load of straight from the tube is their most expensive color, Lapis Lazuli genuine. my everyday pallette inclusions are Garnet Genuine, which is great on its own and makes a nice easy range of browns when mixed with quinacridones, Jadeite Genuine which is also great solo and can be made into a wide range of warm and cold greens with other colors, Rodonite Genuine which I use for lighter skin tones with Quinacridone Gold because most quin pinks/cool reds are too powerful for me, and Mayan Blue, which is difficult to lay a thick layer of pigment on the page, but makes interesting color mixes because it’s a weird blue-green. I do also like Zoicite, Kyanite, Diopside and Amethyst. Plain Hematite is also good, but I’ve had issues with the gum arabic separating from the pigment in both half pan form and within the tube, so i buy the stick form and throw a chunk of the stick in a halfpan. I never had that problem again! It would be nice if Lapis Lazuli also came in stick form because the tube is almost unusable and that’s sad given the price tier.

[@aeli999]

I love the kyanite and sodalite. Adding them to my list of things I want but am not buying. 😂 All of the colors here are really pretty. I do have the Jadeite but haven't used it much yet. I like my swatch card I made from it though. I wrote out 3 different paragraphs on the "scandal" and decided I couldn't bother. lol If you like the paint and the paint company, use it. If you don't, then there are plenty of other companies and paints out there to try. I will say that Daniel Smith isn't the only company that doesn't share what is in some of their paint colors.

[@petiteflower5259]

I don't have a lot of these, some of the ones you swatched here I hadn't even heard of, but I do reach for Jadeite quite a bit, it's a really nice shade similar to hookers green :)

[@rika.chan.]

I really wanted to try the Primatek line, but it is too expensive so I opted for the stick versions. I currently have Hematite, Sodalite, & Piemontite. My favorite is Sodalite, a dark gray blue which granulates beautifully ❤️

[@sandjune2753]

I love daniel smith and I have a lot of your colours. I do not really like paints that cant rewet as that does limit your painting a touch, as you would like to use from the tube only. Strange my Garnet tester came out more of a peach colour not a rich red brick colour like yours. Sodalite is my favourite , Serpentine, Bloodstone. Yet to try the others . Thanks for your review Jay.

[@moonlightgator]

They look pretty but I don't see myself using granulating colors much regardless of the brand. I do have few granulating colors from DS, but I almost never use them.

[@cheryllapham6279]

Since I know most of these minerals as semi-precious stones for jewelry making, it hurts my heart to see them ground up. But they are beautiful. Soda light is the perfect denim color. I need that Serpentine. Thanks for swatching them out!

[@demi3115]

Yeah, i'm surprised they're just being ground up for some paint... the colours are nice, but nothing specially and DS has about 10 similar colours already..

[@hershelroswell]

@@demi3115 don't worry too much. a lot of these are small amounts of non-jewellery-quality minerals, sometimes combined with other pigments (iirc microscope examinations from a couple of years ago demonstrated that some of the paints look more similar to other synthetic pigments in the DS range, compared to what would be typical for a pure mineral paint), so it's not a huge loss

[@elisacavaliere1446]

Hi! Thanks for the video. Useful as usual! Long comment alert... I like most of their Primatek colors. Honestly the whole "scandal" didn't put me off. As long as I like the paint, I will buy their watercolors. Lightfastness tough is indees a bit of an issue... One of my fav Primateks used to be Amazonite Genuine. I truly loved that paint. Unfortunately I found an unpleasant surprise on both my swatches and paintings with that color: about one year later the hue has become much darker and dull. It now looks rather like a watered-down "prussian green". I loved the vibrancy and the glow of its aquamarina-green / viridian-like appearence instead. I looked for online discussion about this but seems like no one else ever encounetred the same problem... Idk maybe I just got a bad tube? Even though at the opening it was totally fine... So sad and disappointed by that. That put aside, unpopular opinion but I really like their Lapis Lazuli because it's such a delicate pale blue and granulates heavily. I love Kyanite and Sugilite, and Serpentine for the greens. Bloodstone, Hematite Violet, and Hematite Burnt Scarlet do it for me as browns. I am curious about Sicklerite and Yavapai, again despite mostly unfavourable opinions on them... But I am not going to buy, since I could not try them for myself (not on the dotcard. Shame!) Same for Kingman Green and Sleeping beauty: love the hues but they seem to be poor in lightfastness, so I'll pass!

[@chris5355]

Great content, thanks.

[@xyz7572]

Sodalite is such a beautiful colour, it’s so sad that the blue part of it is fugitive, otherwise I would use it constantly! It’s so gorgeous, but I like to be able to put up my paintings on the wall and not just have it in a folder, and I don’t want all the gorgeous blue/black parts to be just black after a few months :( (Also, I’d feel awful if I sold any of my paintings and parts of the paintings started disappearing off of the paper at the buyer’s house)

[@lmac_z]

Jane Blundell did some lightfastness testing on some of the Primatek colours and there are a few that had issues. Sleeping Beauty was one, which is very expensive. The others have slipped from my memory, but can be found on her website.

[@hershelroswell]

@@lmac_z i believe kim crick also has done watercolour tests on a lot of the DS range! she has heaps of lightfastness tests on her website. she and jane blundell are my go-to if i want to see paint swatches or check lightfastness

[@StephenMarkTurner]

I have the Amethyst

[@opabinnier]

I guarantee I can mix every one of these from my Jackson's and my Cotman tubes. That's not a boast because we can all mix any hue (I recently mixed a full pan of Perylene Green using Cotman- and it's fab: really useful and stunning in delicate dilutions too, in its way even superior to the original.) Jay you're too good for this DS travesty! You can plainly see the PB7 screaming from under the thre-and-a-half particles of Jadeite. Its all a degenerate con and I have binned my DS box: good riddance; they no longer deserve me. (If I must go colonial, I've LONG been droolong over M Graham!)

[@DeniseSmithCreative]

These are really beautiful ❤ I love these paints as well and have a landscape palette on my channel. I would love if you took a look.

[@demi3115]

Rather see Garnet (for example) in a beautiful necklace =/

[@sherrym.2413]

All Daniel Smith pigment information is stated on their color chart. The chart can be downloaded through their website

[@WRKellogg]

Quite surprised by the haevy criticism I'm seeing the comments toward DS for the Primatek line. I've used most of the genuines and tbh there's nothing else like them. for landscape, mountains, sky, and earth it sets a tone apart from any other line out there. My favorites are: Sodalite, Suglite, Zoistite, Tigers Eye, Hematite, Mayan Blue, Sleeping Turqoise, and Bloodstone

[@kimlindseyOH]

No pigments are listed on these paints because the color is entirely made up of semirecious gemstones that are ground to a fine powder - yes, it's really garnet, tourmaline, etc. This harks back to the illuminated manuscripts of long ago, where the colors are still vibrant because they used powdered lapis lazuli, etc., in the inks. So you don't need to worry about cadmium - the only way to judge toxicity would be to look up information on the actual gemstones. This is also why these paints are harder to re-wet: you're literally putting crushed stones into solution. Hope this info helps. The only Primatek I have is Sleeping Beauty Turquoise (turquoise from Sleeping Beauty Mountain). It's gorgeous, but it takes a lot of paint to produce a strong color, which surprised me since it's kind of opaque. Thanks for posting!

[@tabbi888]

How do you explain them being caught adding other pigments when tested by scientists. If they were truly genuine no one would be arguing, but the fact is they failed testing and were proven to not be entirely genuine but contained boosters. I would love to see a paint that was truly as they made it ages ago but sadly Daniel Smith are liars and their paints are adulterated.

[@J.Dibble]

If a person just wants granulation, one could get W&N’s granulation medium.

[@awatercolourist]

First!

[@awatercolourist]

I just popped in to say First! I’ll finish posting an image to Instagram then I’ll be right back.

[@Joan4me]

I buy my favorites because I like them. Not a serious artist and don’t really care what is in them. What IS important to me is getting joy out of any purchase, making the purchase of anything okay. ❤😅❤

[@jdub3853]

They are beautiful, but very few are good mixers...

[@markdonovan1540]

Primatek paints are very interesting, but do we need them? No. Can we get similar effects by mixing paints we already have? Probably we can, or get close enough. Are they worth the money? Probably not. Have I got any? Yes, just one to try. It's clever marketing from Daniel Smith, and as DS fan I thought I'd try a couple: Green Apatite Genuine and Mayan Blue Genuine. They are both lovely paints which I have used quite a bit. However, the standard DS paints are far more useful in my opinion. The Bloodstone Genuine and Serpentine Green might be the only other ones I'd try, but for now there is no need to. What is genuine about these paints anyway? The marketing hype talks about how the pigments are made as if it were a story of some kind. How "genuine" is genuine?

[@tabbi888]

They were proven to contain colour boosters so only contain very small amount of the actual minerals.