Ranking EVERY Daniel Smith Paint I Own

[@JosieViolet]

Do you agree or disagree with my rankings? What would be your best and worst?

[@CastleMc]

you judged as if one had to use them straight from the tube, apparently because that is how you use watercolors, rather than mixing (which many find to be half of the fun) and have no interest in color theory. As others have noted, Pyrrol and the phtalos are incredibly useful, even indispensable to some because of their mixing properties.

[@cristinalattuada5322]

That’s is so funny, I love many of those colours and I used them a lot by mixing them with other colours.😂

[@Thestripper1]

I think you should explore many of these colors more. The phthalo's are wild but also highly usable colors. Carmine is also a phenomenal paint with some unique properties, not at all similar to Quincridone Rose in fact. Try it in strong mix with a warm or medium yellow.

[@emilymanning2606]

Pyrol orange is the perfect colour to mix with ultramarine blue. It neutralizes the blue and creates the right cloud colour. You only need a little.

[@JosieViolet]

Oooh interesting I need to try that!

[@dannychen1064]

I would move Phthalo Blue and Phthalo Green and Sap green up on the list because they are so useful in mixing. Hardly use them alone.

[@pupawupagus]

*my notes, NOT a critique 🎉🎉 her bottom choices have many of my very top choices! i gotta see what this lady paints. pyrrol orange is fun as hell to use to mix browns. SAP GREEN?? i go through a tube a week it feels like. Nickle Azo Yellow is my HG GOAT go to yellow. i can’t make a bad mix with it. buff titanium is great for mixing almost any color to make interesting pastels. Moonglow is weirdly a current darling which is strange… it’s good for shadows or blacks when i’m lazy hehe i even have lavender and wisteria on my palette. i added them long ago and haven’t worked through them. I do tons of botanicals of that wasn’t obvious i think Ms Josie must look for WAAAY different results from mixes. it’s fun that her nightmare palette is like 80% my go to palette

[@loveandlife4222]

Neutral tint was created so that when mixed with any color it creates a darker version of that color. Also, lavender is one of my favorite colors for shadows.

[@JosieViolet]

Ooh that makes a lot of sense! I will experiment with lavender more in the shadows 🎨

[@berry2602]

I like to mix a bit of ultramarine to buff titanium as a background that I lay down first before painting flowers or things like pottery with shadows.

[@JosieViolet]

Oooh interesting!

[@BeckyTregear]

Oh but I lovvve phthalo blue green shade! Except for the fact it stains literally everything. I have phthalo blue on my studio floor which is never coming out! 😂 I also use buff titanium surprisingly often. It's a good bark colour for gum trees and sandy ground. I like your reasoning for the colour order, and getting your perspective, which is quite different to my own, lol! I do love New Gamboge though, it is one of the first yellows I ever owned. Watered down carbazole violet also works for Jacarandas! ❤️

[@JosieViolet]

Yesss colour is so personal so it’s been interesting hearing everyone’s thoughts! And I totally agree, wisteria + carbazole violet is the perfect jacaranda mix 😍😍

[@bizarro-7]

Both Joseph Zbukvic and his disciple Pablo Rubén, who are true master artists, use DS Lavender for mixing. For example, here there is a very good painting demonstration by Pablo in which he uses Lavender in certain mixes (and explains why, please see minute 9:50): kzbin.info/www/bejne/jJDVd4msdpd7n6s

[@flyinghaggertys9362]

I Love this video! Finally a watercolor video like all the makeup ranking videos!! A couple of my faves you have are quin burnt orange, carbazole violet, pyrrol scarlet and pthalo green BS. But my favorite DS paints I have are Quinacridone Coral, Quin Purple, pthalo turquoise blue, permanant brown, indigo, and trans brown oxide. im missing my green and yellow but honestly its impossible to choose!! Love seeing your picks

[@JosieViolet]

Hahah I felt like I was describing my favourite lipsticks 😂 and ooh you just listed a load of colours that I’ve had my eye on for a while but never got round to buying, I’ll have to give them a try!

[@Renilou2]

Check out the book called "Confident COLOR" by Nita Leland. It explains high key colors verse's low key colors and how to use them. Its a very wonderful book that's a keeper that you can revisit over and over because of the valuable information. I love bright oranges because few watercolor oranges can get the realistic bright orange vibrancy many florals have once the paint is dry. Most oranges dry to a dull dull orange. DS Pyrrole Orange to me is not well ground and can have floating chunks. I prefer Holbein Brilliant Orange for brights & Schmincke Transparent Orange for a mellower look. I agree about the Buff Titanium. Its just a Titanium White PW6 in the raw before the dirtiness is bleached out. I don't use those chalky opaque's in my portraits. I actually hate buff titanium. Reminds my of white clothing that's been washed in muddy water. Yes, its the PR177 red in Moon Glow that fades.

[@JosieViolet]

Haha love that description of buff titanium!And I’ll check that book out, thanks 😊

[@rogerehinger6694]

I do agree with many of your opinions of the Daniel Smith paints. I do use Buff Titanium for sand, concrete, and lighter colored rocks and stones. I often go weeks between water color sketches and Gamboge and Yellow Ochre dry out and fracture badly . Attempts to bring them back have so far failed, fortunately they do re-wet even from the dry state when I want to paint. Your mixing choices are in my opinion spot on, I use them myself.

[@JosieViolet]

Thanks for watching 😊 it has been so interesting to hear everyone's similarities and differences when it comes to paint choices!

[@askialuna7717]

I do have some DS colours, but I rarely use them because they are so expensive in Europe and other manufacturers now have more similar colours.

[@XtianApi]

Pearl orange is a super duper color. By itself, heavily diluted, it is nice, but it really shines when mixed to liven up some other colors. Just a bit added to some warm earth tones for example. Buff titanium is on my top 10 for many reason. Mixing it in a gradient with quid Rose gives tons of tones, but it also can mix with a lot of different earth tones in small amounts. Pyrol scarlet is certainly not a primary dead on red. To me that is definitely an orange that leans a bit harder on red. If you use photoshop to produce pure 255, 0, 0 red, it won't be that. :)

[@annepercival7814]

I LOVE Quin Burnt Orange…also Monte Amiate Natural Sienna. Love the old version of Transparent Pyrrol Orange ..which was more of a light Cadmium Red ….. the version they are making at the m9ment is not the same at all…it’s definitely orange. Luckily I stocked up on the original version

[@francesnorton65]

I love Chromium oxide green. It's the perfect shade for painting gum leaves. Try it mixed with cadmium red, ultramarine or cerulean! I'd say my most used colour is Sepia. As a bird artist, that dark brown is so useful for feathers and bark! Also love Venetian red.

[@mald379]

Pyrrol Orange is literally my top 5 color 😂 use it in my split primary palette instead of warm red (you can get nice engine red with quin magenta/rose but i never use that kind of red because i never sketch cities, only portraits, nature etc), it neutralises beautifully with PB16, makes nice flesh tones with yellow and neutralises greens that are too green.

[@valasafantastic1055]

People have such diffent opinions of colours. I also like opaque and mixing gouache and watercolour. And I love blue-green. So I love Pthalo blue green shade, buff titanium, lavender and Pthalo turquoise if one of my favourite colours of all! I agree on pyrolle orange it is a disturbing colour to look at so I moved my van Gogh one to a less offensive location on a pallet I made near red-orange shades so it no longer offends my eyes. However pyrolle orange is useful for certian mixes and can actually help for certian vibrant animals and for human skin tones. (Such as certian tropical birds and coral reef fish) still less useful. You can arrange the colour order in the pallet so the view of the pallet pleases the eye more this has improved my emotional reaction. I love all colours and paint variety personally. So I love lots of pallets and love having tons of options (I don’t use every colour in each artwork but having options is lovely). Also I advise buying empty half/full pans and magnets and tins (such as from the dollar store) and make your own custom pallets and premix custom colours using tubes! You can also invest in useful mix colours and dupe other watercolours. Don’t just mix in the moment or rely on the manufacturers to mix the colours for you! Fun video thanks.

[@SwedePotato314]

These videos are always so interesting. It’s so weird how artists who all use the same medium can use it so differently and our opinions and uses for the same colors of the same paint will vary so wildly. Agree or not, it’s so interesting to see how we all use these differently.

[@JosieViolet]

Agreed, I love seeing everyone’s opinions!

[@laura4562]

Very nice video. I really love Daniel Smith watercolors. I was wondering what do you use to squeeze the last of the paint out of your tubes? I can see some of your almost empty tubes have marks on them….looks like clip marks….

[@JosieViolet]

Thanks! I think it's called Aluminum Tube Squeezer on Amazon :)

[@BookishMandy]

Phthalo blue(green shade) and moon glow are some of my most used paints, so we are quite different haha.

[@robertweinblatt2018]

IF you know how to use it Moonglow and Buff Titanium they are versatile and gorgeous in mixes

[@gordonsneddon5914]

I agree with you on the phthalocyanines …they are just too strong and staining. My current faves are French Ultramarine, Cerulean Blue, Jadeite Genuine, New Gamboge, Permanent Rose, Carbazole Violet, Transparent Brown Oxide and Sodalite Genuine…so we’re on the same page. Great video by the way😀

[@JosieViolet]

Ooh I’ll have to check out jadeite and sodalite, they sound magical!

[@firdyk]

Love your jacaranda street scene Josie. Found this very helpful thanks. Ultramarine is one of my most used wc. I recently started enjoying buff titanium too.

[@JosieViolet]

Thank you! A few people have said the same about buff titanium, I think I need to do some more experimenting 🎨

[@Tugboat-R-Us]

Not every paint is made to be used on their own. Here’s some suggestions that Daniel Smith has on their website regarding some of the paints mentioned in this video. Pyrrol orange is a tricky one for me still as well. You have to remind yourself that a little goes a long way. I use it as a base layer and I use more water than what I normally would. Again it’s not a great one for me either. Daniel Smith’s site suggests it as warm golden fall wash, mix it with blues and greens and you end up with warm earth tones. Phthalo Blue kind of surprised me to hear bc it’s fantastic for sky washes, it’s actually a favorite for me. Indian Yellow was kind of surprising as well bc I have used it personally for fall leaves and for layering flowers. Daniel Smith’s website also suggests it for fruit & vegetation. If I started struggling with a color of Daniel Smith’s I started going to their website and doing some research bc I hate not using a tube due to the price. If you search for a specific color the website will provide really nice suggestions which are helpful.

[@ninner196]

If you want a lower beautiful sky with lavender without PW6 try M.Graham’s ultramarine pink with any ultramarine violet, Voilà transparent lavender 😊

[@snuuby5468]

I am a great fan of Daniel Smith's watercolour paints. I love DS Yellow Ochre and Burnt Sienna. These two paints are unique to DS. The yellow ochre is semi-transparent and granulating which is very different from most brands of Yellow Ochre. There Burnt Sienna is more red than other Burnt Sienna which are more orange. I agree with your dislike of the Phthalo Blue and Green which are so overpowering. I can see why you dislike the Lavender and Buff Titanium these paints have white added to them which makes them look milky.

[@rodionovamarina]

Thank u for the video! It's very useful and interesting).

[@JosieViolet]

You’re welcome! 😊

[@matthewcloud7064]

I loved the video however. Please tell me you didn’t throw this page out. There is so much pigment where you have put the dots. Please say you are using it still as paint

[@weill6872]

Burnt Sienna and French Ultramarine, an evergreen .. Or should I say evergrey?

[@JosieViolet]

A classic!

[@Oficinasonora]

Lavender +wisteria

[@annepercival7814]

Agree about Moonglow…just don’t understand why so many say they love it!

[@Lalaland_lady]

I’m l😂😂😂 because I own the first 5 colors that ranked on the bottom and rather like them, especially the thalos.

[@sunlightempress]

ma'am you are sleeping on buff titanium lol. it is one of the most used paints in my kit