Manganese Blue!

My paints from Blockx arrived yesterday! Two tubes and two full pans of their now-discontinued Manganese Blue watercolour paint... such a delightful colour!

The NOS pans look like delicious little gold foil wrapped chocolates, and the tubes have hand-written labels - too cute!

If you are after some PB33 for yourself, check out the 'Good Bargains' section of the Blockx online store. The Blockx personnel were super-friendly via email, and shipping to AU was only a few dollars.

Rublev Eighteenth Century Palette

Here is a scan of a watercolour set from Natural Pigments. This is the rather lovely "18th Century Palette": (Click to enlarge!)

I have tested almost every watercolour paint in the Rublev line, and all have delightful textural properties.  I use these paints mostly for small works or field sketches, as the paints are best applied and then left alone. Re-wetting them and brushing over them lifts them and destroys the texture.

(Update: 2013: Over time, some paints became unusable, and would no longer produce colour when re-wetted, even if soaked. Vivianite (Blue Ocher) was of much interest to me but is now just an inert lump which does not respond to water.)

Painterly Things

Well, I have been shopping for art supplies again! I have a nice assortment of watercolour paints enroute, and am looking forward to putting them to use. Here is the list:

From Daniel Smith:

- German Greenish Raw Umber

- Lunar Black · Lunar Blue · Lunar Earth· Lunar Red

- Moonglow

- Fired Gold Ochre.

I love textural paints, and since I love my Lunar Violet I figured all the other Lunar variants were worth a look.

From Natural Pigments:

- The gorgeous 12 pan 19th Century Watercolor Palette

- The cute 8 half-pan Watercolor Case

- Historic blues: Lazurite · Royal Smalt · Vivianite

- Earth reds: Indian Red · Violet Hematite

- Olive Green

I am a huge fan of earth paints, but also have many paintboxes with specific palettes such as bright earth, classical and Zorn.

Photo © 2005-2010 Natural Pigments, LLC.

From Blockx:

- Their discontinued Manganese Blue (PB33) in full pans and tubes.

Oh, happy, happy!