Quinachridone Purple

At Avon Valley Artists last week, Peter was kind enough to give me a sample of Daniel Smith's Qinachridone Purple. I am no expert on paint composition, but Peter said that this is the first purple with a single pigment, and not made up of a red and a blue pigment. The assumption is, therefore, that it will be fresher and cleaner than previous productions. I promised I would give it a go to see whether I liked it or not.

I deliberately chose a flower with a deep purple skirt, to test its potential, but must admit that painting Fuchsias has never been very successful with me. Not sure I have cracked it this time, but at least I tested the paint.

I reverted back to the 'Fabriano Artistico' paper as I did not want the problems that I have been having with the 'Leonardo' to cloud my judgement.

I used a mixture of Quinachridone Purple and Opera Pink (both by Daniel Smith) for the majority of the flower painting. I had thought that the purple would veer more to the blue than the magenta, but I am not sure why I should have had that preconceived idea, and it certainly did not detract from the quality of the paint. It did mean, however, that in the very dark spots under the purple petals, I did add a bit of dark blue to give the darkest shadows.

I had enough paint from Peter to do the top two flowers and then I had to attempt to mix my own equivalent to finish the third , lower flower. In the original painting, the difference is quite obvious and this final flower is heavier than the other two.

I think it is a lovely colour for a flower painter and am definitely having some of that. I have ordered it from SAA as Jackson's do not yet have it on their list. I am hopefully painting Elderberries at AVA next week and I hope it will have arrived by then.

I am sure there will be more technical information available from Peter when he does his critique of the colour, and if you are interested keep an eye on his blog as I am sure it will be soon, after he has had the chance to use it. He can be found at www.watercolourfanatic.blogspot.co.uk