Awesome article @jnart! You've brought up a lot of good points - pigments can affect many things and they all have their own strengths and weakness - it's up to us as the artists to tame it and make best out of it.
My Rembrant Artists' Watercolors
I've been thinking of getting W&N watercolor as my next set - I have old Rembrandt Artists' Watercolors gift from my grandma in law. It's nice, but I crave for a better brand so that I know which pigments they are. The old set I have came with a booklet with pigment information is all black from use and what makes it harder is that some boxes are empty so I don't know which are missing. Kinda fun to try and figure it out, but also frustrating too. ;) I mean it's kinda easy to tell if this one is cadmium yellow (due to its opaque nature), or if this one is french ultramarine, but for more fine shades, I can only generalize.
Anyways, I like how you did the exercise with all colors to see how they react. I think I'll do the same just to get a feeling since I'm used to oil.
Cheers!
Dm7🌞
Ha ha, I had the same problem with some of my pans. Didn't know what pigments they were. But in my opinion the best results are made with fewer pigments in a painting so I guess you could just look for what colors you miss. Yeah, the test are fun. I was lucky and got a lot of these a friend had made for lots of combinations. Because all pigments behave different when mixed add well. Have a great day!
Yup, lucky you!
Painting with fewer pigments - yup, that's very true. I've noticed that with oil painting - it's easier to deal with colors if you have fewer pigments anyways except for few cases where you're going for a specific effect or a vibrant color you can't achieve with a limited palette (for example, turquoise).
Either way, I'm a bit of color-aholic (haha) person myself so I like to experiment with pigments to get an overall feeling. It's super fun to see how they behave because they all are unique. Kinda hard when I don't know what they are though! xD
You too have a great day!
Dm7