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On a recent trip to Quebec I dropped into Omer Deserres art store and happened upon a set of Daniel Smith dot cards. A dot card is a printed sheet of watercolour paper on which actual dots of paint have been places and left to dry. All the information concerning lightfastness, staining, granulation and transparency is printed on the cards as well. The great thing about dot cards is that they let you see the true colour and not just a printed representation, which is never true to life.
Daniel Smith is a great brand of watercolours with some lovely colours. They produce a single dot card with 66 colours (including the PrimaTek authentic mineral pigment paints) and a set of 4 cards with their complete line of 238 colours. No, they are not paying me for this...
The instructions state that you can simply wet a brush and smudge around the dot itself to see the colour, but I wanted to see a larger swatch. So today being a stormy day with no power, I used what light I had to cut my dot cards into strips which I then glued to larger sheets of watercolor paper. I was able to lay out a larger sample of the colours with a gradient effect allowing me to get a better feel for how the colours handle. I was also able to better percieve the granulation effect of certain pigments.
Did I fall in love? You bet! However with Christmas coming fast and my January birthday just around the corner I think I'll hold back for today and give my list to someone else... ;-) Meanwhile I'll dream in colour...
My new favourite colours by Daniel Smith:
Transparent Pyrrol Orange
Indanthrone Blue
Perylene Scarlet
