This review was unsolicited and came as a surprise to us when it was brought to our attention last month. We would like to thank Gurukitty Studios for the time they took to test our paints and their understanding of what Colors of Nature is trying to do for artists and the environment.
Here are a few snippets of their review with some of the product comparison paintings that they did. To read the full review please click here.
Now, the idea of natural paints isn’t all that revolutionary, because watercolours are fairly natural, they are Gum arabic (from trees) for a binder and pigments which are often natural but you can get synthetics as well. The unnatural part of some paint brands is that they put other chemicals into the binder to help the gum arabic and to maintain a fairly consistent viscosity from colour to colour, among other things.
Colors of Nature has gone beyond just being natural and is making sure that every part of their paints production is not damaging to the environment and has any toxins removed or avoided..
Lets get down to the nitty gritty, I will say that I found these paints to be quite lovely to work with, very strongly pigmented, and behaved pretty much how watercolours should behave. They come in cute little pots (as seen in the first image), with the colour name right on the top of the lids...
The colour I use for skintones in my comics is Burnt Sienna, usually mixed with a little of something else (a tiny tinydot of sepia or something) to take down that glow look that pigment usually has (in most brands) and I mix violets and greens for shadows, depending on light source colour, I keep it simple. For the sake of testing I decided to just use Burnt Sienna in it’s unaltered state to compare side by side as a skin tone base.
Here is a chart with a few of the base colours compared with Winsor and Newton side by side, as you can see many of the colours are quite different, especially the last one, Raw Sienna.
So overall, I think this product, even though it’s new and needs refinement, is an amazing product. The consistency is nice, mix-ability is amazing. It’s a small company with a good set of values and is worth supporting.
The only things I would change are the packaging method (tubes or squeeze bottles instead of wide mouth pots) and the redundant colours in the line*.*Colors of Nature will be coming out with watercolor paints in tubes by September 2014.
Colors of Nature has added a natural Black Iron Oxide and is in the process of sourcing natural and non-synthetic pigments for a bright yellow, red, teal, pink and violet. Please visit our site often to see the latest additions to our product line or email us at sales@colorsofnature.com to be added to our mailing list.
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