What is Luminescent? PrimaTek? Quinacridone?

What is Quinacridone Color?

The Quinacridone family of colors (pronounced kwin ak’ ri doan) are high-performance pigments with outstanding transparency and color intensity. Ranging from pink to purple and gold to sienna, they are lightfast with a clarity traditional pigments cannot match. These modern synthetic colors were created in the 1960s for use in automotive paints, where brilliance and lightfastness are essential.

In the early 1990s, Daniel Smith became the first maker of artists’ paints to introduce a full line of quinacridone colors. Ideal for watercolor painters, quinacridones combine the power of staining pigments with the luminosity of transparent pigments. They produce glowing washes, have incredible depth of color and can be lifted easily while still wet. Understandably, quinacridones have become some of our most sought-after colors.

What is Luminescent Color?
Each Luminescent pigment has its own hue and properties that create an expansive range of color choices for painters. In addition to hue they can also be described by four pigment types—iridescent, interference, duochrome and pearlescent.

Iridescent colors reflect light directly, like a mirror reflection, resulting in intense color and sheen. Interference colors refract and scatter light; they take on different hues depending on where the light is striking and the viewer’s point of view. Duochromes bounce between two different colors depending on the reflective light. Pearlescent colors add an opalescent sheen.

What is PrimaTek® Color?
PrimaTek watercolors retain many of the natural qualities of their source minerals. In artist’s paint, the size of the pigment particle is very important—it determines the amount of light that is reflected and, therefore, the intensity of the paint. Standard pigments are produced in labs and adhere to a specific size. When we develop PrimaTek pigments, we mill the minerals to a point where the color is optimized. Pigments that are too large are gritty and, if we mill too far, the color can appear dull. The resulting characteristics of these paints vary based on the mineral. Most have a natural luminosity and many granulate.