What's in the Box!? QoR - The “High Chroma” Palette
Hello Fellow Arters and welcome back to Draw Daily!
QOR PAINTS
QoR, as a company, exists for a very unique reason. This is due to their research in the use of Poly(2-ethyl-w-oxazoline) as a substitute to the traditional use of gum arabic as the primary binder in watercolor paints. Poly(2-ethyl-w-oxazoline) is better known as Aquazol, so that is how I will be referring to it as it’s also a lot easier to read. The use of Aquazol is not new to the art industry as it has been widely used in the world of art preservation and restoration, primarily as adhesive, as a film or coating, and as paint.
Aquazol is a very stable polymer, perfectly safe for humans, and is non degradable meaning it can basically withstand any abuse a standard watercolor painting could expect to encounter during its lifetime. It is also completely water soluble and has strong adhesion capabilities, two benefits that make it ideal for watercolor paints; but, best of all perhaps, is that it has an unparalleled loading capability. This means that this binder can carry more pigment than other binders and that’s including gum arabic. These are artist quality paints meaning that they have great transparency, provide artists with bold, long lasting color, and are lightfast. Most of their colors have a lightfast rating of I, which is the best there is.
INITIAL THOUGHTS
When I started working with the QoR paints I was intrigued by the colors included in this palette. I mean, I love any excuse to play around with magenta and cyan. After I excitedly squeezed these paints into some pans, (so satisfying) I got my first real glance at them as I started swatching all six colors. They felt creamy when I ran my paint brush over the paint and left behind a smooth, even coverage on my Arches paper.
But, as I some what anxiously waited for the brilliantly colored paints to dry, I was left feeling rather underwhelmed as the bright, brilliant colors faded to a dull roar. Now this is something I wasn’t expecting because one of their main claims is that “the unique QoR formulation accentuates the luminosity and brilliance of pigments even after drying,” and if you remember what I said earlier, they are supposed to have a much higher loading capability than my gum arabic paints. However, I found it necessary to use more paint than I was accustomed to in order to achieve a more brilliant color that wouldn’t instantly fade as it dried.
These are the initial swatches, but you can compare them to my later swatches below.
VIOLET
DIOXAZINE PURPLE PV23
PV 23 is known for its intensity and staining capacity when used in watercolor; which explains its inclusion in this palette. Its light fastness varies from brand to brand, but typically only fades in paints that try to stretch the pigment too far. QoR lists their Dioxazine Purple as a semi-transparent, high staining, and excellently rated light-fast paint. Being a, nearly hopelessly, dark pigment means that the consistency from brand to brand is much more stable and also makes this a fantastic base for mixing blacks. Within this palette, if you mix it with Gold Green, you can achieve a very luscious black that is, of course, purple leaning.
RED
QUINACRIDONE MAGENTA PR122
Following Dioxazine Purple, Quinacridone Magenta, is also a vibrant, intense, and staining paint. However, historically speaking, this category of natural pigments, commonly known as Rose, Magenta, Carmine, or Maroon, are horribly fugitive colors. Here, QoR has managed an excellently rated light-fast paint, that is also transparent. This is one of my favorite hues to work with, as, when mixed, it creates a wide range of gorgeous colors. Within this palette, this color can mix a range of vibrant reds when combined with Transparent Pyrrole Orange.
YELLOW
GOLD GREEN PY129
Gold Green is possibly the most interesting color included on this chroma palette. Despite it’s name it is technically a yellow pigment. When diluted it creates a very interesting yellow, but when used in stronger mixtures, it is more of a dirty green. Although universally known as a light-fast color, QoR has listed it as merely “good”, as well as transparent, and only semi-staining. Within this palette, you can get some very interesting greens when mixed with this palette’s Cobalt Teal
GREEN
COBALT TEAL PG50
This Cobalt Teal is also a very interesting color, but in different ways than the Gold Green. PG50 can range from a dull forest green, to a near polar opposite, pastel blue green as you can see here. This is a very granulating color, and is seen most starkly when mixed with this palettes magenta. Besides it’s ability to create a wide range of greens when mixed with Gold Green, it is also capable of mixing some very interesting blues when combined with Dioxazine Purple.
ORANGE
QUINACRIDONE GOLD PO48/PY150
Quinacridone Gold is no longer a single pigment paint as it was originally made using PO49, but this pigment is no longer manufactured. Companies have had to replace this pigment and QoR’s Quinacridone Gold, like many others, consists of both PO48, and PY150. It is often listed as a replacement for yellow ocher or raw sienna, but it is a much more of a yellow gold than a brown when placed side-by-side. Like many other colors on this list, it is vibrant, transparent, and staining, but only has a relatively good light-fast rating. This color deepens anything you mix it with but can expand your range of dark browns when mixed with this palette’s Dioxazine Purple.
TRANSPARENT PYRROLE ORANGE PO71
This is the last color included in this palette, and it’s inclusion is quite clear as it is vibrant, transparent, and staining. It’s light-fastness is 1 of 13 colors included in the QoR watercolor line listed as “good”, as is the Gold Green. It does give this palette a bit of a boost as mixing Quinacridone Magenta and Green Gold can not produce a very strong orange on their own, and such rounds out this Chroma Palette. Mixing it with Quinacridone Gold, provides an even larger range of light, warm browns.
I do find this to be an incredibly interesting palette, and I understand the color selections they made. I can appreciate every color and their abilities to intermingle really well with one another. If I had to say anything about it, I feel that Green Gold, although a really brilliant color that can be diluted into more of a yellow, it could have easily been switched out for a more vibrant yellow. I can admit, it wouldn’t have been as interesting a palette without it, but it does mute the palette just a bit.
Here you can the palette laid out. Along the top I swatched out the colors, this time with a bit more paint than the first, so you can really see the power these paints have when you load the brush well.
To the bottom left we have a mixing chart. If you haven’t seen a chart like this before, it is like a multiplication table where the mixture of the two paints can be found at the intersection. As we move from left to right, however, the mixture leans towards the color on the vertical column and not the column at the top. So if we match the Purple from the left with the Magenta on the top, it will be more Purple than Magenta. Conversely, if we match Magenta along the left and Purple along the top, the mixture will be leaning towards Magenta.
Lastly, on the right we have two color wheel examples. The color wheel on the top represents a mixture of colors used to create a traditional color wheel, meaning that it is mixed to follow along from red, to orange, to yellow… green, blue, violet and back to red as well as the in-between colors'; red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet, and red-violet.
The second color wheel shows a mixture using a base of cyan, magenta, and yellow instead. We start with the Quin. Magenta just to the left-hand side of our usual red at the top, taking the space where our red-violet would normally go. I actually think I might have attempted to substitute the Quin. Gold for the Gold Green here, just to see what would happen, and, obviously, it just muddied the right side of the color wheel. And, lastly, the Cobalt Teal takes the spot of where blue-green would normally be.
It has been a little while since I made these charts, but I believe that the inner ring on the two color wheels just shows what these colors look like when they are mixed with a bit of black compared to what they look like out of the tube.
FIN
Over all, I think that the QoR paints are quite beautiful. If you want to get a set of paints that have been created thanks to modern science - have a go at these. There are worse options out there. I mean, I do like these better than Winsor and Newton; hands down. I don’t enjoy them enough to consider making QoR my go-to palette, but you really can’t go wrong with these guys either.
Thanks for going on this journey with me; and with that said…
That’s it for now. I’m MK, and this is DrawDaily!