Artist Palette Profiles: Jean Haines

I’ve wanted to do a palette profile of Jean Haines ever since I first heard of her in the context of her love of Schmincke Transparent Orange, from Peter Ward’s blog. Haines is an expressive, emotional painter who bold splashes of color belie her ability to paint realistic flowers and people and landscapes seemingly spontaneously drifting out of spilled color.

Haines is obviously very fascinated by color, so I have long thought it would be interesting to profile her palette. When I’ve looked for her colors online, though, all I can find is her Daniel Smith Master Artist Watercolor Set, which is an interesting selection, but somehow I couldn’t believe it was her main/recommended beginner palette. Recently, I got ahold of her 2010 book Colour & Light in Watercolour, the same one Peter Ward reviewed, so I can finally compare the colors she recommended pre-Daniel Smith ambassadorship to the DS set. Are they different??

Colors in Colour & Light in Watercolour

Yes!

Unsurprisingly, in her book, Haines recommends a fairly straightforward, primary-focused selection. She is English, so her examples are all from Winsor & Newton, though she also recommends DS, Schmincke, and Art Spectrum depending on what’s easy for you to get ahold of.

JH selection (WN)	Color Slot
Cobalt Turquoise Light (PG50)	Turquoise
Perylene Maroon (PR179)	Maroon
Cobalt Blue (PB28)	Blue
Rose Madder (NR9)	Pink/Rose
Cadmium Orange (PO20)	Orange
Cadmium Yellow (PY35)	Yellow
French Ultramarine (PB29)	Earth Blue or Dark Blue
Alizarin Crimson (PR83)	Crimson
Quinacridone Gold	Gold
Winsor Violet (PV23)	Violet
Yellow Ochre	Earth Yellow

She also acknowledges using two DS colors sparingly:

• Cascade Green (PB15, PBr7)
• Perylene Red (PR178)

Some interesting things to notice here:

• 11 (or 13, counting the DS ones) is an unusual number of paints. I counted twice to make sure I didn’t miss one.
• I presented this in book order, which I find pretty random, but I do think it’s generally a paintable palette containing three yellows (primary, earth, gold), three reds (pink, crimson, maroon), three blues (middle, dark/granulating, and light/turquoise) for a wide mix-and-match triad selection, plus an orange and a violet.
• No greens, limited earths (depending on if you count Yellow Ochre).
• No granulating colors except French Ultramarine (which is very granulating).
• Some very fugitive paints – not only Alizarin Crimson (PR83) but the even more fugitive genuine Rose Madder (NR9)
• Transparent Orange (PO71), the color I most associate her with, is not here. Cadmium Orange is, but it’s much more opaque. Perhaps she hadn’t yet discovered Transparent Orange or felt that it was at the time too niche of a color to recommend.
• Generally I associate her work with splashy, smooth, high-tinting colors, and there are some (e.g. quin gold, diox violet), but not as many as I would have though (no phthalos for example).

Colors in the “Jean Haines” Daniel Smith Master Artist Set

Set Color	Book Equivalent	Color Slot
Nickel Azo Yellow (PY150)	Quin Gold?	Gold
Aussie Red Gold (PY150, PO48, PR209)	Quin Gold?	Gold or Earth Orange
Opera Pink (PR122 + fluo.)	Rose Madder?	Pink
Quinacridone Magenta (PR202)	Rose Madder?	Magenta
Imperial Purple (PR122, PB29)	Winsor Violet?	Purple
Moonglow (PG18, PB29, PR177)		Gray
Lunar Blue (PB15, PBk11)		Earth Blue
Cascade Green (PB15, PBr7)	Mentioned in book	Green
Green Apatite Genuine		Green
Undersea Green (PY150, PO48, PB29)		Green

A person’s taste can change and evolve, of course, so it’s certainly possible that Haines no longer uses the exact colors she named in 2010, but I would expect to see more than one (1) color overlap.

• Cascade Green belongs here – a color she liked so much in 2010 that she named it even though it was not in the brand she typically used.
• But why not also include Perylene Red, a color she also went out of her way to include in the book?
• For that matter, as she is associated with PO71, that is also a color that can be included in DS.
• Nickel Azo Yellow and Aussie Red Gold are both sort of similar to Quin Gold, but why not just have Quin Gold?
• Imperial Purple is sort of similar to Dioxazine Violet, but why not just have Carbazole Violet?
• Opera Pink and Quin Magenta are both reasonable alternatives to the lighter and darker shades of Rose Madder, which DS doesn’t offer; OP is fugitive, but clearly Haines doesn’t care.
• Why so many greens?
• Why so many granulating colors?
• Where are staples with clear DS equivalents like French Ultramarine, Cobalt Blue, Cobalt Teal, Alizarin Crimson, Perylene Maroon, etc.?

Unlike Haines’ book palette, I don’t find this to be a paintable palette, because it’s very focused on specialty colors and lacks basic palette staples. It does not contain reasonable workhorse primary colors. Moreover its specialty colors aren’t even ones that particularly remind me of Haines; 70% of them are highly granulating, compared to ~18% of Haines’ original book palette.

It’s become abundantly clear to me that, for the Master Artist series, DS doesn’t directly translate artists’ actual preferred palettes into DS colors and release them. Rather I suspect they make a selection of colors they would like to sell, and release them under various artists’ names. It is unclear how much, if any, involvement the named artist has in this process. Did Haines choose these colors as particularly exciting ones from the DS catalogue? If so, did DS give her a limited selection to choose from, or have her change any of her selections on the grounds that the more useful colors were already being released in someone else’s palette? Did DS simply make their own selection and have Haines rubber stamp them? We’ll never know.

As with so many of DS marketing choices, it’s not that they’re overtly, technically lying. They never said “We take the artist’s actual chosen preferred colors and release them as a palette so you can paint like that artist.” But surely this is the implicit promise, or what would be the point?

In what sense is the “Jean Haines Master Artist Palette” related in any way to Jean Haines?

Conclusion

Well, this turned into a rant/criticism of the Daniel Smith Master Artist line as a whole! I would say that the DS Jean Haines Palette is not my favorite, and smacks of a random collection paints that were otherwise not selling, but the palette Haines uses in the book is perfectly serviceable and feels well suited to painting in the splashy style Haines is known for.