Brand Overview: Daniel Smith

Brand Overview is a series where multiple posters give their opinions on a brand. Previously, we did Schmincke Horadam.

Daniel Smith is a professional grade watercolor manufacturer from the United States. Originally founded as an art supply store in 1976 by the printmaker Dan Smith, they are now a manufacturer of watercolor, gouache, and oil paints with wide availability worldwide. At the time of this writing, they offer 272 watercolor colors, including their main Extra Fine line and the special effects lines Luminescent (shimmery mica) and PrimaTek (gemstone-inspired). They offer tubes, pans, and watercolor sticks, all of which use a gum arabic-based binder and synthetic flow agents. They are vegan, containing neither ox gall nor honey.   

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Our hot takes and favorite colors

Logan

Daniel Smith is one of the most widely available brands in the US; I see it everywhere! This was my first professional grade line and it holds a special place in my heart. What I love about them is that they have a large range which covers most of the pigments you’d ever want to try; some unusual and special colors; some of my favorite colors; and beautiful granulating earths. However, I’ve come to regard some of their marketing practices as suspect, particularly in the Primatek line, and I also side-eye the way they hoard rare pigments: anytime a pigment is discontinued, every other brand loses access immediately, and Daniel Smith keeps smugly offering it for twenty years.

Special recommendation: I started my professional collection with the Daniel Smith Essentials Set and I still think it is a great way for beginners to get in the game.

You know how at the end of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Bill and Ted’s future selves come to play at the Battle of the Bands and tell the crowd, “We’ve been all around the world. We’ve been to the past and the future. And we’ve learned: the best place to be… is here. The best time to be… is now!” (God, what a good movie.) Anyway, that’s a metaphor for how I’m feeling lately about paint. I’ve been to every brand, I’ve tried every pigment, and more and more, I find myself coming back to these starter set colors! Especially: 

• New Gamboge (PY97, PY110) is a platonic ideal option for the yellow-orange slot: bright enough for autumn leaves, a little more yellow than unmixed PY110, more range than PY65.
• Pyrrol Scarlet (PR255) is such a strong and lightfast orange-red. I didn’t initially like its opacity, but diluted it’s gorgeous in a sunset mix. 
• Phthalo Blue GS is a super versatile blue, and DS’s Phthalo colors are so strong! I love a very strong phthalo because you can use it for mixing darks as well as brights. In this set, Phthalo Blue GS + Pyrrol Scarlet make black!

Get the Daniel Smith Essentials Set.

Aside from the starter set, my favorite Daniel Smith colors are my core earth triad.

• Indanthrone Blue (PB60) is particularly good in the DS line because its hue is so violet-leaning (similar to Sandra’s love of Schmincke Delft Blue). [Buy Indanthrone Blue]
• Monte Amiata Natural Sienna (PBr7), often referred to on this blog as ‘MANS’, a granulating raw sienna with a very cheerful yellow color. [Buy MANS]
• Transparent Red Oxide (PR101), a very granulating earth orange with a pleasant rust color unmixed and the capacity to mix gorgeous browns and grays with any blue. I love the texture it creates with Indanthrone Blue in tree bark. [Buy TRO]

Colors to avoid:

• The Primatek line doesn’t list the pigments they use, which I find to be deceptive. They claim to be gemstones but I think they’re just standard pigments with dirt in them. 
• While some of the earths are beautiful, some are extremely weak, like Italian Burnt Sienna. Using the dot card can help identify the duds. 

Sandra

Daniel Smith is very expensive in Europe. I try to avoid it when I find the same color and/or pigment in other brands. Plus, I don’t like the weird texture in their transparent colors. But their wide range of granulating earth colors is outstanding. 

My favorite colors are:

• Monte Amiata Natural Sienna, PBr7, is a nice earthy yellow. I hate yellow ochres, but with MANS I finally found an earth yellow I like. Thank you, Logan, for influencing me!  [Buy MANS!]
• Deep Scarlet, PR175, fills the slot for a muted transparent red. It speaks to me more than its alternatives PR206 or PR179. Daniel Smith has the best version of a watercolor made from this pigment. I like it in urban scenes and for mixing non-granulating darks with PB60 or Phthalo Blue Red Shade. [Buy Deep Scarlet]
• Indian Red, PR101, is a color I bought because Jane Blundell suggests it in her ultimate mixing palette. As a beginner I didn’t like it at all. It was too strong. And I didn’t know what to use it for. But now I love it. The muted purples it mixes with blues are to die for. And on its own it’s perfect for muted florals. [Buy Indian Red]

Colors to avoid:

• Transparent colors, if you like smooth colors without texture. Except when you think that there is no better version of the paint elsewhere (looking at you, PR175).
• The Primatek range is overpriced.

Lynne

While Daniel Smith was not my first professional brand, it quickly became my preference. Initially it was because of recommendations by artists whose work I liked, Jane Blundell, Brenda Swenson, Shari Blaukopf, Maria Coryell-Martín, to name a few. But then it was simply the colors. There are so many to choose from, and overall, the pigment load is high, making it easy to produce bold, striking contrast. Colors like Phthalo Blue GS (PB15:3), Phthalo Green (PG7), and Prussian Blue (PB27) pack quite a punch and just seem to get deeper and richer than other brands, which I really like. I have never purchased their pan paints, but find the tubes to pour consistently and rewet nicely with just a few exceptions. They are also very available to me in the US and fairly affordable here.  I have a lot of favorites in this line because they are the foundation of my go-to palette.

Favorite colors:

• Monte Amiata Natural Sienna (PBr7) is my consistent choice of earth yellow. It has a combination of transparency and glow that’s not found in other raw siennas or yellow ochres. It’s a perfect landscape color, but also comes in handy in skies, for stucco buildings, and with a touch of Quin Rose, a variety of textured skin tones.  [Buy MANS!!]
• Cobalt Teal Blue (PG50) is a color I simply love to look at for the joy it brings me. The DS version is very granulating compared to some others, and not as opaque. It leans more green than other brands as well. Early in my watercolor journey I painted a series of fiestaware teacups with this color, and the same pigment from a few other brands and there was no competition for me. It’s been my light turquoise ever since and creates beautiful gradients in skies with both cobalt and ultramarine blue. [Buy Cobalt Teal Blue]
• Organic Vermillion (PR188), filling my warm red color slot, is slightly more transparent and peach than its close competitor PR255. It was a Shari Blaukopf recommendation and it really works for me. I find it much easier to avoid the blob of red that I used to struggle with when using PR255. More recently I’ve become more adept at using pigments with a higher level of opacity, but PR188 has been tried and true for me. While some other brands do produce it, I’m happy with the DS version. [Buy Organic Vermilion]
• Sap Green (PG7+PO48+PY150) is a convenience green with which I have a love-hate relationship. Love, because it makes my outdoor sketching life significantly easier given how often it’s filled with foliage. Hate, because I prefer spontaneously mixed secondaries  over those from a tube, and this is not only a secondary color, but also contains multiple pigments, so makes me feel like I’m REALLY cheating. All of that being said, sap green is called a convenience color for good reason, and the DS version hits a particular sweet spot, not too yellow nor too olive, and is easily adjusted to add variety in my foliage. Whenever I remove it from my palette, it finds its way back. [Buy Sap Green]

Colors to avoid: I find all of these colors too weak in the DS lineup. All of them are binder heavy, dry hard as a rock, and are difficult to rewet toget a decent amount of pigment on the brush. 

• Cerulean Blue (PB35)
• Potters Pink (PR233)
• Viridian (PG18)

Hanna

When I think of Daniel Smith, the main thing that pops into my mind is their marketing.

This can be hilarious or nonsensical (see below) or, as Logan noted, suspicious. There is the Primatek controversy; there is also the fact that when I visited the Daniel Smith booth at an art market, the person running it threw shade on every other major brand. Which shocked me, because people at the other booths tended to be enthusiastic about all watercolours, even their competitors.

The second thing I think of is their price. I understand why they are expensive in Europe, most brands are expensive far from where they are made–but they are expensive in the US, too! 

Because of the above, they are not the first brand I think of when I need a specific common colour. (I have used a lot of DS because of lucky ebay purchases, so I know they are nice enough – reasonably vibrant, dispersive, and not particularly prone to lifting – with the main downside being that some, especially the earths, shrink as they dry to the point of falling out of pans.)

They do, however, have a huge catalogue with a strong focus on granulation, and they make several granulating paints I like that I have been unable to find dupes for in other brands. Which brings me to my favourites:

• Monte Amiata Natural Sienna: I like bright paints and granulating paints. This one is both! Even the marketing description is pretty level-headed. Bring a natural glow to your palette – yes, this paint does that! [Buy MANS!!!]
• Transparent Red Oxide: Do not be influenced by the marketing description, which seems to suggest a torrid romance with Lamp Black:

A highly transparent burnt orange loves to mingle with the lamp black, settling in beneath it, mixing with it to create tones of cinnamon and tobacco. Fire seems to dance on the walls as its peach undertones nestle in with the black.

This earth orange (again) shines on its own, and makes amazing granulating neutrals with purply blues. [Buy TRO!]

• Cobalt Teal Blue: The most granulating, most green-leaning light Cobalt Teal I know of. Great for mixing light spring greens and shimmering greys; adds beautiful pops of colour. But the marketing description says that as an inorganic pigment, it is considered non-staining (or low-tinting) and ideal for glazing methods which upsets me because 1. You want a STAINING pigment when glazing and 2. Tinting ans staining are different things. (Also, I would not glaze with it too much, as it will mess with the granulation.) [Buy Cobalt Teal Blue!]
• Manganese Blue Hue: Surprise surprise, another bright granulating colour! I use it outside as an uncomplicated sky colour on bright days, and, similarly to teal blue, in various greyish mixes. The description is both good and bad. A good substitute for Cerulean Blue, Manganese Blue Hue offers an additional advantage: it mixes well with non-staining, semi-tranparents [sic] to create a mottled texture in underlying colors.
  It IS a good substitute for cerulean – I think it is closer to the sky colour I am trying to mimic, and can be mixed with UB to dupe cerulean – but, of course, cerulean will make mottled mixes too. With many colours, not just “non-staining semi-tranparents”. [Buy Manganese Blue Hue]

As for colours to avoid, I completely agree with Logan. The Primateks might look interesting, but their general appearance can be replicated with pretty basic mixes that are cheaper and IMO handle better (Kim Crick gives hints on many mixes). The only one I still sometimes use is Sodalite. And yes, some of the earths are very meh. I was very unimpressed with Light Raw Sienna.