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Why Do Artist Quality Paints Cost More?

Date: 03-09-2024
News, Tips & Info

For passionate recreational painters and discerning professionals, there are many qualities besides price that we consider when looking for paint. Paint should perform perfectly across a range of criteria: colour strength (in both strong and delicate tones), clean mixing qualities, it must handle properly under the brush, have good lightfastness, and be consistent – in short, “artist quality” or “professional” grade paint must delight the eye and the hand.

Why does one paint range cost more than another? We supply paints in three broad levels of price and quality, and for each, we source the best paint possible.

Our student paints offer the best colour at an affordable price. These paints are great for getting to grips with a new media on a limited budget. Our Pebeo Studio Acrylic, XL Oil colour, and Watercolour ½ Pan Set ranges out-perform many similarly priced brands, and are the perfect introduction to painting. The price compromise is that they have less pigmentation, less pure binders, smaller ranges of colour, and lightfastness is not so exacting as that of the more expensive paint ranges.

At the intermediate level, genuine artist pigments are used in the paint, often as “single-pigment colours” (more on that later), but without expensive pigments, such as pyrrole or genuine cobalt and cadmium. The binders are stronger, providing more durable paint films, and the colours have good lightfastness. Schmincke Akademie Acrylic, Oil colour, and Watercolour ranges are suitable for professional use, while the limited colour assortment keeps them in an affordable, single price group.

 

 

The first considerations of Professional Artists’ Colours is to quality and colour variety. These are paints that are nuanced and individual, made from the best materials available, to satisfy the most exact artistic demands. Let’s take a look at what makes these paints not only more expensive than our previous two levels, but so much more satisfying to work with.

 

 

Pigment is the colour component of paint, and in professional paints it is used in the highest concentration possible. It is clear in this image from Schmincke of the direct correlation between quantity of pigment and quality of paint.

Pigment comes from a variety of sources, both natural and synthetic. Some are inexpensive because they are plentiful, such as those derived from iron; and some are very precious due to their scarcity (such as cobalt) or difficulty in production (pyrrole). While the latter aren’t used in student paint, professional paint ranges make use of all pigments, and this divides the paint range into “series” or price groups.

 

 

The most brilliant, pure colours are made from just a single pigment, rather than a combination of two or more. These “single pigment colours” are the richest expression of colour, and mix to produce the cleanest, most easily adjustable hues. In contrast, student colours are usually mixtures of two or more pigments (often with white added), and as a rule of thumb, mixing more than four pigments together quickly leads to mud. To create extensive paint ranges where up to 70% of their colours are single pigment, German producer Schmincke must use around 250 different pigments! Needless to say, their Pigment Room is one of my favourite places to visit.

The binder is the “vehicle”, carrying the colour to your surface and depositing it as an adhesive and durable film. The clarity and strength of the binder is paramount in professional paint. It must be of the highest quality and formulation, and is used pure, with no filler or dilution (an easy way to make acrylic paint more cheaply is to add lots of water to the binder).

 

 

Pure acrylic resins, each with specific properties, are combined to make the binder for professional acrylic paints. Golden Paints in New York use up to a dozen acrylic resins in their paint ranges, in combinations that result in their unique colour ranges, like Fluid, OPEN, and SoFlat Acrylics. These ranges are only possible through an intimate knowledge of acrylic chemistry: founder Sam Golden was involved in the first developments of artist acrylics in the late 1940s, and today they still lead the way in acrylic innovation.

Watercolours delicacy derives from the use of natural plant resins as binder. Only selected vintages of high-quality Gum Arabic from Kordofan, Sudan, are used in Schmincke’s Horadam Watercolours. This prized binder not only gives brilliance and clarity to these colours, but also perfect re-solubility.

Oil colour uses plant oils as binder, predominantly linseed oil, with smaller amounts of safflower, poppy, and walnut, depending on the individual recipe of the colour. The first pressing of linseed yields the most precious oil, which over time oxidises into a durable adhesive film. This precious “cold press” oil is especially light and supple, providing the buttery characteristics for professional Oil colours like Old Holland, made to the same recipes since 1664.

 

 

The manufacturing process can be lengthy when producing the best paint. Colour is milled several times to achieve the right consistency, colours may need to “ripen” before tubing, less popular but artistically important colours need to be filled by hand, and the research and development of a paint range takes years before it reaches the artist. These costly measures ensure a remarkable paint!

Once combined, both pigment and binder are evaluated for lightfastness, to determine how resistant to fading the colour is. All artist quality colours are made to the maximum lightfastness, except for some colours that artists love too much, despite their fugitive nature, to let go of.

Here are some side-by-side examples of professional artist quality and student colours.

 

 

Genuine Cobalt Blue is a rare and precious pigment, providing an intense, almost neutral blue. On the left, it mixes cleanly with yellow to produce strong green shades. Due to the expense, student colour will approximate the original by mixing cheaper pigments together; this is usually called a “hue”. As we see on the right, student quality Cobalt Blue Hue, mixed with the same yellow pigment, produces a much smaller gamut of greens, which tend towards a greyish green.

 

 

White pigment is added to many student colours as an extender, so dark mixtures are difficult to achieve. In the image above, a green has been mixed using professional colours (left) and student colours (right) from an equivalent blue and yellow. Each green has been tinted with white: zinc then titanium on the left (professional), and titanium on the right (zinc is not available in student ranges). Due to the white pigment added to the student yellow, at full strength that green only matches the zinc white tint of the professional grade.

 

 

Even relatively inexpensive pigments such as Titanium White and Ivory Black cost money, and to keep costs down, the pigment concentration of all colours is much lower in a student range than for a professional colour. The black and white examples above shows the difference in depth and opacity between the professional (left) and student (right) colours, even with these simple colours.

Some pigments have a much higher “tinting strength” than others, i.e. they will more powerfully affect a mixture than other colours. The highest tinting strength colours are the Phthalocyanine blues and greens. In professional grade paint, just a speck of Phthalo will drastically affect a mix, as their true nature is allowed to shine. Student grade paints use some of these pigments in a much lower concentration, while avoiding the more expensive “blue shade” and “yellow shade” and turquoise variants of this very useful set of pigments.

 

Having your pigment bound in a pure binder enables you to play around with dilution with much less concern for film failure. The professional quality acrylic on the left has been diluted with water at a 1:1 ratio, and we can see the film looks strong and cohesive. The student quality on the right has been diluted to the same ratio and, because the binder had already been diluted at manufacture, the paint film is showing signs of losing its surface adhesion.

 

 

The emphasis on quality applies equally to professional grade mediums. The blue on the left has been extended 1:5 acrylic to professional quality gel, and the colour remains bright and lustrous. With the same ratio of student grade gel on the right, the colour is milky and lacks the same brilliance.

 

 

While we may think of earth as a readily available material, genuine natural earth pigments are not so common, and available only in professional grade paints. They have a soft warmth to them, like these natural earth colours in the Horadam Watercolour range. Student and Intermediate paint ranges make use of synthetic iron oxides, which are very versatile, but tend to produce less subtle hues.

A customer once said to me that they needed all the help they could get, so buying professional grade paint made perfect sense, as they looked great no matter how they applied them! Our materials are one of the few things we can control when it comes to painting, and good quality materials will go further and look better.

No matter what your level, Gordon Harris work hard to source the best materials for you. Our staff are happy to help you choose, and don’t forget to check our blog pages for plenty of arty goodness, like this article on colour mixing https://www.gordonharris.co.nz/blog/98-approaching-colour-mixing

 

 

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