The Magic of Granulating Watercolour Paints: My Top 3 Colours That Paint Themselves
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If you're looking for watercolour paints that create stunning texture and depth with minimal effort, granulating pigments might just become your new obsession. These special watercolour paints separate and react with water to create multiple colours and beautiful granulated effects from a single tube—they practically paint themselves.
Want an easy way to turn an ordinary painting into something a bit special?
Granulating colours might be the perfect solution!
The texture, mood, and magic they create requires no extra effort, which is exactly why I keep reaching for the same handful of colours again and again.
Watching beautiful watercolour pigments disperse on the page has always lifted my spirits, but these granulating colours take it to a whole new level. Today I'm sharing my three favourite granulating watercolour paints that every artist should know about.
What Makes Granulating Pigments So Special
If you're not familiar with granulating pigments, they are simply paints that have been made by the manufacturer by mixing a range of particular colours together. Because of the particular pigments that they have chosen, they will react in fascinating ways when they interact with the water. Very often, they will split out and become multiple colours in one.
So even though I've only had to get out one tube of paint, I've already added a whole lot of extra layers of colour and interest into the painting. It's a whole lot richer than if I had just used a flat, plain colour. And the other thing that happens with granulating pigments is that you actually get a bit of texture—odd little patches of really interesting surface quality that add depth to your work.
I created a little grid to make mini abstract landscape paintings using just one colour in each so that I could have a play with these colours. Want to see? I made a video for you… 🍿
My Top 3 Granulating Colours
1. Green Apatite Genuine (Daniel Smith)
This is the latest addition to my favourite paint colours, and it's one I keep reaching for because it's a really natural green, which is sometimes quite hard to come by in a set of pre-mixed greens out of the tube. You know, normally we mix them up with our yellows and blues to get the colour we like, but very often it can be a bit too much of a vibrant neon, kind of kiddie green.
But this is a lovely, rich, deep olive. What happens when it interacts with water on the page is magical—it separates out, and you have this wildly vibrant, neon green as well as the rich dark olive and a little bit of a rich brown as well.
I've reached for this colour all the time when I'm painting landscapes and florals and trees because it's often just what you're looking for: a little bit of rich, earthy brown, a bit of texture, as well as the fresh, vibrant shots of green every so often.
I also used it when I painted my Dappled Fruit in Watercolour series.
Why yes, it was a delightful series to paint! 😉
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2. Cascade Green (Daniel Smith)
This one is much more blue-toned because it's got so much more blue in it. I often use it if I'm trying to push a part of the painting into the background. For example, if I want to paint some more distant shrubbery, or if I have hills and mountains in the background, because I know this is automatically going to give me much more of a blue-toned green. That coolness is going to really convey the idea of that part of the painting representing something that's much further in the distance.
Where I find Cascade Green always shines is when I'm painting the ocean, because it splits into the yellows and blues that give you wonderful range of colour for painting any sort of ocean scene.
3. Moon Glow (Daniel Smith)
It's a bit of a running joke in Happy Painters Hub membership that I don't seem to be able to create a single painting without using Moonglow. Admittedly, I'm a bit of a purple nut, so anything that's purple, I absolutely love—but this is a kind of subtle, muted grey purple.
Even better than that, it actually separates out into lots of wonderful colors too. It's amazing that out of that purple, you get these little shots of a red color and even a pale, light, dusky blue, as well as that rich, deep, dark purple that's almost close to a Payne's Grey. It's like a really warm Payne's Grey.
I use it so often when I'm painting shadows because I like to use it as a shadow layer over something I've already painted—a shadow on a path or something like that.
Getting the Most From These Colours
What I really love about both of these green colours is the range of tone that you're able to get out of just the one colour. It's something that's true of all watercolour paints—we can get a wide range of tone out of it just by adding more water, because the more water we add, the more of the white paper we see through the transparent paint.
This range in the values that you can get out of one colour is more pronounced if you start with a really dark colour. Both the Green Apatite Genuine and the Cascade Green are really rich, deep, dark greens. If you have them nice and thick with very little water, you'll find that can put in a really strong, effective dark for you. But you can also use these colours for the palest hint of colour—just by putting the tiniest drop of the paint in a little bit of water, I can have a tiny bit of tone in the background, which gives me what almost feels like a whole new different colour.
The Key to Success: Patience
One of the keys, I think, with using these paints is to remember to be patient enough to let the paint do its thing. When you first put down these washes, sometimes it doesn't look like anything much is happening. But if you leave it and let it dry on its own, then you start to see these beautiful effects occurring.
Why I Love These Paints
These paints certainly aren't something that you absolutely need, but they might just be the little joys that you might love, especially if you paint for the fun of the painting process, not just for the final output. Although, as you can see, there's plenty from both of those with these particular colours.
They add interest and life to your painting, and there's every chance they're going to surprise and delight you along the way. So if you were looking for a little creative treat, this might just be the next addition to your paint palette.
Learning to let the paints do some of the work is really a good portion of loosening up your watercolour painting. I'm always trying to paint a little bit looser, and I find that very often, it actually just comes down to a mindset thing.
I wrote more about this mindset approach to loose painting in this blog here.
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