Daniel Smith Sugilite Genuine tested in 110 mixes

Hi everyone,

As autumn is here, I am starting to turn towards more neutral colours. The painting I just finished is a bright orange and saturated blue Strelitzia, the end of summer on Patreon. Now these bright hues are gone and the browns and greys are coming in, with the occasional surge of automnal red. I have my eye on some stunning mushrooms growing in my lawn: in the rain they look like tarnished metal. The squirrel is busily burying all sorts of things, which I will find out when the walnut and oak trees start growing next year, but so far has managed to avoid destroying the mushroom crop. He always checks all around before burying something, making sure that no one is watching and waiting to steal his bounty. Then he digs at light speed, taps the soil to flatten everything when it’s over, then adds a dead leaf on top of the scarred grass to camouflage the site. After all this he sits on it and looks like nothing happened, like there’s definitely nothing precious at all buried under his little butt, and he’s super breezy about the whole affair. I love watching him…

Back to neutral colours. I have lots of greys and blacks to test. Daniel Smith sent me their whole range, so I could try them and decide which ones get a permanent place in my palette. I never use ready-made greys and blacks in my botanical work, but now I have started painting landscapes, I am enjoying playing with them. My landscapes are the complete opposite to my botanical work: neutral colour schemes, nothing more saturated than a Nickel Azo Yellow, greys, blacks and blues with a hint of turquoise, and semi-abstract brushwork in soaking washes. I am having a lot of fun!

One of the greys I started playing with is Sugilite Genuine. It is made from a crushed semi-precious stone. I actually have a necklace made of Sugilite. It’s a stone I really like. So I was curious about the paint. It’s a pale grey and even at its thickest and darkest it doesn’t go very dark. Certainly nothing like a Neutral Tint or Payne’s Grey. It has some violet undertones, making it a subtle, pale mauvy grey. It is absolutely beautiful. On top of that, it shimmers. Not like glitter or anything too garish. Just a hint of shimmer that shows more or less depending on the light and the angle you look at it. There is a true magical feel to it. I mixed it with every single colour in my palette and ended up with 110 variations.

Unfortunately, although I have completely and utterly fallen in love with the paint, in my botanical work there is little use for it. Honesty seed heads, insect wings, that’s about it. However, I have added Sugilite to my landscape palette. Moonlight, skies, snow and water seem to be the subjects that come back the most often in my musings, and Sugilite will be useful for all of these.

I wish Daniel Smith would replicate the colour without the sparkle. I would use it a lot in all my work. In very thin washes, the grey disappears and only the shimmer remains. So it looks like you can take the colour out of the shimmer, but you can’t take the shimmer out of the colour…

Here is the video of all the tests and the review:

Happy Painting!
Sandrine