Da Vinci Dot Cards Part 5: Earth Tones & Neutrals

We’ve reached the final stretch! I’ll finish up the DV dot cards today by exploring the earth tones (DV has some of my favorites!) and neutrals like black, white, and gray. I’ll also answer the question: which Da Vinci colors are not in this dot card set?

Let’s start with the earth tones, which, unusually, I’m very excited about. I put a star (⭐) next to my favorites.

Earth Yellows

Top Row:

1. Nickel Azo Yellow (PY150)
2. Naples Yellow (PY35, PY43)
3. Naples Yellow Deep (PBr24, PY53)
4. Yellow Ochre (PY43)
5. Gold Ochre (PY42, PY83)

Bottom Row:

1. Raw Sienna (PBr7)
2. Raw Sienna Deep (PY42)
3. Raw Umber Natural (PBr7)
4. Raw Umber (PBr7)
5. Burnt Umber (PBr7)

Nickel Azo Yellow

Nickel Azo Yellow is often put with the yellows but I see why they put it with the earth tones; it acquires an earthy appearance in masstone. I like the hue of this NAY but when I painted it out from a tube on another occasion, I found it stinky. I might have just gotten a bad batch, but I thought I detected a slight odor when I rewet the dot, so I’m going to keep on giving this one a miss.

Naples Yellow

Naples Yellow is an opaque wheat color that used to be made from a discontinued toxic pigment, PY41. Nowadays, many companies offer a blend. Da Vinci’s is made from Cadmium Yellow (PY35) and Yellow Ochre (PY43). It does look like a nice yellowy wheat color but is easily mixed from any middle yellow and yellow ochre. I tend to avoid Cadmiums, so this isn’t going on my palette.

Naples Yellow Deep

Many brands makes a single-pigment approximation of Naples Yellow from PBr24, an opaque brown pigment. DV’s Naples Yellow Deep uses this pigment mixed with an opaque cool yellow, Nickel Titanium Yellow (PY53). Note that some of the materials say it’s only PBr24, but I confirmed with Da Vinci that it’s a blend with PY53. I’m not sure why they blend it because I find PY53 profoundly ugly, and I think that its weirdly greenish milky opacity gives this blend a chalkiness that is not typically present in a single-pigment PBr24.

⭐ Yellow Ochre

This is a nice yellow ochre made from natural yellow ochre pigment (PY43). DV obviously considers it a flagship color because it’s in a lot of mixes. This is a really good rendition of Yellow Ochre, classic in hue and lovely in its creamy tinting strength. I am not a huge yellow ochre fan generally, but in terms of preferred brands, DV is definitely ahead of the competition. I think this is a good buy.

Gold Ochre

Gold Ochre is a mix of the synthetic version of the yellow ochre pigment (PY42) plus Indian Yellow (PY83). This is a nice color if you like a brighter yellow ochre, which I do! However, again, it’s an easy mix from yellow ochre + any warm yellow, and I have concerns about the lightfastness of PY83.

⭐ Raw Sienna

I have recently fallen in love with DV’s Raw Sienna.

Over the past year I’ve gone hard on DS Monte Amiata Natural Sienna (MANS), a yellower, more granulating version of PBr7 that taught me what a useful pigment it is. It is transparent, so it mixes more nicely than Yellow Ochre; it resists going green, so it’s lovely in dilute in sunset skies; it makes wonderfully muted dry grass colors for winter; and it’s a great base color for sandstone and beaches.

I was nervous to switch to Raw Sienna because its more orangey color means it mixes differently, but I found it to actually be better in most cases! It’s a bit harder to make work in skies, hue-wise, but I like how smooth it is. It’s better for dry grass, even though dry grass is less orange, because adding a bit of blue mutes it to a nicer grayish tone than I can achieve with MANS (at least with the mixers on my palette). It’s better for sandstone, etc., because it matches the orange tones of the desert more. It’s great in light values for buff-colored animals. It’s just got a ton of use cases and is super-flexible as a mixer.

Raw Sienna Deep

I was initially excited by this as a MANS alternative because it matches the hue nearly exactly, but then I realized it is made from a yellow ochre pigment so it won’t have that PBr7 magic. Nah.

Raw Umber Natural

Raw Umber Natural is the traditional color that “Raw Umber” used to refer to, before we came to associate it with a darker brown in the modern era. This is a color I considered for dry grass before I learned how to mix with Raw Sienna. It’s close, but a bit too brown and hard to tilt in the right direction. I also found it difficult to paint out because it’s low-tinting.

Raw Umber

Raw Umber is the dark, cool color that most companies refer to now with the term ‘Raw Umber.’ I’m not really a fan generally, but this is a nice version of it; a cool barklike brown with reasonable tinting strength. It is a bit binder-heavy and can go shiny in masstone.

Burnt Umber

Similarly, Burnt Umber isn’t a color I use a lot. I initially really liked DV’s version shown here, because it has really pretty granulation, but I’ve come to realize that it’s pretty orangey compared to other brands’ versions. That makes it intuitive for mixing (since I usually mix with an earth orange), but kind of redundant on the palette (since I can mix a hue with colors I already usually have, e.g. some kind of earth orange + blue).

Earth Oranges & Reds

Top Row:

1. Burnt Sienna (PBr7)
2. Burnt Sienna Deep (PR101)
3. Terra Cotta (PR102)
4. Venetian Red (PR101)
5. Indian Red (PR101)

Bottom Row:

1. Brown Madder (PV19, PR101)
2. Violet Iron Oxide (PR101)
3. Sepia (PBk6, PBr7)

Most of these are variations of PR101, that multi-faceted iron oxide pigment.

Burnt Sienna

PBr7 Burnt Sienna is traditional but I find it a bit dull. Still, I think if you are a PBr7 diehard when it comes to your Burnt Sienna (the way I am for Raw Sienna), you will like this version.

⭐ Burnt Sienna Deep

Personally, I prefer the more orangey tones of the Burnt Sienna Deep, a transparent PR101 which is the equivalent of DS Transparent Red Oxide (PR101). As I’ve often mentioned before, TRO is one of my favorite colors; I just find it super-useful as a mixer for making a range of browns and grays (with blue).

DV Burnt Sienna Deep is quite orangey, somewhere between DS Transparent Red Oxide and DS Quin Burnt Orange in orangeness. It’s less granulating than both, but still gently granulating in masstone. I find DV’s BSD to be a great version of a great color!

Terra Cotta

Made from natural red iron oxide (PR102), this has a very similar hue to Burnt Sienna Deep but it is a bit more natural-looking and also opaque. A reasonable choice for an earth orange, but not as exciting to me BSD.

Venetian Red

I think of Venetian Red as being a true earth red, less orange than Burnt Sienna but not as violet as Indian Red. To me this one errs too far in the violet direction and just looks too similar to Indian Red to be worth another palette slot. Brownish and very granulating.

⭐ Indian Red

I avoided this color for a long time because of its opacity, but since I’ve started using DS’s I’ve kind of liked it. The granulation is interesting, it’s a nice pink in dilute, and it makes a wonderful gray with Cerulean Blue. (Note that DV lists this as transparent both on the dot card and the website, but it’s clearly opaque, like all Indian Reds. It is transparent in dilute but if that were the criteria, nothing would be opaque.)

Brown Madder

The name Brown Madder typically refers to PR206, a now-discontinued pigment. This hue is a mix of what looks like Indian or Venetian Red and a PV19 rose (or maybe Alizarin Crimson Quinacridone). PR206 is usually smooth (not granulating), so IMO this is not really a good replacement for that pigment. It looks like Venetian Red is supposed to, but if I’m going to get a Venetian Red I’d rather get a single-pigment one.

If I were DV I would have either discontinued Brown Madder or replaced it with a smooth brownish-red hue, maybe something involving PBr25 or PR179.

Violet Iron Oxide

Violet Iron Oxide is similar to Indian Red (PR101), and made with the same pigment, but much cooler, a deep dark violet-brown. It’s an interesting variation on Indian Red with a similar hue to Perylene Violet, only very granulating.

Sepia

Typically of colors called Sepia, this is a mix of a PBr7 (Raw Umber?) and black.

Neutrals

The final category of paints is ‘neutrals’ – flavors of white and black.

Neutral Tint

I briefly covered Neutral Tint back in the blues section; it’s a mix of Lamp Black, Phthalo Blue, and a PV19 rose or red.

It is gently granulating from the Lamp Black. The idea is for a dark gray/black that is neither warm nor cool. My personal preference is for the smoother Spinel Black, Pbk26 (which I use in the form of MaimeriBlu’s Neutral Tint), but this is a fine mixed neutral tint if you want a granulating one.

Black

There are two black single-pigment paints: Ivory Black (PBk9 – I wrote PBk6 but this is a mistake) and Lamp Black (PBk6). Both are granulating. Ivory Black is warmer (browner) and harder to work into a flat black masstone. Lamp Black is also browner than neutral, but closer to a pure black, and it gets darker. I find both of these a bit flat and weak, and would rather paint my darks with a Payne’s Gray or similar.

Davy’s Gray

A mix of black, white, and phthalo green, this is a greenish opaque gray that I have not much use for. If I were going to choose a Davy’s Gray, I think I would go for Winsor & Newton’s, which includes the traditional Slate Gray pigment (PBk19) as well as granulating Chromium Oxide Green (PG17) to form a more interesting, textured middle gray.

White

I don’t have much use for white watercolor pigments. I typically use gouache, which is more opaque, so it can be used for things like stars. White watercolor can really only be used to mix certain types of opaque pastels – which I sometimes want to do, but gouache works for that too.

It’s hard to tell on ivory paper, but the Chinese White was pretty streaky. Opaque Titanium White would be my pick if I had to choose one.

Titan Buff is a new addition, DV’s answer to DS Buff Titanium. This is a warmer, granulating color that is also listed as PW6. It looks like a mix of Titanium White and a PBr7 (e.g. Raw Sienna). Many artists like this color for sandstone, buff bird feathers, etc. but I think this color can look chalky and mixes horribly, and I prefer diluted Raw Sienna for all those use cases. At any rate, if you do like Buff Titanium, I see no reason not to choose the DV version instead; DV’s version seems fine, I just don’t like the color.

Shopping List

DV is already my primary brand of choice for earth tones! There are the ones I have, love, and would buy again:

• Yellow Ochre
• Raw Sienna (key!)
• Burnt Sienna Deep (key!)
• Indian Red

I’ve also given test runs to Gold Ochre, Raw Sienna Deep, Raw Umber, Burnt Umber, Terra Cotta, and found them “just okay.”

What’s missing?

As I mentioned in part 1, the dot cards have 110 colors; Da Vinci describes their catalogue at present as having “120+” colors. So what’s missing?

New Colors: Colors that came out after the dot card was released. These may be added to future dot cards:

• Stormy Blue (PB60/PR101) – This is a great idea, Indanthrone Blue + Burnt Sienna Deep is my preferred way to mix dark gray. I don’t need it, but I heartily endorse this mix.
• Denise’s Gray (PB36/PR101) – Same basic idea, but a lighter, color-separating version with Cerulean instead of Indanthrone Blue.

Discontinued Pigments: These colors are listed as “Out of Stock” on the website and were not in my dot card.

• Quinacridone Burnt Orange (PO48). Per the website: “This product is currently out of stock due to a worldwide discontinuation of PO48. Da Vinci Paints is currently reformulating this color and will have it available again soon.”
• Quinacridone Gold (PY150/PR206). Per the website: “This product is currently out of stock due to a worldwide discontinuation of PR206. Da Vinci Paints is currently reformulating this color and will have it available again soon.”

It seems that DV plans to have new hues of these available eventually, although I think personally Burnt Sienna Deep works as a substitute for both (alone for QBO or with PY150 for Quin Gold).

Iridescent Colors: DV offers several iridescent colors which are mixes of pigment + mica platelets.

• Iridescent Hansa Yellow (PY74 + mica)
• Iridescent Naphthol Red (PR170 + mica)
• Iridescent Phthalo Blue (PR170 + mica)
• Iridescent Phthalo Green (PG7 + mica)
• Iridescent Raw Sienna (PBr7 + mica)
• Iridescent Burnt Sienna (PBr7 + mica)

I don’t like iridescent colors, so I’m not mad about these being omitted. I didn’t even swatch out the ones on the Daniel Smith dot card.

This brings us up to 120 colors, so what’s the +?

DV may be leaving itself room to add additional colors, or they may be unsure whether to count the “Paul Jackson Signature Colors,” a series of colors available in 15ml tubes that appear to be the same (or basically the same) formula as existing colors but with different names (Hansa Yellow Deep is Marigold, Opus is Rockstar Pink, etc.) The only one that appears to be different from the main line is Jackson Blue, a mix of Cobalt Blue and Da Vinci Violet.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed my tour of (most of) the Da Vinci line! I was really glad they came out with a dot card – I just wish it had been a bit earlier before I had already collected so much of their line, but I think I may have ended up buying the same things anyway. DV is one of my favorite brands, and I’m very happy with the majority of the paints I’ve gotten from them. It helped my FOMO to learn what I’m missing!