The Secret of Opus Essential Watercolours

I recently moved to Vancouver, B.C., Canada from the U.S. The local southwest-B.C. chain art store, Opus, carries most of my favorite watercolor paint brands – Holbein, Daniel Smith, Winsor & Newton, Schmincke – but notably absent is my very favorite, Da Vinci. Nor could I find it offered anywhere in the entire country to ship! So, I made sure to stock up on my favorite Da Vinci colors before I left the States, with no plan for what to do when I ran out. Gradually replace them with other brands, I guess? Only, Da Vinci makes the only Cobalt Blue I like, the only Cerulean Blue I like, and several other of my top-brand picks. (Just see my post My Favorite Watercolor Paints by Brand.) What to do??

The only watercolor paint brand at Opus I’d never tried was their house brand, Opus Essential Watercolours. My last, best hope was that this brand would carry some good alternatives for my Da Vinci staples.

And I had good reason to hope that this would be true. Opus watercolours have a good local reputation. And when I began to explore Opus’ catalog, I noticed some curious similarities with Da Vinci’s:

• The smallest tube size is 8ml, the same as Da Vinci; most brands’ smallest size is 5ml.
• Opus marketing copy stresses “small batch processing”, “finely milled pigments,” and “made in North America,” while DV marketing copy emphasizes “small batch processing,” “finely milled pigments,” and “made in USA.”

They also offer a strikingly similar set of color mixes and hues, including these highly specific mixes:

• Alizarin Gold (PR177, PY42)
• Gamboge Hue (PY3, PY42)
• Gold Ochre (PG7, PY42)
• Hooker’s Green Dark, Sap Green, and Olive Green (all PG7 + PY42)
• Indigo (PB27, PV19)
• Lavender (PV15, PW6)
• Leaf Green (PG7, PY65)
• Lilac (PV19, PB29, PW6)
• Naples Yellow (PY35, PY43)
• Payne’s Gray (PB27, PBk6)
• Permanent Quinacridone Magenta (PV19, PB29)

A few of these being the same could be a coincidence, but all of them? The same names and exact same pigment combinations? I mean, nobody else offers Alizarin Gold. And nobody else makes Indigo in that bizarre way.

The coincidences mounting up, I began to wonder:

Could Opus Essential Watercolours… be… Da Vinci???

Opus doesn’t offer a dot card, so I couldn’t personally test widely to confirm (without investing a lot of money). So, I tried two colors from the Opus line that I not only love in Da Vinci’s catalog, but find fairly distinctive in their formulation:

• Alizarin Crimson (Quinacridone). While it’s not unusual for brands to offer permanent Alizarin Crimson alternatives, it’s unusual for it to be made from PV19 only; most brands mix in PR179 or something. This is a deep crimson red that is extremely intense, transparent, easy to grade, and lovely. Not as dull as most brands’, its only possible flaw is that it has a lot of palette overlap with pink/magenta PV19s like Permanent Rose/Red Rose Deep.
• Cobalt Blue, an essential middle blue that I LOVE in Da Vinci but actually tend to dislike in other brands! DV’s Cobalt Blue has a lot of strength and boldness and is only moderately granulating, compared to other brands which I tend to find too wild and too weak.

While I don’t currently have DV ACQ on me to compare, Opus Essential Alizarin Crimson definitely looks and feels like the color I remember.

With Cobalt Blue, I was able to directly compare Opus with my DV paint on hand. They sure look and feel the same!

I am sold! I believe that Da Vinci makes paint for Opus.

There is precedent for this kind of arrangement. In the U.S., the store Cheap Joe’s has a house watercolor brand called American Journey that is widely known to be made by Da Vinci. There are a few points of non-overlap (colors unique to AJ or DV colors not in the AJ catalog), but all the colors with the same name are identical. This appears to be the case with Opus too.

Da Vinci vs Opus Catalogs

Like American Journey, Opus Essential offers a subset of Da Vinci’s line, with 60 colors compared to Da Vinci’s 120. Many of my favorite DV colors are offered, with some notable exceptions (like Quin Red and Perm Red; luckily DS and WN have reasonable alternatives).

There are at least two colors that appear to be Opus exclusives:

• Cornsilk Yellow (PY65, PW6) – no equivalent offered in DV; mixable from Arylide Yellow and Titanium White.
• Salmon Pink (PO73, PW6) – no equivalent offered in DV; mixable from Da Vinci Orange and Titanium White. Similar to Holbein Shell Pink.

Additionally, Opus has renamed some colors:

• Opera Rose (PR122, fluo.) – amusingly, this is called ‘Opus’ in DV’s line.
• Pyrrole Red (PR254) – called ‘Da Vinci Red’ in DV
• Dioxazine Violet (PV23) – called ‘Da Vinci Violet’ in DV
• Glacier Blue (PB15, PG7, PW6) – appears to be roughly equivalent to DV’s Charlie O’Blue named for DV Ambassador Charlie O’Shea. I can see why they renamed such an inside baseball color.
• Indian Yellow (PO62, PY97) – called ‘Soulshine’ in DV.
• Ethereal (PB29, PG18, PR177) – this is called ‘Artemis’ in DV. It is a copy of Daniel Smith’s Moonglow.

I suppose it’s not too surprising that the factory that is known to make Da Vinci and other stores’ house brands also makes the Opus line. Still, it’s a delightful surprise to me, since it’s totally unexpected and solves one of my main art supply problems!

Now the only other question remains… what other lines are Da Vinci in disguise?