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This beautiful watercolor is a cool blue gray. Highly lightfast and mildly staining, Payne’s Gray is perfect for painting wet skies. Use this pigment instead of Indigo, except where yellow is involved. Payne’s Gray helps create flat ocean waters and after-the-storm clouds and skies. Rocks and granite boulders, including their shadows, can be quickly rendered with light dilute washes or more concentrated brushloads.
Starting with 10 parts water to 1 part paint (by weight) in the palette, our chemist paints the top half of the swatch uniformly with a round brush to show the paint’s color and characteristics. For the bottom half, he dips a ¾” flat brush into the paint well just once, then applies the color in stripes until the brush is dry, which shows the color’s tone and behavior through a wash. We use these swatches for color matching during the manufacturing process.