If you thought black would be the darkest watercolor, think again! We define the darkness or brightness of a color as the “L value” on the CIE Lab Color Map, which ranges between 1 (darkest) and 100 (brightest). The letter L stands for lumière – the numeric measurement refers to how much light shows through and reflects back from this color when painted in a 1:10 ratio of paint to water. Read more about it in our Study of Color brochure. You can also review the L values for all of our watercolors on this sortable online spreadsheet.

These are four of our darkest and four of our brightest colors (not including the Luminescents), which John swatches and talks about in the video excerpts below. Watch the full one-hour Zoom session on our chaîne YouTube – or better yet, join us LIVE on Zoom or Facebook every Thursday to chat with artists, ask John questions and swatch along!

Swatch pages above by Ashley Hawkes.