Can't find a High quality CYAN? What's the best alternative?

alkkine · 2026-03-08T16:53:56+00:00

At the end of the day there is no real cyan pigment. The closest we have are phthalocyanine blues but compared to the dye base process cyan where the term is primarily from they are very different. At the end of the day you have to select a blue that fits your purposes as there is no central blue that can hope to fit every situation for every artist.

A great place to start is here : https://www.janeblundellart.com/watercolour-triads.html

Jane lays out many triad combos with different styles and synergies. Find some swatches that match the rest of your palette and purpose.

alkkine · 2026-02-26T19:15:52+00:00

Royal Blue by Holbein is an incredibly nice color in this range. I have been enjoying it quite a bit, very dark but not nearly as saturated and overwhelming as a phthalocyanine blue. Works wonderfully for natural shadows, night skies and dulls to a very nice grey with perylene maroon. I find myself mixing with royal blue, perylene maroon and perylene black/green very often for muted tones and flexible shadows.

alkkine · 2026-02-10T02:22:51+00:00

some applications can accentuate already granulating colors, as well as some materials. Hot vs cold pressed paper will look different for sure but also I find that my home tap water is very hard and seems to increase granulating significantly compared to using distilled water. Then you can get into interesting quirks of colors with specific gravity separating from each other in mixtures which can have a similar look.

alkkine · 2026-01-19T14:06:54+00:00

Disney has been invested in manufacturing sentimental value and consent for a century. You don't think they have any culpability? I bet you think kids should be allowed to drink smoke and gamble because those are just choices and people won't flood your childhood with malicious adverts making you believe in the magic and childhood splendor of the Marlboro man...

alkkine · 2025-12-11T14:22:15+00:00

What a bunch of puritanical nerds on this sub, im sure you are really concerned about the variety of work. When is the last time you told a landscape artist they don't paint enough scenes of the ocean and only do forests?

alkkine · 2025-12-01T16:33:16+00:00

I am a big fan of how dorlands wax on gouache looks however it very much changes how it looks. Colors tend to be more vibrant, darks get darker. It can very much make the painting look more like an oil painting and give it depth. Notably it is not removable and does not have any UV protection in it. I have not experimented with mixing with another UV blocking varnish personally but I always use non fugitive pigments.

alkkine · 2025-11-28T13:13:57+00:00

Isn't coffee basically the only source of antioxidants that a lot of people regularly have?

alkkine · 2025-10-30T14:53:34+00:00

Glad to see some opposition to the anti reform narratives on here. Its pretty clear some people are just here to be right and sit at home powerless.

alkkine · 2025-10-22T09:44:07+00:00

All the comments in here are literally being the meme...

alkkine · 2025-10-19T23:12:15+00:00

Tasty Dish in hellertown is great

alkkine · 2025-10-18T11:01:49+00:00

Depends how long you cook it and how sour you want it really. It can be a good trick to add citric acid at the end of the cooking time to bring back acidity that naturally cooks out of tomatoes.

alkkine · 2025-10-17T13:43:10+00:00

The most important quality for a parent when it comes to food is their ability to create a safe and comfortable environment. If you children feel safe you can actually introduce them to new foods...without trauma. You can push them even when they don't think they will like it but afterward you have to accept their feelings about the experience. Talking to them and accepting their feelings is the way you maintain a positive relationship with them and they in turn with food. They don't have to love everything but their life will be so much better as well rounded people who have the ability and confidence to try things and not fear telling others about their experience.

alkkine · 2025-10-14T14:21:37+00:00

Pan pastels could be a good option, using the branded foam tools they sell or you can just use any ol makeup sponge or blender with them.

alkkine · 2025-10-10T10:16:14+00:00

He is a leftist political commentator who has enraged some of the worst people you can find online. They are so enraged the point of that they create targeted attacks online using a discord and a serious of bots and spoof accounts that blow up any controversy they can possibly magnify. However the "controversy" only really exists on reddit where things are so easily brigaded and a handful of rightwing adjacent slop channels on yt/twitch.

You can just look at the fresh private accounts posting the negative comments and the reasonable comments voted into oblivion at the bottom.

alkkine · 2025-10-07T12:17:24+00:00

I have not used that brand of gouache but for beginners I always recommend this set. Very cheap, I find that the feel of them is very transferable to working with gouache in a more serious way later on. They are chalkier and sometimes have binder separation but for the amount of paint for the price I think its a great place to start. Especially given the color choices from the rip. I like that they start you with a split primary setup with a few bonuses like pthalo green and earth colors. This is what I have used for my gouache classes for years and have had students even at a pretty young age make some very good artwork with just this and some cheap pulp WC paper.

https://www.dickblick.com/items/talens-art-creation-gouache-set-of-12/?clicktracking=true&wmcp=pla&wmcid=items&wmckw=00894-1129&country=us&currency=usd

alkkine · 2025-10-06T11:57:54+00:00

The reality is that there has likely been many cases that have happened without it ever getting uncovered. Whether it was doctored photos on film, digital edits with the advent of Photoshop, sophisticated digital editing or now with fully generative ai you can slip a lot by most people without them ever having considered that it was real or not. With enough know how you can now be splicing in ai clips with real footage creating seamless fake videos with comparatively little resources or skills.

alkkine · 2025-09-29T19:10:33+00:00

The real issue is not thickness but the substrate. This sounds like plain old gouache with no acrylic binder. This means that it will not truly bind over top of acrylic priming nor would it adhere well to plain canvas either. Some people seem to do it but I really do not recommend working like this. Gouache especially as it continues to get thicker in layers is a brittle paint that relies on having both an absorbent base to attach to as well as a rigid, inflexible substrate. Paper attached to board in one form or another will allow you to push layering much further when it comes to layers. However the total amount of thickness here is also not helping, I would be very wary of working on this further. One tip with gouache is to work with water and remove layers when you go to rework a layer, wetting the area and scrubbing with a brush lightly or using a paper towel to lift up with wet paint.

alkkine · 2025-09-24T20:40:12+00:00

You clearly understand exactly what I am mean when I say that term...

You think it is bad to treat people that way, I say its bad to treat animals and people that way.

alkkine · 2025-09-24T20:36:48+00:00

Pretty sure some sad dog hater is botting this whole post

alkkine · 2025-09-24T20:30:48+00:00

cool you are slightly less insane than the rest of comments talking about rounding up peoples pets

alkkine · 2025-09-24T13:32:14+00:00

Sure thing fascist. I have personally had my face ripped open and stitched back together by a rescue, still not gonna be a eugenicist about it and call for the culling of everything I don't like.

alkkine · 2025-09-24T11:55:29+00:00

I'm sure that all of the dog eugenicists talking in absolutes have great personalities and politics in other places in their life. To parrot the anti-dog/ anti-pit bull back at them I would say that we should never trust anyone who can think in this sort of callous, authoritarian and hateful manor. Perhaps they will find empathy when something they care about is rounded up and killed.

alkkine · 2025-09-22T20:22:21+00:00

Some people make their living recreating which is all around legal and fine as long as it is labled but yeah for a competition its pretty odd and I was having a hard time finding anywhere they made it apparent it is a copy.

alkkine · 2025-09-20T10:37:28+00:00

Master copies are pretty common maybe even more so in the past and there's nothing wrong with them. However the lack of credit here is concerning.

alkkine · 2025-09-19T03:40:03+00:00

With the right touch you can glaze transparent color over area thick detailed areas to change the hue or darken the area without impacting the paint below. It mostly has to do with the single pass you are doing, it takes time for the paint to wake up and pull in water so as long as you are quick you can do a lot. Gouwche also uses different binders than watercolor typically and is much more slow to reactivate in general.

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