Making potter's pink (hue) watercolour at home for cheap!

Potter's pink is possibly the most beautiful watercolour paint ever.  It's heavily granulating, earthy pink.  Used for natures, urban sketching, portraiture, and so many things.  Potter's pink checks all the boxes.

There are only two things wrong with it.
1. It's often not very strongly pigmented
2. It's one of the most expencive non-specialty colour.

I wonder, can I make Potter's pink (hue) at home but better and cheaper?

Well, one can buy pigment and mull their own paint at home.   But Potter's pink pigment looks even more expensive than the pre made watercolour

So, what if I mixed some paint together?

Other than the hue (colourness - saturation and value can be managed through water control in watercolours), the most important element is the granulation.  Since this is a hue (same word, but means substitute for the original colour in this context), I don't mind multiple pigments if it gives the desired look and behaviour.   One pigment would be good to have heavy, earthy pigment that settles unevenly into the texture of the paper (the granulation part) and another pigment could be more staining and evenly floating in the water like a solution.  Think i want a mixture of lentils and sugar in water - one sinks to the bottom, the other blends with the water.


Then I discovered professional grade raw umber, in this case, by jackson's ,  and this is a delightful.   It's a desaturated brown, leaning towards a warm black.  It's extremely granulated.   And it plays well with others.

Student grade raw umber was none of these things.

This changes everything!

I play around with mixing this and various colours on my palette. Van gogh has dusk pink which is granulating, but nope, not quite the colours i seek when mixed with raw umber.  Cotman rose?  Too pink still.  Eventually I settle on Rembrandt Alizarin crimson and raw umber as being closest.   Still needs a bit more something.



Glass slab from an old shelf, empty watercolour pans to put the finished paint in, palette knife to mix things up, and some tubes of watercolour paints.  Is that everything?   Oh, paper towels, water, brush, and paper for sampling.



This is just a starting place from earlier mixing experiments.   Spoilers, it needed a lot more raw umber.

I mixed them together with a palette knife, and then tested.  Added more raw umber, tested again.



Until I was happy.

The thing I struggled with most was the paints losing moisture quickly and drying on the glass and palette knife.   I wish i had a spray bottle with clean water.  I had to work quickly and had no time to photograph stuff.



I managed to get a bit more paint into the pans after this.   But pretty happy with the results.

I got a pink that is heavily granulating, earthy coloured.  It's a bit more pigmented (saturated) than potter's pink I've seen in person, but that's what I wanted.

Most importantly, these are all series one colours, aka, the most affordable.  

Best document the recipe in my swatch book.



I don't think these pictures show the colour well enough, but maybe you get the idea?  In person, it's exactly what I had hoped it would be.

And why not just mix this from the individual paints on the fly?  Normally, I would.  But today, I'm building a limited palette and neither Alizarin nor ultramarine will likely find a place there.  But I do want potter's pink (hue) and I'm excited what I can do with this colour.   I might even mix up a few more convenient colours for this little limited set,

Note, hue meas it's not made with the pigment most often associated with the paint name.

Inspired
I ended up mixing a buff titanium paint.



This is a really nice titanium white that excells at opacity control (note, white in watercolours is traditionally- aka, pre 1950 - used for opacity control not as a value adjuster or white colour.  Want white colour, go with gouache).  I find it's a little bit cool for my current mood, so I got my cotman burnt umber which leans slightly pink for a burnt umber and has low granulation.  Professional level burnt umber is more granulating, so wouldn't work for this smooth look I'm going for.

You can see the results in the swatches upthread.

I don't think I'll call this a hue as most buff titanium we buy are a mix these days.  Unbleached titanium seems to be the new name for the specific pigment they used to use.

Here is a video about potters pink watercolour



It never gets very dark and i wasn't able to reproduce that limit, yet.  But I rather like my darker version better.

Maybe next time. A student grade Alizarin crimson and less raw umber.  There is a tipping point where we add too much raw umber and it turns from pink to red. I got on the wrong side of that with my first try, but again, I like this result.