“You’ll not see nothing like the mighty ‘Quins’!”  I hear Bob Dylan’s tune as I gush about the family of paint colors called quinacridone (kwin awk’ ri doan).

I first encountered them in Golden Acrylics.  They became a staple in glazes and undercoatings and all Tuscany colors, as in one of my horses, above, because I fell head over heels in love with Quinacridone Gold.  (Sadly, Golden cannot get that original pigment anymore, and has gone to Quinacridone/NickelAzo Gold, which is still beautiful, right.)

Quinacridones are a family of synthetic pigments  considered “high performance” pigments used in artist’s oil, acrylic, and watercolor paints. They were created for the automotive industry in the sixties, but quickly became beloved by artists everywhere.   They have amazing intensity coupled with transparency, shown below in an image of Daniel Smith’s Quinacridone Watercolors.  In watercolors, they have the depth of color of the staining pigments but can still be lifted when wet.  If you haven’t tried them, DO!

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Copyright “The Mighty Quinn” © 1968 by Dwarf Music (Bob Dylan)