Getting new paints, for an artist, is like being 5-years-old on Christmas morning.
It is THAT exciting.
You unwrap the paints, ooh and aah, play with each one,
and discover everything you can do with each color!

My disappointment in the newest Schminke anniversary palette is huge. After I wet each one in the back of my  Nostalgie journal, I didn’t go back to play. Also, palettes are usually specific mixes (beginner’s palettes, primary palettes, etc.) Most of these colors, all new to Schminke, are colors that MOST people would not order unless they had many paint colors and wanted it for a reason.

Or ever…

Case in point, I loved Daniel Smith’s Caput Mortem.
I found it a most excellent mixing color…
but apparently no one else did, because they discontinued it!
No one elses version is close — They are often much more like
Schminke’s Potter’s Pink, a darkish mauve from the 70’s —
or an even darker purple-mauve… excuse me, blech.

BTW, I am willing to trade
or buy DS Caput Mortem from you! Please!

The colors are dull and lifeless,
and many were muddy.  One literally!
You never have to look further than
one color to paint a mud puddle now… Schminke’s Mahogany Brown is
exactly “mud puddle brown!” >>>

In case you are thinking of a Schminke
palette, this is the one I bought,
paint colors above:

• Mahogany Brown (Opaque, basically mud)
• Perylene Dark Red Semi-Opaque
• Perylene Violet Opaque
• Potter’s Pink (mauve from the 70’s)
• Saturn Red (an Orange, okay)
• Yellow Orange (a little like an Indian Yellow but doesn’t  have the same mixing qualities)
• Rutile Yellow (a mostly-Opaque pale yellow, meh)
• Phthalo Sapphire Blue (nice)
• Cobalt Azure (which is a nice name, pretty color, very close)
• Viridian
• Perylene Green Opaque (gads please no opaques)
• Hematite Black (an Umber Green, and oddly, Hematite usually tends to go reddish purple not green… I’ll keep this one)

So a couple of weeks later when
I was in fact so addle-brained, head
stuffed with a cold, and lacked
any creative spunk, I decided to
play with the Schminke paints.
Palettes are not my favorite thing to do —
I am more a messy-mixer of certain
colors (see below).  But I did a palette
with all but the Mahogany Brown
and “Potter’s Pink” — or the mud
and mauve.  I see that this is a
mixing palette, interesting, but still, meh.

The way I tend to “mix” which is only what I am interested in mixing.

I also compared their Hematite with the Daniel Smith Primatek Hematite;
No comparison to the way it mixes.  The Schminke is fine and
the granulation is not what I am looking for in this type of paint —
but some may prefer the fine granulation, so look closely!

Finally, two images done mostly with Schminke, above,
on Hahnemühle postcards, versus other paints on the same paper, below.
There is a dullness or flat quality to the paints that makes me uninterested in choosing them…  though perhaps it is the particular colors in that palette.
I also found going in deeper with a second coat difficult on
the Schminke oranges, (flower) above; perhaps I am not used to these paints?

Schminke also sent me a pan of a color they thought I’d like, above,
after I told them I wasn’t happy with the paints I purchased
but was not asking for a replacement on those, just the bent metal palette.
It is lovely, and I have it in with my Da Vinci palette to see how I like it.
It tells me I may have to swap full pans of a couple of other pigments I love to
see how the paints really play out.  Meantime, comments welcome.

Finally, about the palette debacle (warped and chipped, which means eventual rusting).
Schminke made good on this with me, sending me an empty replacement palette.
Always report damages to a company — good companies will do right by you.

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