Saying Goodbye to Quinacridone Gold & How to Make Your Own Convenience Colors (Sap Green)

On September 13th Daniel Smith officially announced that they have made their last batch of single pigment quinacridone gold and will be fully switching over to their new formula. In this video, we take a look at alternatives for the base color and then talk about how to mix our own convenience mixtures, using Daniel Smith's original sap green as an example.

If you would like to skip straight to the convenience color mixing, the time stamp is 7:08.

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*** Music ***

[EveBolt]

Oh man, a quin gold car. I'd pick it in a heartbeat. Glad I stashed the original pigment like the hoarder I am. The sap green is so freaking beautiful, I'm glad it's made by mixing PG7 into quin gold, which is fairly simple to reproduce.

[MrsTiffanyGrey]

Denise- THANK YOU for making mixing something approachable and doable. I had it in the back of my mind that I would need a white lab coat, goggles, an assistant cat, a beaker with some vapors coming out of it and a sterile environment. You've armed all your viewers with great knowledge and instruction. Thank you, Thank you! Have a great show this weekend!

[juliesczesny]

Oh, you already covered this. My dad did have a metallic Quinacridone Gold, on his Lincoln Continental Mark IV - the one as big as a whale. Had to sell it, because it was too big for parking spaces in S. Cali. It shined up beautifully, did glow like sunlight in the day!

[ShinyGoldBacon]

I just bought a mostly-full tube of ds quin gold on ebay a few weeks ago. I feel like I found a great rare antique now.

[mjpete]

This was very interesting, I am not sure that I would ever miss a color so much that I would buy up remaining stock! I have used many different paints in my past and have found that I have been able to mix most colors that I have needed. I have been thinking about getting a wider range of paints, you have recommended Da Vinci paints and I liked the samples I got from them. Even considering your trio! Thank you for showing us your expertise, and now I just need to afford to purchase the colors I want!

[erins.]

Yup I stocked up on the DS Quin gold weeks ago! Really glad I did because after I bought it the price went up and up and up.

[milenabdesign]

I can't believe you got it right almost at first try. You're a color mixing wizard!

[nathanmarch]

I just got the last 2 tubes that my local artstore had! I was very happy that they still had some:)

[arttupaavola]

Nooo! This is so sad! So glad I got a tube in the summer. R.I.P Quinacridone gold, you'll be missed.

[robertweinblatt]

I think there are beautiful substitutes for this color that are magical🥇

[MeowMeowKapow]

RIP, Quin gold....the most beautiful color out there. My heart is so but the greedy greedy hoarder in me was ready. Good thinking with checking local art stores, actually! There's a super hidden store out by-ish me that might not have been raided

[cwales]

Try the Qor Sap green. It is lovely!! While I watched this I ordered some Quinacridone Gold! Thanks for the heads up.

[joshuaclabeaux]

If you want the original Sap Green back, we should just start a campaign to DEMAND the production of Quinacridone Gold! We should make such a big outcry about the injustice that the pigment industry is driven (pardon the pun) by the auto-motive industry; then the pigmentari will have to listen to us. Trust me; Sap Green is SO POPULAR with artists, that I think it WOULD be financially worthwhile for the pigmentari to produce Quinacridone Gold. The profits would be smaller, but they would STILL MAKE A PROFIT! The original Sap Green is REALLY THAT POPULAR! Probably as it was the favorite green of Bill Alexander and Bob Ross!

[geslinam]

Well. I’m glad I never experienced the original Quinacridone gold. Can’t miss what you never had. The newer version is pretty enough for me.

[SomethingImpromptu]

I started painting watercolor too late to ever experience the OG Quin Gold (not sure if that’s to my benefit or not since I didn’t have to experience losing it), but since I started, Winsor & Newton’s version of Quin Gold has been one of my absolute favorite paints anyway. It’s made with PR206, PV19 (interestingly!) & PY150… I’ll have to look into what the role of that violet pigment is, because that’s very counter-intuitive & I wouldn’t have guessed, & again, writing this having never used the original, but based on swatches & comparisons I’ve seen, it seems to look & behave fairly similarly. It does fade very smoothly from a warm-Earthy brown to that beautifully saturated & transparent, somewhat staining I’d say, Azo Nickel Yellow color upon dilution (I definitely was struck by the unparalleled similarity between it & equally dilute Azo Nickel Yellow before I even had any inkling that it was literally made with it, rather than from true Quinacridone Gold). The difference is, when it’s raw or close to raw, W&N’s Q. Gold has that extremely nice warm Earth tone (I’m very picky with Earth tones because I love saturated colors & don’t like a very dull, dry brown or a grungy muddy brown, but the yellow-orange just radiates through this stuff & gives it a really pleasing, healthy appearance even when it’s clearly a brown, whereas I really don’t like the appearance of raw Azo Nickel Yellow paint (at least the Daniel Smith one I’ve tried) nearly as much as I like it dilute, nor as much as I like W&N’s replacement Q. Gold either raw or dilute, because this Azo Nickel Yellow raw just looks like mustard, frankly. 😂 And I don’t even like to eat mustard. It looks like some Dijon or something, just a clump of kind of flat, dull matte yellow, whereas add a bit of water & suddenly it’s vibrant & transparent & saturated.

So sure, it may not be the same as the original (and naturally it comes with the downsides of a multi-pigment paint), but I do think, if nothing else, Winsor & Newton (& some of these others you showed) did improve on pure Azo Nickel Yellow with this convenience mixture/replacement for Q. Gold… The versatility of being able to use it either raw or dilute & get lovely, vibrant colors either way— that whole nice spectrum from rich, orange-brown to a transparent, light-fast yellow is great. And I also love the way it’s like… When it’s less dilute & more brownish, it behaves almost like a granulating pigment— the brown will settle on the surface & flow around in water like a sediment, which opens many doors for opportunities to use hydrodynamics to your benefit, while, when diluted to a yellow, I find it behaves more like a normal/IIRC even somewhat staining pigment, appearing extremely fine & covering areas effortlessly, creating a very smooth & even coverage, without problems lifting excessively when you don’t make a point to intentionally make it. So, however much better the original may or may not have been, I love this stuff.

I haven’t tried a bunch of other brands of replacement Quin Gold to compare it to yet, but I have purchased a tube of Daniel Smith’s Quinacridone Gold Deep, &… While I’m not discounting the stuff, & I’m sure in the right use case it might be just what I need, but I’m not as instantly taken with it as I was with W&N’s normal (replacement) Quin Gold. And I say this as someone who overwhelmingly as been impressed with Daniel Smith & typically likes their paints far better than most of what I’ve tried from Winsor/Newton.

[SoulKeever]

I made a video recently about the end of Quinacridone Gold. Nothing's a perfect match for Quinacridone Gold that I've seen, but QoR's version is still really nice. Winny Newts' Raw Sienna is really close to Quinacridone Gold's hue too, although it's considerably weaker. I hear that their Burnt Sienna with a little Nickel Azo Yellow is a perfect match. I'd wager it looks pretty much the same as the PO48 mix.

There isn't a lot of difference in mixes flesh oranges with the conveniences mixes and Quinacridone Rose, but there's a minute difference in mixing greens; the hues mix a little brighter.

Congrats on mixing that old-time Sap Green! Oof, I'm too scared to mull Quinacridone Gold like that. I just squeeze a couple of lines of paint in the same well and mix oranges/greens whenever I need them.

On another note, DS' revised Sap Green looks awesome! I need to get some of that. The Sap I've been using is *too* dull, but D. Smitty's looks bright enough. :D

[MDCampbell]

If you'd told me 30 years ago that a watercolor paint would be discontinued, I'd have thought you were right mad. Honestly can't believe it. As I've never made the jump to DS paints, so I'll never know what using it would be like. Big bummer. ;)

[StephenMarkTurner]

According to 'handprint', the pigment has not been manufactured since 2001. It's gone, until Oldsmobile make a comeback.

[mariakellner]

I remember we had a holden manoro car in that color over 46 years ago, i still have some of the original sap green, 😊

[waxwiing]

QOR also has two Quinacridone Gold colors, but after some research I found that their Quin. Gold is ( PO48/PY150) and Quinacridone Gold Deep is just (PO48). They're beautiful colors, but D.S.'s is beautiful. I really need to get some of their colors sometime.