Schmincke is introducing a new special line: limited edition colours in the Schmincke Horadam professional watercolour range. Artists from all over the world were involved in the creation of these colours, and as a result of this collaboration, the new colours are completely unique to the brand; these shades have never been available in the watercolour range, and they also have special qualities and properties. There are five colours in the range, each with its own history of creation and distinctive features. Three of them are named after artists, closely working with Schmincke for years, and are signature colours of these artists. In this article, I will give a detailed overview and discuss the history of the special colours of Schmincke Horadam 2025 watercolours.
Schmincke Horadam Limited Edition Watercolours
Schmincke Horadam Wild Purple by Vitas Artworks
Wild Purple by Vitas Artworks is a very interesting purple shade created by artist Carolin Behnke who specialises in painting animals. This colour is a semi-opaque, and quite heavily granulating pink-purple. The hue of the colour is quite cool and tends towards red-maroon. In its saturated form it looks like burgundy wine, while in its diluted form you can clearly see granules of warm blue and cool red creating a violet in the optical mix.
This colour has many variations of use: pure paint is good for creating a spectacular background, suitable for landscape sketches, and looks interesting in painting details.
Due to the granulation of the paint, it can create different effects: when strongly diluted with water with the technique ‘wet on wet’ it gives a beautiful texture, with granules and flows of colour clearly visible, and in a more saturated form, the colour can be homogeneous and dense. The colour performs well in mixes, giving a great variation of shades: yellow together with Wild Purple by Vitas Artworks can be mixed for beautiful browns, cool reds or warm blues can be used to change the undertone, and green shades are used in mixes to create greys, which give a clean neutral shade.
Carolin has created this particular shade based on her frequent needs: she often uses this range of shades for backgrounds and backdrops. And they create a great contrast in tone with the light yellow and orange of animal fur. This colour is also useful for painting darker fur and feathers, which look more vibrant and interesting using this hue.
Schmincke Horadam Cologne Bridge Green by Dirk Schmitt
This is an unusual shade of green, invented and realised by Schmincke’s ambassador Dirk Schmitt, an artist from Cologne, Germany.
A very lightfast and semi-opaque cool fresh green shade that can be seen in many gemstones, from tourmaline and malachite to jade and emerald. It is faintly granulating and can be described as ‘pastel’. It’s easy to imagine the shade of colour – you’ve definitely seen the patina on monuments and roofs; it’s exactly this colour.
This colour will be useful for painting many subjects, and it’s not just the surfaces covered with patina – church towers, various monuments, plaques, roofs of houses, etc. In addition, this kind of green is good for painting grass and trees, as well as water, especially in darker parts of the waves. If you mix warm yellow shades with it, the colour becomes both rich and dusty, giving a very interesting effect, which is difficult to achieve in mixtures with ordinary greens. Another use for the colour is in night lighting where the lighting source is definitely cold: neon signs, street lamps, lights in tunnels, reflections in wet asphalt etc.
The story behind Dirk Schmitt’s creation of this colour is also worth noting and is closely linked to the history of the German city of Cologne. Most of the bridges over the Rhine River are painted in this colour, an idea that came from the then Burgomaster of Cologne and later the first Chancellor of Germany, Konrad Adenauer. He wanted the bridges to be painted in a very special shade based on chromium oxide, and to echo the roofs of the city, creating an interesting visual effect and supporting each other. Curiously, in addition to the approved formula, individual samples of the colour are kept in museum conditions so that if the paint fades in the sun, the shade can be reproduced exactly. In essence, the colour Cologne Bridge Green by Dirk Schmitt is an ode and declaration of love for the city.
Schmincke Horadam Shadow Grey by Anna @draw_better
Shadow Grey by Anna @draw_better is a dark grey-blue colour created in collaboration with Schmincke’s ambassador, watercolourist Anna Zadorozhnaya, who specialises in painting landscapes and snowy mountains.
Cold and dark, this colour is hardly granulating. In concentrated form it is a dense dark grey, while in diluted form it is a translucent cold grey-blue with a blue bias.
As the name suggests, it is an ideal colour for shadows, especially on white – in the shadow part of clouds, on snow, in drawing white objects, fog, light clothing, white stone architecture, etc. In addition to this, it is well suited for drawing translucent cold shadows, works well for deepening the tone, does not get muddy mixed with other colours, and gives in mixtures muted, pure violet, and green shades. And it is really suitable for drawing tone sketches and paintings in one colour – grisaille.
The story behind the creation of this colour stems from a question that has almost always been of interest to artists: how do you get the most beautiful, most neutral and most winning shade of grey that doesn’t go green or brown, works well in mixes and looks beautiful in its purest form? After doing a huge amount of testing and mixing seemingly every possible paint to produce this perfect, easy, and successful grey, Anna came up with a mix that has become her most used in all her years of painting. It consists of the two most frequently run out colours in her palette, Ultramarine Finest and Cadmium Orange Deep.
Schmincke Horadam Atoll Blue
The shade of Atoll Blue is reminiscent of the colour of a summer sea lagoon somewhere in the Mediterranean. It is a bright, sunny yet cool shade of transparent blue, which goes into a greenish undertone and also correlates with turquoise. It is the colour of water in the sun, of the deep sea, of a dazzlingly bright sky: beautiful in its pure form and convenient in blends. Thanks to the pigments that make up Atoll Blue, the colour is highly staining and has excellent lightfastness.
The variations in the use of this colour are wide-ranging. In its pure form, it can be used for different hues of water and even grass in the shade, various seascape elements (atolls, lagoons), bright spring skies, shadow elements, dark glass, and accent spots, which work well in contrast to warm yellow, orange, and red shades. In blends, however, this colour allows you to achieve natural and muted shades – and it mixes particularly well with browns to create a regal dark green.
Schmincke Horadam Buff Titan
This colour is the perfect beige. The colour shade is warm, with a yellowish undertone, but still a neutral beige: it can be compared to natural adobe clay. It does not granulate and has a fairly high covering power. One of the distinctive features of the colour is that it consists of only one pigment, and such a neutral and eye-pleasing shade is really difficult to mix with other pigments.
Buff Titan can be called universal and multifunctional. It will look good in painting different kinds of surfaces, from man-made buildings, walls, cityscape, various masonry and bricks, clay, crockery, etc. to natural textures like sand, animal fur, various tree branches in the light. And it is also ideal for drawing light human skin. In mixtures, it creates an interesting effect of ‘pastel’ shades – due to its semi-opaque characteristic, the colours are dusty and really delicate.
To summarise, the new special Schmincke Horadam watercolour colours 2025 comprise five shades (violet, green, grey, blue, and beige), three of them produced in cooperation with artists. Each of the colours has its own characteristics, works well in mixtures, and suggests a multitude of uses in paintings. Due to the fact that this is a special edition, the colours are a limited edition only in 15 ml tubes. In addition, a special dot card with all the new colours has been produced for the possibility to try the watercolours and formulate your own opinion.
Further Reading
A First Look at Schmincke Horadam Naturals
What is the Difference Between Watercolour and Gouache?
Artist Insights: Shanti Panchal
Shop Schmincke Horadam Limited Edition Watercolours on jacksonsart.com
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