Schminke Horadam Dot Card

Look y’all, I’m on my last day for the streak I wanted of ten days. Never doing that again. I hate scrambling for content and stupidly trying to do things on another. I only have two modules to go and I feel like I got punched in the face from somatic issues related to stress.

Unrelated to me!

These swatches are absolutely stunning. I really love Schminke already, they’re just a bit expensive for my taste! If I sold my art, I would totally buy some of these.

I’d hate to put a long list since this list is bigger than Winsor’s, I will discuss the color families I like. (Because otherwise, y’all would be here for hours or skip over boredly.) Some colors have a heart on them if I like them.

Earth yellows

Even though a lot of these were convenience mixtures and don’t show “true color-mixing skill,” they’re awfully beautiful. I really love the ones that offer opacity and brightness. I have no idea how they mix, but I know I’d use them diluted or in mass tone. These particular paints also went down smoothly even though they’re earth colors and granulating.🥺

Earth Reds

The more opaque the color is of this group, the more I love it. I do love when they’re transparent because they have a look I can’t explain, but the opaque ones feel comforting and heavy—like hot, thick soup on a winter day. I just cannot explain why these abstract examples make sense to me, but they do. Earth Reds are comforting, especially that English Venetian Red.🥰🥰🥰

Earth Browns

Earth browns are some of my favorite families in all watercolor brands hands down. There’s so many variations, varieties, textures, strains, hue changes, so on. They’re also typically the cheapest. I would never recommend a palette for someone, but these will be in a palette.

Back when I was younger, other than coloring some skin tones, I avoided browns in my art. I just didn’t really care for it and rather would have vibrant art. Vibrancy is still okay, but browns make vibrant colors vibrant. Brown is about equivalent to black and white.

It is the mixture of tertiary colors, complementary colors, or black and potentially white with hues. It’s great to mix those colors and get “muddy” variations.

Black and Whites

Same thing I said about browns. They add a different look to a painting and I think they’re fun to mix with. ☺️

Yellows and Oranges

I really liked Vanadium Yellow, chromium yellow light, transparent yellow, all the cadmium yellows, and pure yellow of the yellows because they are bright and clean. Some of them are very opaque which is good to me, but I know I can’t mix them with other colors who aren’t or they’ll look thick or ashy (chalky is the word, but chalk reminds me of the filler and ashiness is just what goes on top of something like legs, so I will use that.)

To be honest, like I said on my last swatch dot card that I love oranges? Well, I loved all of them. Especially Saturn Red.🥺 How is a color that beautiful? It borders between orange-red and red-orange and I love that.

I loved all the red-oranges too. If someone told me that I had an unlimited budget to buy what I wanted, I’d buy those first. They’re my soft spot. I did not like red-orange and orange-red when I was younger because I thought they were overrated, but I can totally get why people liked them.

Red and Violet

…eh? They were a bit…mid. Like, don’t get me wrong, I loved the perylenes, the quinacridones (the ones with the actual names), and the madders, but the colors offered in some other brands are cheaper so it’s…really not worth the buy. All of them are beautiful.

Violet and Blue

Manganese violet for the win. That is one truly fantastic color and this one was quite vibrant. My second favorite is ultramarine violet. 😅 I usually love this color in all brands, but I might consider this one because it’s sooo vibrant and actually still has some paint left over so you know it’s one that will last.😉😉

My favorite blues are also very biased…so, I leaned towards more the colors between delft blue and Paris blue. They just had that affect on me. I want to try ultramarine finest. It sounds very promising to have a less granulating ultramarine. Though, I do love granulating ultramarines.

Blue to Green

Usually I love chromium green oxide, but that one made me angry because it had limited paint on the dot card.😡 Anywho, olive green yellowish is something else!😍😍 Normally I hate colors that are convenience mixtures of green because they’re overhyped and I get my hopes up and their mixes upset me, but that one…that one had me stunned. I also liked sap green too. Cobalt green is a color I tried so hard to hate, but I’ve fallen into submission. I love it. (In this brand, idk about others, I’m sensitive).

However, I actually hated permanent green, May green, helio green (usually I like this one too…), and earth green (this brand). May green looking paints are always a terrible color when I mix them. They always look bad.😕 Permanent green isn’t ugly or anything, I’m just a hater and I just want to hate on it, and earth green was ridiculous to rewet.😡 This brand has no fillers really or that much binder to pigment and I’m in a humid climate yet it was ridiculous. 😡And even more ridiculous is that this is a dang convenient mixture and not PG23 makes it even more of a headache. I’ve had trash cheap brands rewet better. Still a beautiful color.

Overall, Schminke has lovely colors and paint and even if I got colors I hated, I’d still enjoy using them. This is just dot cards and not the best representative of the brand.