Extrafine Handmade Watercolor Genuine Madder Lake

Our Extrafine Handmade Watercolor Genuine Madder Lake is prepared with pure Madder Lake pigment. The roots of madder (also called garance, Rubia tinctorum) give this beautiful blood red thanks to the presence of many coloring molecules, going from orange to purple, passing through red. The most famous of these ones is alizarin, which was also one of the first colors to be sintesized in laboratory. The other coloring principle is purpurin, which has a lower fastness than alizarin. Since it is an alumina lake, its covering power is not high, but it owns a great transparency and brilliance. It is the natural color which was mostly used in the past, beyond indigo, to prepare pigments for artists, due to its fastness too: the obtained pigment owns an extraordinary brilliance and transparency.

The Extrafine Handmade Watercolor Genuine Madder Lake is made in Italy by Nila Colori and is prepared with this pure pigment, is rather lightfast, transparent and has a moderate tinting strength.

Genuine Madder Lake pigment is milled with just the right amount of a mixture of Kordofan gum arabic (binder) and vegetable glycerin (humectant and plasticyzer). These are the ingredients which are historically the main characters in the production of the watercolors and which give the best results regarding ease and pleasantness of painting. We don’t add any filler or any other organic compound, which might alter the color over time.

Code: GAR

Colouring agents: Alizarin and purpurin

C.I.: NR9

Lightfastness: BWS 6/8

Transparency: Transparent

Series: 6