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Testing cerulean (Patreon)

Published:
2026-08-17 05:15:24
Imported:
2026-10
Tags:

Content

Hi Everyone! Monday 9 am AZ time the link above will be live.

Sorry it's last minute, but tomorrow morning works best with my schedule this week to finally test the cerulean paints I have gathered on my desk.

In this live class we're going to settle the great cerulean debate and test which cerulean brand and color we like best. I have gathered a large number of cerulean "cyan" looking paints from different brands and we'll test their brightness, granulation and how well they mix with other colors in our limited palette.

If you can't make it to the live class, the class will be saved and available to watch any time.

Can't wait to paint and test these colors out with you!

Files

Kristin Van Leuven is live!

Comments

Michelle Thomas

“The great cerulean debate” 😂😂😂 I love it! Thanks for being willing to experiment for us!

Harry Brownsell

It will be very interesting indeed. I think this is the one colour everyone has a different experience with. The other issue I have is messy pallets. There's always some yellow or red in my cerulean to dull the colour also.

Kristin C.

Hehehee YES I am deeply invested in this topic!!! My Daniel smith cerulean that is actually titled cerulean is nothing like yours. Yours is my phthalo blue. This will be interesting!!!

Gitta Beentjes

I would love to see it! My Winston & Newton professional cerulean always granulates badly, and just will not mix with my lemon yellow from the same brand. The colors just split on paper in front of my eyes. I'm curious if I just got a bad batch, or if others get the same problem!

Sue Heiss

I can't hear you

raelun

My DS cerulean blue is a lighter tourquoise

1Nd1g01979

I wonder how they lift? I seem to remember that Managnese is more staining….

Hagstone’s Miniatures and More

I started with my mother’s old Michael Wilcox cerulean and loved it, but I’ve replaced it with Schminke cerulean blue tone which I think meets all the criteria…Hilary 🙂 oh and I think I like the W&N Windsor blue green best

Marlene - VT

Paint your Mystery on a small piece of Arch so you can move it around?

Kathleen Livingston

I have fallen in love with Jackman's watercolour paints from England. Consistently extraordinary!

Nancy

Learned so much. Thank you!

Michelle Thomas

Don’t want to detract from this experiment, but I have a question about refilling pans. Do you wait until the paint in your pans is 100% gone before refilling? Or if you are getting low on a color do you just refill on top of the existing color?

1Nd1g01979

I remember that Manganese stains- hard to lift?

Carol

Thank you for exploring Cerulean, glad to know the Holbein MBN doesn't granulate

1Nd1g01979

Thank you for lifting!!!!

marielle

This was great, thanks Kristin! My go-to cyans are either the Letter Sparrow phthalo, Daniel Smith phthalo blue (green shade), and Winsor Newton Winsor Blue (green shade). I sometimes use WN phthalo turquoise, especially fox mixing or for ocean/water in landscapes. I do sometimes use Daniel Smith cerulean blue *chromium*, which does granulate (and is a completely different experience from regular DS cerulean!), but generally I avoid the granulating ceruleans/cyans.

Marlene - VT

Thanks for the Cyan comparison. Looking forward to seeing the tube name details of your limited palette. Thanks!

Terri Benyon

Thank you again, this was a fun and very informative class. I feel good about my choice to go with the Holbein Manganese Blue, especially when I want to lift out clouds. I love my WN Winsor Blue (green shade) as Phthalo blue is beautiful, but I had issues with water control trying to get it light enough and I did struggle lifting to get my clouds.

Amy Avocado

This is really informative :) I’ve gotten the closest to the mystery cerulean with DS manganese blue + a little DS cerulean blue chrome. …If the palette is clean.

Paula Albright

I didn’t catch the live so I don’t know if this was mentioned. Could your mystery color be W&N Pro Cerulean? Not Cerulean Red Shade or Cerulean Cotman. It looks exactly like my W&N Professional Cerulean.

debbie

Would LOVE the same for Sap Green!

Jennifer Nichols Art

Here are these three straight out of the dried pan. I really don't care for the regular cerulean :) Their website said the cerulean chromium is also granulating but I'm not seeing that here. This is Arches paper as well. Hope that helps!

Harry Brownsell

I have been mixing w&n Cerulean and w&n Winsor Blue. I kind of sussed out the cerulean was granulating and the Winsor Blue was flat so mixed them about to get what I needed. There are some instances where I have likes the granulated look too.

Harry Brownsell

Here is the cerulean and you can see the slight granulation.

Robyn Starkey

I missed this morning because of work (boo!) but I recently bought both the Windsor and Newton Cerulean and the A. Gallo, and I like the A. Gallo better because it's a more blue and I think the W+N leans more greenish.

Leslie Young

I think the mystery color is cotman cerulean. You haven't been able to get nearly as dark a color from your cerulean as the W&N winsor blue green. You had to seriously water it down on the test.

DebH2Ogal

I LOVE my WN Winsor Blue Green Shade. I can get deep Phthalo as well as light bright Cyan. It is a workhorse on my palette. I've been using it for my tutorials and as much as I love this shade... I feel like I go too dark too soon. I think I may need to grab a WN Manganese. My DS Man. granulates and is not great for skies.

Laura Curley

Thank you so much for this experiment! Loved seeing this. Is there a way to save the live chat comments on YouTube when you publish it? Sometimes they save on your live videos, and sometimes they don't show up anywhere, but they are helpful to see!

Jeanette

I’m a big fan of Schminke.

ellen lekatz

I can’t believe how much time I wasted trying to figure out why the sound wasn’t working 🙄

ellen lekatz

You know everybody’s looking at this from a different display screen as well. So even though I’m using the same paint as you, my paintings never look the same color as yours. And that’s OK. I really don’t care. I’m just trying to get some technique down here that’s my main goal right now.

Shar

Thank you. Have wanted to try Holbein paints, so I will start with Manganese. I am generally using up my Letter Sparrow on the tinies, they are often quite different from yours this year. The Nitro green is very granulating. I would love to know everyone's preferred sap green.

Jerika Ortlieb

I highly recommend looking at the actual pigment numbers and not using names when you are learning/playing with colors. It’s fun and also so informative. True “Cerulean” is either PB35 (cerulean cobalt stannate) or PB36 (cerulean cobalt chromium). These are all granulating as this is a key component of the actual pigment, similar to how all UM blue has a little granulation. They also are not as bright/high chroma. So Kristin, you likely used a cerulean “hue” paint because you wanted cyan instead of true cerulean pigment. Extra crazy—True Manganese Blue is actually PB33. Winsor and Newton’s manganese blue hue and holbein’s manganese nova blue both are actually a phthalo blue pigment (PB15 family). So you do love phthalo blues! :)

Cathy

I really enjoyed this class, thanks so much for doing this. I love the granulation of cerulean blue so it wasn’t bothering me and now I feel encouraged to go out ans explore color a bit more on my own. I’m very excited you’ve discovered Holbein pants. They’re some of my favorites!

Danielle Heinlein

WHY DID I LOVE THIS SO MUCH! I am onthe replay crew here but my favorite... as a shock to ME was the Holbein. Then the WN red shade. Again, shocked. I think the mystery color was the cotman though.

Amy Adcock

Thank you for testing the cerulean blues! I personally have been using Winsor Newton’s Winsor blue green shade as my “cerulean” in my bigger palette that is on my art desk, just because I felt like it matched the Letter Sparrow Phthalo blue that is in my Split Primary travel palette. It is an intense color, so I use very little of it. But it is such a pretty blue!

Kristin Van Leuven

That’s what I was thinking, but it was a mystery that mine had no granulation!

Paula Albright

Oh darn. This is definitely granulating.

Joalie

Please list the colors and brands that you use in your tutorials. Thank you, Joal

Kristin Van Leuven

Check out the captions of the videos for the list of all the colors I use ♥️

DebH2Ogal

Hello Jerika! I think you are my new watercolor Buddy! I agree with everything you posted. I think it is so important to know what the Pigment #s are and their attributes. It amazes me how Pigment #s can stay the same and brands or mixes can look different. PR 101 Blows my mind! If anyone reading this is interested in learning more about your pigment colors... This is a fantastic resource: https://stephenberryart.com/blog/2016/5/8/color-mixing-and-navigating-the-color-wheel

Kelly Amato

This was such a fun exercise! Thank you!A. Gallo, my favorite paints, has Cerulean Hue and Trans Cerulean among other similar cyans. I haven’t tried T. Cerulean but the Cerulean Hue is very pretty. MaimeriBlu is great, too, but A. Gallo is dreamy. I started with Holbein paints—like those too. There’s 1 Sennelier in there—the Phtalo Blue. I am a complete novice learner at watercolors so this is a very humble opinion.

Heidi Borgwardt

So fun to see the comparison, thank you!! It is also helpful to note that "hue" colors are not the really the original/genuine pigment, because sometimes those original/genuine pigments can be too toxic or difficult/expensive to manufacture today. So the "hue" version is a mix of pigments designed to imitate the genuine pigment. It's not a bad thing, but good to note, because when you're working with a mix of pigments as opposed to a single pigment, how it mixes with other paints can be less predictable. A lot of the blue "hue" colors are phthalo based, which is why they don't granulate. True genuine manganese blue & cerulean blue do granulate. I was using DaVinci Cerulean Blue Hue from the art toolkit explore palette, and I noticed it was so much more vibrant and smooth compared to a pan of daniel smith Cerulean I had, so I ordered a tube, but they accidentally sent me the same daniel smith Cerulean tube you had here, and I really dislike it, I was so glad they replaced it and I sent back the DS. But the DaVinci is phthalo blue based and it has a white pigment mixed in, so I don't always like it for mixing. Another helpful resource would be Jane Blundell's blog website because she has swatches comparing so many paints. It's not the same as testing yourself for your own preferences, but can help narrow it down if there's a specific look you're going for.

Kaylen Dinsmore

Replay crew here. This was a super fun exploration! Last year, for the Tiny Painting challenges, I used the Daniel Smith limited primary set along with indigo and sap. I learned that the New Gamboge and Light Hansa were not quite giving me the mixes that I saw in the tutorials, but I learned how to adapt the more I used them. I also found that the DS Sap green MOVES quickly, and the Phthalo Blue green shade, while BEAUTIFUL, was just too powerful and frustrating. So this year I switched up my palette a bit - sticking with Daniel Smith because it is more readily available and more affordable in my area than W&N. So I landed on my colors being DS Lemon Yellow, DS Hansa Yellow Medium, DS Quin Rose, DS Pyrrol Scarlet, DS Cerulean Blue Chromium (it does granulate but I like it), DS French Ultramarine, DS Sap Green and DS Indigo. I find the more I use my colors, I don't mind that my paintings turn out a bit different from the tutorials and I have learned how to adapt to get the same effect that Kristin is teaching in the tutorials, but with my own little "Flair" on it. I will also switch it up and use the handmade Aloha Watercolors and I love those are more pigmented then W&N or DS and give a whole different vibrancy to my paintings. It's so fun to see how we all like and enjoy the hobby in different ways. :-)

Kaylen Dinsmore

OOOO I love seeing the swatch of the DS Manganese Blue Hue! May have to try out when my DS Cerulean Chromium is all gone (I am LOVING it - but I do find it granulates in washes, but I enjoy the surprise and unpredictablity of granulation)

Jennifer Nichols Art

It's a nice bright color for sure. Since she started pointing out "brightness" in the blues, I'm also noticing it in reds :)

Anita Stolk

This is soooo helpful! I have the DS cerulean and I just couldn't get the shades in my paintings that I wanted. It doesn't mix well and it's dull, like you said.