Can artist’s paints be natural?

Natural non-toxic watercolour paints DO EXIST and they can be professional and affordable. And we’ll try to prove it.

What is inside watercolours?

A full overview what watercolours are made with you can find in our other articles . Let’s stop on the main factors that make watercolour genuine and quality. Generally speaking any watercolour would have the following components:

• pigments – to colour your artwork
• binder – to glue pigment powder together and adhere the solution to your paper
• fillers – to increase the visible volume of paint sold
• plasticizer – to increase elasticity of a paint and film
• humidifiers – to prevent paint from over-drying
• preservatives – to prevent mold growth
• additives to enhance colours or achieve any other specific goals.

The best paints have more pigment, right amount of binder, plasticizer, humidifiers and preservatives. These ingredients are essential for any watercolours. Lower grade paints may look the same, but they will have more fillers, tints instead of pigments or low-quality pigments. More information about pigments you can also find in our knowledge base.

The weakest colours belong to yellow segment and many manufactures to bring opacity and show colour in tube to catch buyer’s eyes add some white into a colour.

RUSART Naturals professional watercolours is a result of years of research and development as well as non-stop testing, formulas improvement and working with professional artists.

What is special about RUSART Naturals watercolours?

We released our first watercolours in Sep 2020. More colours are coming up as soon as testing process is finished. And for now we’re happy to offer our soft, semi-dry watercolours for professional artists.

• High-quality pigments. Most pigments in RUSART watercolours are mineral, tested with time by generation of artists. With technical progress some pigments get replaced with synthetic ones (like it happened to ultramarine, for example) and we have them too. We’re also testing our own pigment manufacturing that coming up in 2022-2023.
• We buy pigments from responsible vendors, so no children or unfair labour was involved. This ethical problem exists for some pigments sourced from Africa (mostly red and blue cadmiums) and China.
• For our watercolour paints we use only natural ingredients: water, arabic gum, pure glycerin, natural BC honey and essential oils. No formaldehydes or other harsh chemicals.
• RUSART watercolours have absolutely zero fillers. We’re not cheating our clients and don’t increase volume of paints to make you pay more fore the less amount of paints.
• Maximum pigment volume concentration: 50-90%. Some pigments take more binder, while the others take less. Some let pigment take as much as it needs for the best performance.
• Our binder is also different. As we’re a small manufacturer we can control every little step. We create arabic gum varnish at certain temperature and certain conditions. Usually bigger manufacturers just dissolve gum arabic with water.

Other benefits for artists

• We make our paints in small batches, so you’re always buying fresh
• Each RUSART Naturals watercolour jar contains 5ml of paints. Normal size of a full pan is 2.5 ml.
• Our watercolours are portioned in convenient little pots with twist caps that keep watercolours moist and clean.
• Made by an artist, Elena Nahum Leroy, for artists
• Made in Canada, from mostly local raw materials. Buying from us, you’re supporting 10+ more Canadian small businesses. 
• We’re working on reducing plastic in our packagings, as we did for many other our products.

5 ml glass jars

Check RUSART Naturals professional watercolours>> Prices start from $7.99 for 5 ml of semi-dry watercolours.