Daniel Smith Hidden Green Gem: Diopside Genuine

Diopside Genuine is the main paint used in the background when recreating Vincent van Gogh’s A Crab on its Back (original at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)

Daniel Smith is a renown brand that offers a huge selection of professional watercolors, including their PrimaTek line of paints made crushing naturally-occurring minerals.

When thinking about green paints in the Daniel Smith’s PrimaTek line, two colors come to mind: the popular Jadeite Genuine and the always interesting Green Apatite Genuine. But in my opinion, there is another paint that deserves a spot in the palettes and hearts of artists all over the world: Diopside Genuine.

It is a transparent, heavily granulating bottle green that delivers a huge range of values, is easy to handle to create flat and graded washes, and brings life to botanicals and landscapes.

When recreating the painting A Crab on its Back from Vincent van Gogh (original at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)) I used Diopside Genuine and Viridian (PG18) to contrast warm and cool background tones, characteristic of the original painting.

Diopside Genuine could be seen as a granulating version of Phthalo Green Yellow Shade (PG36), in the same way that Phthalo Green Blue Shade (PG7) (often called “Viridian Hue”) can be seen as a non-granulating version of Viridian (PG18) (see diagram below).

Comparison of the temperature and granulation of Viridian (PG18), Phthalo Green Blue Shade (PG7), Diopside Genuine and Phthalo Green Yellow Shade (PG36).