Cobalt Green PG50 vs Cobalt Teal Blue PG50

For the longest time, I've always thought PG50 exists only as one colour, that teal pastel like colour.


It was only recently when I saw Cobalt Green which also uses PG50 that I was surprised. Different colours using the same pigment is not uncommon. Take a look at PR101, PV19, PBr7. PY43 and PY42.

The reason why the same pigment can have different colours comes down to how the pigment was prepared. It's usually due to the temperature at which the pigment is made into paint. Think Raw Sienna and Burnt Sienna. I learned about this during a factory tour at Royal Talens.

PG50 Cobalt Teal Blue (Daniel Smith) and Cobalt Turquoise (Schmincke) are lovely vibrant teal colours. Daniel Smith's version appears to be more granulating while Schmincke's version appears to be more cyan.


Concentrated wash of Cobalt Teal Blue with DS Pyrrol Scarlet PR255.

Cobalt colours are usually heavily granulating colours. One characteristic of mixtures created with Cobalt colour is the colour separation where you can still see the individual colours that were used to create the mixtures.

For these mixtures, I wanted to see what kind of purples or violets we can get by mixing Cobalt Teal Blue with reds.


Lighter wash of Cobalt Teal Blue with DS Pyrrol Scarlet PR255.

A warm red with Cobalt Teal Blue seems to produced a light neutralised gray with colour separation.


Lighter wash of DS Cobalt Teal Blue with DS Quinacridone Magenta PR202.

Here we have neutralised violets mostly because of the high tinting strength of Magenta. Oh, Cobalt colours typically don't have high tinting strength which means to get a concentrated wash of colour, you have to use more paint compared to other colours.


Cobalt Teal Blue with DS Quinacridone Red PV19


Cobalt Teal Blue with Lemon Yellow PY175

This is quite possibly the most vibrant yellow green mixture I've ever seen.


DS Lemon Yellow PY175 with Phthalo Blue and French Ultramarine

This is the non-granulating version of the bright yellow green mixture above. It's very vibrant, just slightly less so compared to Cobalt Teal Blue and Lemon Yellow.


Cobalt Teal Blue with New Gamboge (PY97, PY110).


DS Cobalt Green with Quinacridone Red PV19, Quinacridone Magenta PR202 and Pyrrol Scarlet PR255.

These are the various neutralised colours we can get from green and red. Again, the granulating is very obvious. So much so that you can't actually get a complete mix because the colours would separate.

Cobalt Teal Blue is not a colour I have on my palette because I don't know what I would paint with it. It's such a vibrant colour.

If you use these two PG50s for painting, let me know in the comments section what you paint with them.

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1 Comment

I bought a tube of Cobalt

I bought a tube of Cobalt Teal Blue from Daniel Smith with a gift card just because it was so pretty but I haven't use it at all. I'll probably use it for some splatter effects one day when I do some more pop art. I didn't know it was so granulating so thank you for this information, I'll have to try it on some hot press paper to see what texture I can get on that.

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