Daniel Smith’s Mayan Range of Watercolors

Why I Couldn’t Help Myself

Thomas Schaller puts Mayan Orange front and center in his palette, which got my attention. Anything he does gets my attention. Schaller paints light, atmosphere, architecture, and drama, so when a painter like that gives a color prime real estate, I want to know what it is doing there.

Then I fell in love with Mayan Blue Genuine in my own work.

And then I ordered Mayan Violet, because dammit, I just couldn’t help myself.

The Daniel Smith Mayan colors are interesting because they are not just pretty colors with romantic names. They sit in that wonderful watercolor zone where chemistry, history, pigment behavior, and painterly accident all start talking to each other.

A little history

The name comes from the famous historical pigment Maya Blue, an ancient Mesoamerican blue known for its remarkable durability. The original pigment was made by combining an organic colorant, traditionally indigo, with a clay mineral. That hybrid structure helped the color survive heat, humidity, time, and chemical exposure with almost unreasonable stubbornness.

Daniel Smith’s Mayan colors are modern pigments inspired by that ancient chemistry. Mayan Blue Genuine is the most direct descendant of the idea, while the larger Mayan color family expands the concept into a range of modern hybrid pigments: blue, dark blue, yellow, orange, red, and violet.

So yes, the name is partly history. It is also partly branding. Art materials: where archaeology and marketing share a folding table.

The Mayan color family

These colors are not all doing the same job. Some are silky smooth. Some granulate like a CRACK of buckshot on a crisp winter morning. Some make clean transitions. Others break apart like the San Andreas, into an estuary full of silty texture.

And that is where watercolor gets interesting.

Smooth color versus granulating color

Mayan Orange, the Schaller color, is non-granulating. That means it can give you a smoother wash and more predictable gradation. It is useful when you want warmth, sunlight, brick, reflected light, glowing edges, or a strong complement against blue.

A color like that behaves. Mostly.

Mayan Blue Genuine behaves differently. It granulates. It settles into the paper. It can create broken, organic textures that suggest atmosphere, stone, distance, shadow, and surface without having to render every little thing by hand.

That is what I fell in love with.

Granulating colors can imply detail without fussing. They can make a wash feel alive. They can suggest age, weather, grit, mineral surface, dusk, or depth. Used well, they let the paper and pigment do some of the work.

Used badly, of course, they can make everything look dirty water, a messy turgid mudpuddle. So there is that.

But when they work, they are magic.

Why Mayan Violet tempted me

Mayan Violet caught my attention because the company says it is both violet and granulating. That is not a basic utility color in the way ultramarine, burnt sienna, or a good yellow are utility colors. It is more of a character color.

But character colors matter.

A granulating violet could be useful for cool shadows, evening light, weathered stone, distant hills, bruised skies, expressive figure shadows, or atmospheric passages where you want color but not flatness.

I do not expect it to replace a clean mixing violet. I expect it to misbehave in an interesting direction.

That is a very watercolor reason to buy something- Pigment addiction. It's real. I haven't found a support group yet, but I need one.

1-Minute Quick Sketches from the Model. The Mayan Blue plays nice with neighbors.

Why fellow watercolorists might care

The Mayan colors are a good reminder that watercolor is not only about hue. It is about behavior. It's about the mystery that unfolds on the paper.

• Some pigments glide.

• Some stain.

• Some lift.

• Some settle.

• Some gradate smoothly.

• Some dissolve into fascinating organic patchworks.

• Some give you clarity. Others give you implied complexity.

That is why I am attracted to this family of colors. They're compelling, and just a little tricky; complex in the way that interesting people have intricate layers. The Mayan colors give us a small but useful laboratory for observing what watercolor does best: the controlled accident, the useful irregularity, the moment when pigment in water creates something we would never have drawn by hand.

You do not need these colors to paint well. Painting well comes from having a relationship with whatever colors and papers you've embraced.

But if you are curious about pigment behavior — especially the difference between smooth washes and granulating texture — this range is worth considering.

For me, Mayan Orange explains itself through light. Thomas Schaller is a long-time hero of mine, ever since Architecture school 352 years ago, in my distant youth.

Mayan Blue Genuine won me over through atmosphere. It made some of my gesture drawings jump vigorously to life. Gregarious; a joyful friend to colors around it.

And Mayan Violet? That one is still on trial.

But I have a strong suspicion it is going to get away with something.

Thanks for the chemists and artists at Daniel Smith. You make expensive paint. Sometimes they're worth it, easy complexity or perfectly dispersing gradients. I love discovering both.

Charles Houghton

1100 Watercolor Society