The color orange can be found all around us, in traffic cones and caution signs, marigolds and Monarch butterflies, sunsets and campfires, and even on our tables in the sweet tastes of peaches and pumpkin. Often appreciated for its bold, fun vibe and energetic nature, orange can also be a color that’s graciously warm and calming and can add a bright spot of cheer to a palette or painting.

Orange has been used by artists for centuries and is celebrated in a wide range of works by well-known figures such as Edward Hopper, Auguste Renoir, Vincent Van Gogh, and Paul Gauguin. Until more recent times, pure orange colorants were mainly extracted from natural materials which could be very expensive and difficult to obtain, and those colors often deteriorated and faded due to time and sunlight. However, the development of cadmium-based pigments in the 1800s along with the discovery of synthetic pigments in the 1900s greatly expanded artists’ choices for lightfast, stable colors, including oranges.

Although Da Vinci Paints offers many excellent oranges for artists that range from light peaches to deep earths (and we’ll be sure to share plenty of those at the end of this post), today we’re featuring our namesake orange, Da Vinci Orange. Continue reading to learn more about Da Vinci Orange Artist Watercolor along with tips for painting and mixing with orange, or visit our main website to discover Da Vinci Orange along with our complete range of artist colors.

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The Advantages of Da Vinci Orange

Although orange is often considered a convenience color in an artist palette and is easily mixed from primary colors, there are many advantages to keeping oranges in a palette. Bright oranges like Da Vinci Orange are excellent for creating contrast and balance in a painting, especially when used alongside cool or complementary colors like violets and blues. Because the saturation or tinting strength of a tube color will often be greater than a mixed color, this can result in a painting with clearer hues and bolder colors.

Single-pigment colors are preferred by some artists, and Da Vinci Orange Artist Watercolor is carefully crafted with a high concentration of finely milled Pigment Orange 73 (PO73) dispersed in responsibly-sourced, pure Gum Arabic. Rated as highly lightfast and non-toxic, Da Vinci Orange is semi-opaque in masstone but easily softens and becomes more transparent in dilution.

Although Da Vinci Orange is slightly red-based when full strength which results in rosy tints when mixed with white, Da Vinci Orange will balance nicely between red and yellow on the color wheel which makes Da Vinci Orange an excellent, all-season secondary pick for an artist palette.

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To learn more about what the letters and numbers in PO73 mean, see our artist guide to the color index.

Mixing With Da Vinci Orange Watercolor

Single-pigment Da Vinci Orange’s soft opacity is wonderful in mixes and adds warmth and body to more transparent colors. As you can see in the illustrations above, Da Vinci Orange can also be a valuable naturalizer and neutralizer in mixes, able to morph greens into golds and blues into neutrals and darks.

Because Da Vinci Paints uses a red-shade (RS) version of PO73, Da Vinci Orange can also be used to mix rich violets with nearly any blue. When mixed with earths or greens, Da Vinci Orange easily creates clear golds, warm browns, deep russets, and muted greens. Da Vinci Orange mixed with roses like Alizarin Crimson or Red Rose Deep creates warm, vibrant reds, scarlets, and vermilions.

As you can see, this single-pigment orange is a generous mixer, and its red-shade bias often creates some surprisingly beautiful results when used in mixes. We encourage you to discover more Da Vinci Orange mixes for yourself!

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Da Vinci Oranges for Every Artist

Whether you paint in watercolor, oil, gouache, acrylic, or all of the above, Da Vinci Paints offers all artists plenty of excellent choices for the color orange. Below are just a few of our many options. Click on the images to explore, or shop Da Vinci Paint’s complete color collection by clicking the button below.

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