Stumbled on an interesting fact about lead in watercolor paints yesterday

I was looking up pigment numbers for a landscape I was sketching, and I found out that some professional watercolor paints still contain lead. Winsor & Newton makes a lead white color called Cremnitz White that has actual lead carbonate in it. I had no idea that stuff was still being produced for artists today. Has anyone else run into heavy metals in their art supplies?

3 comments

3 Comments

theac6313d ago

Oh but lead white has such a beautiful luminosity that you just can't get with titanium white, it's like painting with light itself. People have been using it for centuries and it's not like you're licking the brush or anything, just wash your hands after and don't eat your snacks while you paint. The real danger is probably all those cheap Chinese knockoffs that nobody regulates, not the proper art store stuff that's been made the same way since Rembrandt's time.

jesse_williams6213d ago

Oh great, so I've been huffing toxic fumes over my sketchbook for years and just now finding out about it. The lead paints are still popular with oil painters because of how creamy they mix, but in watercolors that stuff can literally kill your brush and your brain cells. Guess I'll stick to my cadmium reds and cobalt blues for now, at least those won't give me lead poisoning unless I eat them.

taraanderson5d ago

Wait, aren't cadmium reds and cobalt blues also pretty toxic if you're not careful? Cadmium is a heavy metal that can cause lung and kidney problems if you inhale the dust from dry paint, and cobalt can be a skin sensitizer. I mean you're right that you're not in immediate danger of brain damage like with lead, but you still don't want to be breathing in the spray from dry brushing or sanding those colors either. A lot of the old masters actually died young from handling their pigments, not just from eating them. It's more about how you work with the paint than which specific tube you grab off the shelf.