The only animal derived ingredient to be found in Umton’s artistic oil colours, tempera gouache and watercolours is PBk9 /Amorphous Carbon/ Bone Black in several colours (see attached PDF lists and colour listings on their website for more information).
At this time, there is no further information whether this applies only to the finished products or manufacturing cycle as well.
St. Petersburg watercolours (White Nights; English branch)
Nevskaya Palitra
To all, who have sent enquiries to me about companies (and products) that I have yet to contact: I have not forgotten any of you, I will pick up where I left off. Thank you for your patience.
sadly, I just found out that Colors of Nature closed down. The cruelty-free Canadian company that flew under an ethical and environmentally conscious flag, manufactured and offered only vegan-friendly products ranging from watercolours, and oil paints in artist quality, … over to brushes, glass mullers and more. I feel as though I am writing an obituary and in a way I am. What a plight for our small world of vegan art supplies. Which leaves us with no more natural, eco-friendly oil paints ;and brands that offer non-pencil watercolours halved. I introduced the company on here in 2017. In all my correspondence with Lori Stryker and Mark, they were nothing but accommodating and nice. – I am sorry to see this business go, farewell Colors of Nature.
I bring lovely watercolour news (especially to Europeans)! Kaia Natural Watercolor is a cruelty-free company based in the Netherlands, offering all vegan, 100% natural, plastic-free, non-toxic, highly pigmented watercolour of professional artist quality and highest lightfastness. What a mouth full. They come in ten different shades . They are available as single pans or in a set of all ten.
Faber-Castell ink : available in four colours: black, blue, pink and turqoise; the shades blue and pink are erasable; black and turquoise cannot be erased; the ink is not document proof; (the waterproof and lightfast alternative by Faber-Castell are the Graf von Faber-Castell inks)
Here is the list of vegan-friendly products by Faber-Castell:
Thank you to eagle-eyed reader Isabella, for pointing out that more colours in both the Academy Colouring and Watercolour range are no longer vegan-friendly. Derwent now provides information in their colour charts about products being vegan-friendly or not.
Derwent doesn’t carry out animal testing,but also can’t confirm whether all of the raw material is free of animal testing.
Australia based Derivan is a cruelty-free company with an array of different products.
Except the one colour Ivory Black in the Matisse range, all Derivan and Matisse branded paints are vegan-friendly!
Here: http://www.derivan.com.au you can find all of their products, e.g. cadmium-free acrylics, different types of acrylics, acrylic based inks, mediums, screen ink, block ink, watercolour, fabric paint, face and body paint, glitter glue, liquid pencil, …
Instead of using watercolours in pans, you can use watercolour pencils, sticks/gelatos and crayons with a water-reservoir brush or stiffer regular brush, but in the way you would paint with pans.
Tip-to-tip transfer: Brush over your water-soluble crayon/stick etc. (use more strokes to intensify the colour) and then apply it onto the paper. Alternatively draw with the crayon direcly on the edge of the paper or a separate paper and take the colour with the brush from there.
This way the colour application is much softer than drawing directly on the paper and going over the lines with a brush. You can colour a dainty little drawing or cover a DinA3 and larger paper with beautiful patterns.
If you don’t have a watercolour travel pan set, you can always take your pencils, crayons etc. and a water-reservoir brush pen. There will be no spills, it does not take up too much space and you have double the use out of the pencils. Using them with the brush and also drawing details directly with them.
It is also something different to go over the crayon/pencil with a wet brush than immersing the whole crayon/pencil tip in water, which can damage the lead.
I also went over a Faber Castell Pitt Artist Brush Pen with the water-reservoir brush to take colour and transfer to the paper. After drying the colour is going nowhere, because of the waterproof ink used in the pens. Why would someone do this to an already brush shaped pen tip ? You can cover a bigger area this way than with the small, less flexible brush pen tip; you can gently glaze the paper and if your brush pens are older, you still get good use out of them without having to draw streaky (although I found it can make also nice effects).
Painting on wet paper with the laden brush helps covering the paper surface quicker.
left side: tip-to-tip transfer, on wet surface; right side: paper-to-brush transfer+wet brush over applied colour
