Art Supply Insiders Podcast

ASI 41 "Watercolors, Gouache and Acrylics" Interview with Judy Rebitzke, Business Operations Manager and Dan Justus, Technical Product Manager at M Graham

August 15, 2022 Jeff Morrow
Art Supply Insiders Podcast
ASI 41 "Watercolors, Gouache and Acrylics" Interview with Judy Rebitzke, Business Operations Manager and Dan Justus, Technical Product Manager at M Graham
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Show Notes Transcript

In this episode you will learn why M Graham:

  • Watercolors are made with Northwest blackberry honey. 
  • Gouache is made in the time-honored tradition of binding pigment with pure honey and gum arabic, just as it was for Dürer and Boucher. Providing superior coverage and a creamy application.
  • Acrylic artists’ color are made with the same devotion and craftsmanship that they use in their traditional media: small batches, quality ingredients, and the highest concentrations of color possible.

For more information on all of the M Graham products click here.
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jeff00:05

Welcome back to art supply insiders. My name is Jeff Morrow, and today we get to talk with some old friends of ours. We get to talk with Judy Rebitzke who's the business operations manager and Dan Justice. Who's the technical product manager for M Graham. Welcome back guys. Thanks. Hello.

Judy00:24

Hello? Hello. Thank you for having us again.

jeff00:27

Gosh, the the first one was so informative. We had to have you guys come back because it's, it's, it's such a great line. So tell us a little bit about who M Graham is.

Judy00:40

All right. M Graham art Graham. Started the company. And he was raised in Staten island, New York, and he attended Parsons school of design and in New York to study graphic design and painting, and then went on to graduate from the Cooper union in New York, he returned to Parsons as an instructor where he taught painting from 1975 to 1981.

While showing his own work in the Soho district in New York city employed first in the laboratory of IM Grumbacher making testing and developing art materials from 1970 to 1978, he moved to the position of product manager and eventually became the director of marketing. With an extensive background in art materials and color making art and his wife, Diana, more than 20 years in the art industry, herself founded M Graham and company on December 23rd, 1992, to create an artist color line that reflected the quality and value that they sought personally, as artists.

After building the M Graham line into the internationally recognized and requested brand that it is today in 2016, art and Des Diana decided that they wanted to spend more time painting and traveling at that time cork and Jackie Selinski bought M Graham. Cor has been in the art industry, his entire career at a distributor distributor and manufacturer of artist materials.

And he worked closely with art and Diana, since the founding of M Graham, while the ownership of the company has changed, the mission has not. The paint is still made in the exact same way by the exact same people. We do this with our corporate mission statement is that we believe that every artist Deso deserves the finest color.

We live up to our original mission to serve artists by providing the finest color available. We're dedicated to protecting and preserving the beauty of the earth from the source to the end product. Every choice we make from using the purest and traditional ingredients to taking the time to custom mill.

Each pigment is in service to one goal and that's creating rich, vibrant color. To enhance and excite your work. M Graham paint is solvent free and so is our manufacturing and cleaning. We use Walnut oil and non-toxic soaps to clean our rollers and equipment. And lowering our carbon footprint is really important to us.

We recycle and reuse our factory waste water. Used for cleaning our equipment. We reuse the backing material from all of our labels as packing material instead of buying new. So wow.

jeff03:22

That's what a history. So te tell us a little bit about each of you Dan, how about you? Give us a little bit of background.

Dan03:32

You know, Jeff I've been in the art industry over well, now over 40 years, I started boy, I can't even remember when I had hair back then. Jeff and, but for the, I was with. The distributor that Judy mentioned for 40 plus years. And, and then with M Graham from the day they started. So it's been really fun to have continued to now be part of it when it's just with basically Judy and the paint makers and the employees are still the same.

Basically day one. So it's been really fun for me to initially been on the sales end of things, where I was out in the world, you know, traveling and, and pioneering Graham paint and have seen it turn into actually an internationally known product. Now it's been really, really fun.

jeff04:23

It's really exciting, Judy, how about.

Well,

Judy04:26

I worked for that distributor for 38 years. Started there answering the phones and just kind of worked my way up. And and again like Dan because I was in, I was in the sales department for that distributor. And so. I was involved with Graham since day one working with customers and retail stores and artists and things, you know, pioneering this brand.

And then in 2019, I moved. So that I work exclusively with Graham now.

jeff04:58

Wow. So the, the first time we had you guys on, we talked about your, your oils and some beautiful information about that. Today. Let's talk a little bit about maybe your watercolors, your qua, your acrylics, and you know, maybe we can finish up and, and talk a little bit about your, your mediums.

Tell us a little bit about your watercolors and, and what makes them different

Judy05:22

watercolor. We offer 70 colors in half. Tubes and we use Northwest Blackberry honey in all of our watercolor honey acts a natural humectant. So it pulls the moisture out of the air, leading our paint more moist in the pallet by using honey, we can avoid artificial humectants and preservatives in our paints, and instead infuse more color because of the honey.

Our watercolors will dilute easily in the palette, even after months of dis. They resist hardening in the pallet whereby it Provides you more time painting and less time working in your palette. Plus one of the artists we work with tells us that it's also easier on his brushes because you're not having to scrub and work at that hard dried cake of, of color to reactivate it.

We don't use any fillers or bulking agents in our watercolor. So each color is gonna have its own unique feel in Vascos. And this is gonna give you a brighter, cleaner color, honey.

jeff06:23

Wow, honey, in a watercolor. What, what, what prompted you guys to put honey in a water? Does everybody do honey?

Judy06:33

No. And I can't really speak about why one manufacturer uses a diff one ingredient over another.

But every manufacturer has a unique formula and method of production, which is why there can be such differences in consistency and handling qualities of paints between brands manufacturers of professional quality paints will also adjust their formula to account for the characteristics of each individual pigment.

And I can say that our water, that all watercolors need some sort of sugar and many will use corn syrup, but we have chosen to use honey because of its natural humectant properties, as it helps the paint retain the moisture and will rewet easily after drying.

jeff07:17

Okay. So you just said a word that I don't think I've ever heard of before.

Humectant properties. What what's that?

Judy07:25

It's what keeps the, the paint, the watercolor soft. It actually, the, it, the honey allows the moisture to be pulled from the air and naturally keeps our paint soft so that it doesn't turn into a big, hard. Cake or brick of paint.

jeff07:44

So I, I just a kind of a dumb question.

I, with the honey, does it have a shelf life? Does the, does the, the water coat does the paint spoil because it's got

Dan07:56

honey in it. Actually just the reverse Jeff. They found honey in the Egyptian term tombs. It's it's actually a, almost a natural preservative in a sense. And our paints even left out in your palate for months and months still retain.

A soft texture, we call it kind of a Gumdrop texture. And what that does for you. Is it again they'll instead of like, Judy's mentioned, they don't turn really hard in your palate, so they just they'll, rewet almost instantly. And so that humectant that you mentioned, and it does confuse people a little bit, cuz it's kind of a big word, I guess.

It draws the moisture from the air. So that's what keeps them soft and pliable in your pate. And again, it's it. There aren't any preservatives on our paint. The honey actually acts as a natural preservative. Wow. I

jeff08:52

mean, your guys' paints are so cool. I, you know, last time we talked about putting Walnut oil in, in, in your oil paints and now you've got honey in your watercolors.

I can hardly wait to get to wash an acrylic to see what you put in there. Tell me a little, what is the binder for your paint?

Judy09:12

That's a great

Dan09:13

question. That is a great question. Yeah. Thank you. Thank

Judy09:15

you. And one that we get a lot many people think honey is the binder. It's not, honey is the humectant, like we just talked about that keeps our paint soft and creamy, but we use gum Arabic as the binder.

jeff09:29

So what exactly is gum Arabic,

Dan09:34

Daniel? That also, that's a very good question. Also. It's actually really widely used in, in almost all watercolors and it's a, a, it's a binder. It's what holds the honey the pigment. All together. That's why they call it a binder. Jeff, I guess, is the simplest way for people to understand that.

And it actually comes it's a gum product that comes from basically a tree. And it of course, as we find, and, and it's used by. Probably almost every watercolor manufacturer, but you have to have something in these products that will hold everything together. Hence the word binder, it holds the pigment.

The, the honey for another manufacturer will say whatever sugar, the sugars. Is actually, as I've had water colorists that and chemists explain it. The sugar, whether at honey or corn syrup is what fixes the, the pigment to the paper. If that helps any I think it helps a

jeff10:32

lot. Yeah. So can you store your watercolor paint in, in, in a traditional palette?

Judy10:38

Absolutely. You can. But we suggest to use a metal palette with a white enamored inside. If you're going to do a lot of traveling for plain air painting the paint tends to just stay in a, that metal pallet a little bit better. or if you wanna use a plastic pallet artists have told us to scrub it with like simple green before you load the paint.

It'll take the, kind of like that slick finish off the plastic and we'll help the paint adhere better. Cause our paints are more moist. Make sure you do allow a few days to let. Your paint dry before you put your pallet in your travel bag. If you're going to extremely humid climate to paint, we advise taking the tubes and just putting them in a sealable bag and using a small travel pallet because of the honey you know, pulling the moisture out of the air.

It just works better if you're, if you're going to an extremely humid climate and just a tip, our cobalt, teal doesn't ever really fully dry in the pallet. So if you like that color and you do a lot of plain air painting, we recommend you just take that color in the tube with you and squeeze out what you need, huh?

Yep. And like Dan said, just to, to re. Even when a color is quote dry, it's gonna be a little squishy, kind of like a gum drop consistency. It's never gonna get that hard dry cake. Look to it.

Dan12:13

Judy, we might wanna mention now too, is we get this every now and then people wanna put their watercolors in.

I'll say like a Tupperware container. There's pallets out there that seal these things up. And that's not a good idea. Because moisture and warmth it's better for our paints to leave them in an open pallet. Now a lot of pallets, even the metal ones, they have lids, but the air can still get to them.

It's better that way. And the analogy that I'll use, it's probably, I think a good one, but I know guys that are, are farmers and of lettuce and, and. Vegetables in the Salinas valley. And they said the worst thing that ever happened to them is when they had to start putting salad in bags because the moisture and warmth was a perfect breeding ground for little things to start growing.

So for our product, it's best to actually not put them in a completely airtight sealed up palette. Wow. Now

jeff13:12

I know a lot of people will put sponges in their palette to kind of keep the paint. Moist. Is that, is that you do the

Dan13:19

same thing with yours? Don't need to do it ours because of the honey and, and that, that rewetting ability.

You don't need to do that. And there are pallets out there made for that. And actually the acrylic painters will talk about that a little bit. Use it more. You don't need to do that with ours. Ours will rewet even after sitting in a pallet for months it'll rewet with a brush or a spritz of water almost instant.

Wow.

jeff13:43

So what makes a kind of a different question? What makes a, a tube of paint separate, you know, and you, you, you, you bring it out of the tube and all of a sudden you either got pigment or you got all this other stuff coming out. What, why does that

Judy13:56

happen? A lot of times it's because it has been exposed to either excessive heat or cold, more likely excessive heat.

And that excessive heat will make paint separate. And that's not just our brand that's, I mean, house paint. Everybody's everybody's so, you know, don't store your. Paint in like a car or an outside storage shed where it can get really hot because it will make paint separate and a small amount of separation can occur.

And the paint still be fine. Can still be fine. We don't add any fillers or bulking agents to our paint to prevent this from happening. So you might have a small amount of honey that first squeezes out of your tube. If you, if that happens you can't really mix the honey back into the paint.

It, it just isn't gonna work it by hand mixing it. So we just suggest that you, you know, squeeze off the excess honey, discard that. And as long as you can squeeze out the paint out of the tube and it be pliable, then you should be good to go. Yeah. However, if there's been a total separation, And you know, where the it's been exposed to heat and it's been completely separated.

Then we suggest that you just toss that tube and. Get a new one because that separated tube is not gonna have the correct working properties. Makes perfect sense. A tip to help avoid separation. And this works for, you know, any of our paint oil watercolor Gouache. When you squeeze out paint make sure that when you go to cap it, that the paint is all the way to the top of the neck of the tube before you squeeze, or before you screw the, the lid back on.

Because if you leave a, an air gap in there that will allow the paint to separate a little bit easier.

jeff15:44

That's a, that's a great point. Do, do you guys have any artists or anybody that, that, that. Love your watercolors.

Judy15:52

We do. One of the artists we work with is Ron stoke and he he loves our watercolor paint because how it stays moist and pliable when he's working in the studio or painting on location and no matter what the climate is he feels it's important for that's important for two reasons.

That he's not having to waste time, scrubbing a hard cake to get enough color while the while my paint is drying. And it also extends the brush tips, which is important to him because he uses the expensive stable brushes. Yeah. He also says the second. Has become part of my normal painting technique, being a value painter.

He insists on getting his darks as dark as possible. And this means that he needs to mix his paint very thick. And the result of that thick paint is what he calls my second palette. If I have an area on a painting where he has to build up a strong dark, he will often soften that area with a damp brush and use that color somewhere else, or simply soften that edge to create a mood or interest.

jeff16:55

So you said Ron stoke his last S STOCKE.

Judy17:01

That is

jeff17:02

correct. Right. And can you, can you find him on YouTube or something like that?

Judy17:06

He has a website. So if you search out Ron Stocke you'll find his website. Cool.

Dan17:12

So

jeff17:13

let's, let's jump a little bit now, let, let's jump over to. Gouache first of all, what the heck is Gouache?

Dan17:25

you gotta, you know, Jeff, the first place you gotta start, and this is, is the pronunciations of, of that paint that I've heard over the years is so interesting. That. It's been really kind of a, a humorous thing for us. And it's been tough sometimes when somebody says, would you tell me about your Gouache

get back and without embarrassing someone, but anyway Most people are familiar with designers Gouache and it's been around forever and it was actually made to do design work. And basically what they did is they took regular watercolor and either put chalk calcium, carbonate whitener, or some kind of a bulking agent to get opacity.

And also. A a mat finished because what they were gonna do is do a piece of artwork and then they were gonna take a photograph of it. And basically the artwork would go away. It wasn't because the pink quality, it was not necessary to have a really great. Piece of artwork, it was made you needed opacity and a map finish to take a photograph of it.

Our stuff is a totally different product. And the difference is between a designers, Gouache and an artist quality Gouache which is what ours is. Is we. Don't put any of the chalk, whitener or fillers of any sort in, we get the opacity and the map finish by overfilling with pigment. So what you have is a, a product, a Gouache with opacity, with a map finish that you can actually do a total artist quality.

Piece of work that will last and last and last, just like any other artist. Well, let me rephrase that. Just like any other oil painting watercolor or acrylic painting, you'll have that longevity. So whereas the designers quality stuff. It had a great purpose. It's not used as much anymore still used, but the computer age took over a lot of the design work.

So it was one of the hardest things for a lot of people to understand the difference between a designers Gouache and an artist quality Gouache is you can actually do true artist paintings that are, you can hang on your wall forever because a designer's quality paint in most cases. It would chip and flake and crack and, and it would just fall apart.

It won't, there's no longevity. So that's a good place to start thinking about the difference between ours Our Gouache is made with honey, like our watercolor, but it's a different formulation. It definitely is. And I think the key is. People are using wash and watercolor together. And a lot of times they'll use wash to get detail because you, you don't have, even though our wash, because it's overfilled with pigment, you can get washes with it because you can wash it down and you'll still get some transparency if you want that.

But you also got the opacity and then Matt finish, if you.

Judy20:45

So, like you were saying, our opacity comes from the amount of pigment we put in our paint. So this means that with no added chalks or fillers, you are in control of creating the opacity that you want. So that can be helpful when you're creating a professional piece.

When you're combining it with watercolor to make a multimedia piece, there are sometimes like a lizard Crimson because it's such a naturally fugitive color. You're not going to get that. Full opacity with one layer of color. So you may have to get put down two or three layers of that particular color.

We've got a couple others that are kind of that way, where if you want a full opacity, you may have to put a couple, couple layers down. You said you don't

jeff21:31

add chalk fillers or anything like that to change. Does it? What, because you don't, does it change the flow or feel of your qua.

Judy21:40

We've had many people throughout the years tell us that our Gouache has a very different feel than other Gouache they've tried.

And it's true. Because we don't add any fillers or bulking agents to our gush. Each color will have its own unique viscosity or feel. As an example, our phthalo blue wash is very thin. It's almost like water when it comes out of the two. But most of our yellows have a much thicker viscosity. Our production operation manager describes the yellows as almost being fluffy.

So so yes, it is true that that our gush does have a different feel. But the different, the viscosity between the colors does not affect the working properties of the paint or how the finished painting will look.

jeff22:32

So can, can you leave gush on the pallet the same way you can, your

Dan22:37

watercolors. You, you can for a bit, Jeff, it's it again?

It's a different formulation and you can rewet it, but it's best, honestly, if you're gonna do a commission piece or, or it's better honestly, to, if you're gonna use a bunch of it to work it right out of the tube, because it real, it will rewet but not as nicely as the watercolor, because it has to set up in a different way in a different formulation, but.

So our really great water or great gush painters say that they have the best luck by working right out of the tube. If they're gonna do a commission piece or they're gonna leave it for any period of time, they're not putting out a lot of paint. And actually that's a great point. I'd like to mention too, is a lot of, I just talked to a lady this morning.

That was Philly. She just bought 20. Tubes of, of our watercolor. And she said, well, I put half a tube in my pallet and that's okay to do, but. You really don't need to do that. Storing it in the tube, I think is a better way to go. Whether it's Gouache or watercolor, put out just what you need for a reasonable period of painting, cuz our paints they're so highly pigmented, they go such a long, long ways that you can, you don't need to, to fill up that whole pallet cup completely.

You really don't. So just kind of a little sideline tip there, but on gush. Probably working fresh is best. If you're gonna do a lot of, if you're gonna leave it set for an any period of time, I would work out of the tube,

Judy24:14

but you can put it in a pallet and store it that way. But. If it sat there for a long time, the gush will get that hard cake like appearance.

And it is gonna take a little bit more reworking than our watercolor cuz our watercolor is spritz of water and it's gonna spring back to life. The gush isn't gonna do that. Yep.

jeff24:36

So kind spray into all fields here. Let let's jump just a little bit and talk about your acrylics. You, you do make

Dan24:44

acrylic paint.

Yes, we do. We make a great one. Yep.

jeff24:50

Tell us a little bit about that.

Dan24:53

Well, we we make 50 colors, Jeff and in two ounce tubes, which is a standard, that's a heavy body acrylic, and then may wake. We make 21 colors and five ounce tubes, and then we have two mediums. A matte medium and a gloss medium to go along with those acrylics.

And we'll talk about the mediums a little bit later. Our, our acrylic we use kind of a unique high solids acrylic. Polymer resin that contains 60% of those high polymer solids compared to others that use only about 45%. And what that really does is it, we can increase our pigment loads substantially, and then it also And we don't have to put any artificial thickeners or anything in cuz these are heavy body acrylics, but, and a number of manufacturers actually.

And it's okay to do this, but we don't put any fillers, waxes, retardants, bulking agents, or whitener in it. And the so we kind of get a, a really clean, clean color. And I might mention, since we've gone through oils, Previous podcast or acrylics and our watercolors and our quashed. We all use exactly the same pigment in every one of these medias.

So if you're doing mixed media you'll use the same pigment because of that, that higher concentration of resident solids, our, our acrylics dry, a little slower. And then, then the majority of the other ones on the market. So

jeff26:28

we've got, we've got gush, we've got watercolor. We've got acrylics. Can you, can you kind of touch briefly on the mediums that you offer?

Dan26:40

Absolutely. The only mediums we have we don't have any watercolor mediums. We don't have any gush mediums, but we have two mediums for acrylics. Andre. They're both well, excuse not both, but gloss and matte mediums. And they're, they're very concentrated and they, what they do is. They increase the adhesion, the flexibility, and the durability of the paint films, Jeff, and they they're recommended over.

You want to use. Over. If you just use water to, to say thin your, your acrylics and you dilute it, it decreases the strength of the acrylic film. So the use of these two mediums, really, it, it keeps that acrylic film strength enhanced. Plus you don't, you don't lose the color value. And so. Is recommended to thin and acrylic color.

You make a mixture of, of approximately 50% water to 50% medium and add that to the color until you get the consistency that you want. And basically, you know, Matt. Is just gonna give you more of a matte surface and the gloss is gonna give you more of a Glosser. Wow. Well,

jeff27:52

we're we've covered a lot in a short amount of time here.

We're we're running out of time. Is there anything that I've forgotten to ask you about any of this stuff?

Dan28:04

You know, one, one thing that we, this just came up again, I answer all the phone calls that come into Graham paint and a gentleman I spoke with last week we were talking about he's an oil painter, but he was priming his canvases with with Jesso.

And he said, how can I tone my canvas? You can actually add. Whatever acrylic color to your Jesso, if you wanted, because you can paint oil paint on top of acrylic, not vice versa, doesn't work, but it's just one little thing that popped up last week that I thought we might wanna mention because we're talking acrylic.

So you can either put down an acrylic color on your canvas. And paint with oil, or you can tone your Jesso as you're putting it down by adding that acrylic paint, whatever color you want as your, as your base color on your canvas.

jeff28:58

Great tip, but Judy, anything from your end that that

Judy29:01

I've missed?

Yeah, Jeff. So there's a couple more testimonial from Derek Gundy. He says I've been creating. With M gram watercolors for most of my professional career, but I've recently discovered a wonderful combination of both the watercolor and gush together in my illustrations, I can utilize the transparency and beauty of the watercolor medium while at the same time, maintaining more control with the opacity of the gush.

I'm able to edit and adapt my client work with great freedom with the gush. Another one for the acrylic. From mark Affy from a recent class that he just taught. He said, everyone who tried M Graham's acrylic loved it. One of the participants came with another brand and after trying Graham, they preferred the gram acrylic, the other brand was too stiff and dried out a little too fast for plain air painting.

And that's one of the main reasons that mark. Enjoys using our acrylics is because they do have that slightly more open time to them. That's great then if anyone has any questions once additional information, you can always go to our website, www.mgraham.com. There's a comment or contact box that you can use, or you can email us directly at colormaker@mgraham.com

jeff30:28

I'll tell you what, this has been a really great interview. We've learned so much about M Graham and what makes your product stand out in, in a field where there are a lot of people that manufacture acrylics and so forth. So I, we really, really appreciate you both taking the time again, to chat with us on our audience.

And I hope we have a chance to talk again soon.

Judy30:54

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Jeff, for allowing us to, to come and tape this podcast with you.

Dan31:02

Thank you. Appreciate it.

jeff31:04

My pleasure. You've been listening to the art supply insiders. Check back with us often as we talk about the world of art and craft supplies.

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