Hi Briant, I am not quite sure what you mean in stating that “the brands” have stated that their reason for discontinuing the pigments is that “artists just don’t buy enough to justify making the pigment to begin with.” By “the brands” do you mean the pigment manufacturers? I don’t think artist demand affects them in the slightest.

Or do you mean the artist paint brands like Winsor & Newton & DS? In that case, I’ve never seen anything suggesting that that their reason for stopping producing a paint color was anything other than that the pigment was not available to them anymore, have you? I haven’t been around here long, but I have read and researched quite a lot (since that’s what I like to do! :)), and I haven’t seen any indication that they stopped making/selling New Gamboge (or in the case of W&N and others, “real” Quin Gold) because of lack of artist demand for the colors. It was just because the manufacturers stopped making the pigments. That’s why they’ve continued to try to reproduce the same colors with other pigments (and sell them, confusingly and – I think – misleadingly, under the same name!).

See e.g. this link, which is also from another thread:
http://www.goldenpaints.com/technicalinfo_faq_xv_limited

…The automotive industry is the chief consumer for pigments, and after that the next market is coatings for household and industrial goods like washing machine manufacturers. When the automotive folks stop using a particular pigment, it can quickly fall into obscurity because there simply isn’t enough sales to warrant continuing to make it.

When a pigment company stops making a certain pigment, we first will secure enough pigment to continue to make it for several years. Then we look towards other companies who make that same pigment, and if they too are halting their production, we begin to search for new pigments that are similar to the one being phased out….

It does seem like the minimum purchase amount for the pigments is large (how much pigment to paint a car?????) – but is this different from how any other pigment manufacturer provides any other pigments, since they all aim at the automotive (and other) industries, and the art industry is not even a speck on their radar? I have no idea what the answer is – I thought perhaps someone like Bruce of Handprint would, since he did so much research. Just attempting to reason it out, with no facts at my disposal :D, I don’t see why the pigment manufacturers would differ greatly in their standards for minimum orders etc., but of course I could be totally wrong.

Might art paint companies buy smaller amounts from (say) automotive manufacturers, instead of direct from pigment manufacturers?

Again, I have no idea whatsoever how this works, though the quote above (which is from “Golden Artists Colors”) suggests that they buy directly from pigment manufactuers.

Marialena, the problem with that reasoning is that 1) no one else other than Daniel Smith sells “true” Quin gold (PO49). You really think W&N and others wouldn’t be selling it if they could get it? You think DS would be reformulating their Quin Gold if they didn’t have to (see recent thread)? Also, 2) no one at all sells New Gamboge/Nockel Dioxine Yellow anymore (PY153), despite it apparently being an artist favorite yellow. Again, you think someone wouldn’t be selling that color if it had remained available?

It seems highly unlikely that the demand from artists is ever going to be enough to affect pigment manufacturing.