I like casein and wanted to explore it more, but wanted some yellows and orange biased reds that weren’t cadmiums in order to be able to work more transparently. And also to have some of my favorite watercolor colors that aren’t available in casein, like quinacridone gold and indanthrone blue.

So I bought some pigment dispersions from Guerra Paints and got some casein emulsion made by Shiva and mixed them up. The dispersions make lovely bright colors, but of course they’re thinner than the tube paints.

The question I have is about the ratio of casein emulsion to pigment dispersion. Guerra Paint says that for acrylic a normal ratio would be 1 part dispersion to 8-16 parts acrylic binder. And also say that there’s no point in adding more pigment once the pigment/binder mixture doesn’t change color. But some of the articles I’ve found online about mixing up casein paints with dry pigment advise a much smaller amount of binder.

I’ve only mixed up two teaspoons at a time, with about 1/8 – 1/4 teaspoon pigment, which is the same as the 1 to 8/16 ratio for acrylics.

The couple of pots of paint I’ve mixed up are quite transparent, so I’ve definitely achieved that part. I guess I’m wondering if they’re too transparent because I haven’t used enough pigment.

Has anybody else used pigment dispersions with casein?