LUKAS 1862 Aquarell Watercolors Review and Color Chart Swatch Cards

Lukas watercolors are vegan made with a cruelty-free variety of wetting agents in addition to gum arabic (tree sap). They are available in pans as well as chunky 21ml tubes which are quite reasonably priced in comparison to other professional grade paints. They have 70 colors, 48 of them containing a single pigment ingredient.

I have found that the quality of these paints varies greatly by color. They do have some rare offerings, such as really useful mixing colors like PY175 and PB16 available from only a handful of pro-brands worldwide. I was sad to find some batch to batch differences, or different pigments being used for pan vs tube form. My old pan of Viridian was a slightly granulating, non-salt reactive (normal for PG18) deep green. The tube form of Viridian I bought a year later was slightly brighter, less granulation and had prominent salt reaction. This is far more of a phthalo green PG7 appearance, which unfortunately makes it behave differently in mixtures than my well-loved PG18 (which I talk about on my favorite lightfast pigments page).

Swatch cards:

      

You can buy Lukas paints on Jacksons here.

If you'd like to see how each color compares to the same color in another brand, check out the pigment database.