I was unable to find any information about this, and so for a long time I just assumed it was the cheap Wilko acrylic I was using. I can't varnish it without it smearing. I can't use it mixed with fabric medium without it smearing, even after several top coats of clear medium and heat setting it. The moment you add any acrylic or water on it, it reactivates the pigment. It's just not colour fast at all.

But then I noticed the same problem with cyan printer ink. When printing on photo paper, I can seal printouts with diluted PVA except cyan. Anything with a lot of cyan will smear, just like with the paint, but the other colours will be fine.

So if true cyan pigments are so problematic, why can I not find a single other mention of other artists having this problem? Why is it just me?

I'm sick of ruining my art. I decided to see if ChatGPT knew anything about it.

I'll post the full conversations in another post. And next up, an experiment.

The primary colours. I'll be testing cerulean and lemon from theworks's (budget art brand) Boldmere branding; cerulean and ultramarine from Wilko (also budget); and cerulean, cobalt, primary cyan and primary magenta (I found some!) from Royal and Langnickel, which is kinda mid-range.

I made swatches of each colour.

The Wilko and theworks ceruleans are very similar and close to a true cyan. Royal's cerulean is more muted, which I was surprised at. Primary cyan is nothing like true cyan, it's a very deep blue. Cobalt is nice, and again, it's a deeper blue, closer to a muted royal blue.

On the left of each swatch, I brushed on diluted PVA, and on the right, I brushed on diluted matt medium.

Strangely enough, when brushing on the PVA, nothing much happened to any colour. I think maybe the paint needed a little time to activate. Once I started with the diluted matt medium though, you could see which colours had the least stability.

I was really going at it, as you can see. The Wilko cerulean hardly took any effort to smear with the diluted matt medium. theworks's cerulean also smeared, but did hold out a little longer. The Wilko ultramarine was also reactivated, which surprised me. The best performer was in fact Royal's cerulean, followed by their cobalt. The primary cyan did reactivate without too much effort, though, so I'm glad the seller I buy from no longer stocks the big 500ml tubs!

In this case, it seems Chat GPT wasn't entirely right. The cerulean was far more stable for the Royal brand than primary cyan, which was a very dark, deep colour.

Anyway, the real winner was the blue Sharpie! Not a smear in sight!