INTENSE COLOR, EFFORTLESS FLOW

Tonic Watercolor is made right here in our St. Louis HQ, with a unique formula that we developed over two years of experimentation and research. We designed Tonic for maximum pigmentation, and you’ll notice that a pan of Tonic is more concentrated than many other artist-grade watercolors.

With just a few drops of water, you can make bold, saturated marks on wet or dry paper. To make typical, translucent watercolor washes, you’ll need to add more water than you might expect. Most Tonic colors start out semi-opaque because of their high pigment load, but they open up with water, becoming light and subtle as they’re diluted.

At any concentration, Tonic is free-flowing. It’s easy to load onto a wet brush, easy to lift from its pan or from paper, and easy to move the brush across watercolor paper. Some brands of watercolor are too sticky or slow-moving to allow painting on dry paper, but with Tonic, you don’t need to pre-wet the page for most techniques.

12 mL ALUMINUM TUBES

Hand-filled in St. Louis, our aluminum tubes are the most direct way to put Tonic on paper. Professional painters often prefer tubes, because they offer excellent control of the crucial pigment/water ratio. You can paint with Tonic tubes full-strength for intense, dark, semi-opaque color, or dab just a touch on your palette for bright, clear washes.

Federal Color aluminum tubes have wide, octagonal caps for easy opening, even if you get paint on the threads. They come in a cardboard box for protection and storage. 12 mL (0.4 oz.) per tube.

MADE WITH FINE ACACIA GUM

One element of our recipe is highly traditional: we use specially sourced and carefully tested gum arabic as the binder for Tonic watercolors. Gum arabic, which is the plant-based medium of virtually all watercolors, varies wildly in quality and consistency. As we learned over dozens of materials tests, some grades and species of gum arabic are totally unsuitable for watercolor. Some are merely acceptable. The best-quality gum arabic (which is what we use in Tonic) offers incredible transparency, flexibility, and handling. That’s why our Tonic Watercolor Medium is noticeably clearer than many of the other brands on the market.

LIGHTFAST, MODERN PIGMENTS

All Tonic colors are lightfast, with ratings of 7 or 8 on the eight-point Blue Wool Scale. Paintings made with Tonic colors are suitable for commissioned work and for long-term display under appropriate gallery conditions.

TRIPLE-MILLED FOR PERFECT DISPERSION

We put each Tonic color through extensive testing to ensure that the consistency of each dispersion is perfect. That means that each tiny particle of pigment is surrounded by the watercolor medium. Tonic Watercolor is completely free of clumps and inconsistent pigment dispersionunlike handmade watercolors, which can’t achieve the same consistency, and even some cheaper factory-made colors.

Our process for achieving these professional-grade results involves several stages of mixing, milling, and quality checking. First, we use a dispersing blade to pre-mix each color with medium. The pre-mix can take quite some time, because we use such high concentrations of pigment. But when it’s done, the paint is a smooth paste without major clumps.

After the pre-mix, we use a three-roll mill to fully disperse the pigment and break up any clumps that are invisible to the naked eye. Each time the paint passes through the mill, it is pushed with incredible force through a tiny gap, generally measuring less than 50 microns (0.05 mm). The shearing force breaks the bonds between nearby pigment particles and turns the paste into a luxuriously smooth, free-flowing watercolor paint.

Three passes through the mill are required to make Tonic silky smooth. This labor-intensive process requires considerable skill from our mill operators, who ensure that each batch meets our exacting standards.

NO ANIMAL PRODUCTS

We’re pleased to let you know that Tonic contains no animal-derived products. Unlike many watercolors, Tonic does not contain ox gall instead, we use modern surfactants to achieve the same effects as the traditional animal-derived recipe.

MORE ABOUT FEDERAL COLOR

Federal Color is the manufacturing department at St. Louis Art Supply. Available in our own shop and from other great indie retailers, Federal Color products are artist-made, professional-quality, and designed with contemporary creatives in mind.

Explore the full Federal Color range.