We are excited to be one of the first exclusive partners with our good friends at Federal Color in St Louis, MO!
Made with incredibly concentrated pigments. Hand-poured into large porcelain pans. Tonic is a deluxe new line of artist-grade watercolors, with a unique formula that emphasizes flow and intensity. Tonic moves freely on wet or dry paper; it lifts readily with a wet brush; it dilutes smoothly and without coaxing. Perfect for expressive, quick-moving painting sessions with large brushes.
INTENSE COLOR, EFFORTLESS FLOW
Tonic Watercolor is made in Federal Color St. Louis HQ, with a unique formula that was developed over two years of experimentation and research. Tonic Watercolor was designed 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.
MADE WITH FINE ACACIA GUM
One element of the Tonic recipe is highly traditional: it uses 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. After 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 used in Tonic) offers incredible transparency, flexibility, and handling. That's why 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
Each Tonic color is put 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 dispersion—unlike handmade watercolors, which can't achieve the same consistency, and even some cheaper factory-made colors.
The process for achieving these professional-grade results involves several stages of mixing, milling, and quality checking. First, a dispersing blade is used to pre-mix each color with medium. The pre-mix can take quite some time, because of the high concentrations of pigment. But when it's done, the paint is a smooth paste without major clumps.
After the pre-mix, a three-roll mill is used 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 their mill operators, who ensure that each batch meets their exacting standards.
NO ANIMAL PRODUCTS
Tonic contains no animal-derived products. Unlike many watercolors, Tonic does not contain ox gall — instead, modern surfactants are used to achieve the same effects as the traditional animal-derived recipe.
