Watercolor Library

Color Study: Gray Titanium

During World Watercolor Month 2026, Daniel Smith laid down a series of daily color prompts, which I matched up with the WWM prompts – resulting in this painting. As I’d never painted in Gray Titanium, I decided to smoodge out some color for swatches, then also be able to pull from that swatch sheet smoodges to create paintings with! If I create more from this paint I’ll add them to this page later.

From the Daniel Smith Website (tap the image to see more)

Single pigment Gray Titanium is a mid-tone warm gray with slightly yellow undertones, and is semi-transparent, granulating, non-staining and has excellent lightfastness. The color and granulation make it wonderfully useful for dusty desert animals such as deer, elephants and tortoises, and for birds whose feathers offer good camouflage for blending into dry woodland, savanna and desert like the roadrunner and burrowing owl. In landscapes, granulating Gray Titanium is beautiful for trees and shrubs whose trunks, branches and twigs are light colored and textured. Urban landscapes benefit from Gray Titanium as well with light washes suggesting concrete structures. As a single pigment, Gray Titanium mixes wonderfully with other colors adding both warmth and softness due to its semi-transparent characteristic.

The gray I keep in my studio palette is Payne’s Blue Gray, but I wanted to see what another gray might do. These swatches cover all the range of Daniel Smith grays except Jane’s which went awol during this test.

Another interesting discovery: they’re all spelled GRAY (American spelling) until you get to the Alvaros and Joseph Zs and Jane’s which are all spelled GREY (English spelling)

On the 4th of July this eagle flew above a mountain scene in primarily Gray Titanium – the warm grey seen on the sunny side of the mountain. The shady portion is Alvaro’s Fresco Grey, then some Payne’s Blue Gray makes an appearance in the foreground mountain in shade.

Jane’s Grey smoke! The tube appeared in time for its World Watercolor Month challenge day. It lifted the smoke out fairly well, as the paint’s properties said on the DS website!
As other gray paintings are completed I’ll add more here for comparisons.