Kuretake Gansai Tambi Watercolor No.13 LILAC

Lilac – Japanese 藤色 fujiiro, the colour of wisteria flowers – is No. 13 in Kuretake's Gansai Tambi palette: a muted, cool blue-lilac with a distinctive white content that gives the tone its characteristic velvety quality. Made as a pressed pan using traditional Japanese Gansai technique, the colour dissolves quickly and evenly with a damp brush and dries with a subtle silk sheen on paper. The oversized pan (48 mm × 28 mm) provides ample surface area for broad brushes and generous colour pickup.

Features

• Pigment composition PW6 · PV23 · PB1: The white content (PW6) makes Lilac a semi-opaque colour – applied with minimal water, the colour sits richly on the surface and prevents the paper showing through. Heavily diluted, it becomes a delicate, transparent lavender wash.
• Creamy consistency, no granulation: Kuretake presses the pans with great care, ensuring the colour dissolves smoothly and uniformly – no pigment separation in washes, no grainy application.
• Reactivatable after drying: Even fully dried layers can be reactivated with a damp brush, corrected and softened – making it significantly easier to refine edges and transitions.
• Subtle silk sheen: Gansai Tambi dries with a softly lustrous surface. This distinguishes these colours from flat gouache and gives Lilac a certain depth in print – particularly on smooth paper.
• ACMI-certified: The colour carries the AP seal from the Art & Creative Materials Institute and is rated as non-toxic.
• Individual pan as replacement or addition: The pan is compatible with Gansai Tambi sets and can be inserted into existing palettes once the original colour is exhausted.

Use & Tips

• Wet-on-dry for crisp areas: Gansai Tambi spreads less on dry paper than Western watercolours and stays more where applied. Wet-on-wet is possible but creates softer, less controllable transitions – ideal for hazy backgrounds.
• Lilac as a shadow tone in portraits and floral subjects: The blue-violet tone with white content is classically suited to soft shadow areas in skin and flower passages – it cools without oversaturating and remains legible on light paper.
• Mixes with Rosé or Cherry Blossom Pink: Blended with a warmer pink, Lilac shifts towards a muted lavender; with more water it becomes an almost pastel wisteria tone, perfect for large background areas.
• Calligraphy and brush lettering: The smooth, homogeneous consistency of Gansai Tambi makes it suitable for broad calligraphy brushes. The large pan allows generous colour pickup without damaging the brush.
• On black or dark paper: The white pigment content (PW6) means Lilac covers visibly even on dark grounds – a distinct application area for lettering or floral illustration on card stock.
• Layering with care: Since the colour is easily reactivated, work quickly when layering so lower layers are not dissolved and pulled into the new layer.

For Watercolour Enthusiasts

No. 13 Lilac is based on a combination of dioxazine violet (PV23), a blue component (PB1) and titanium white (PW6). This pigment profile is typical of the muted pastel tones in the Gansai Tambi palette: the colour is naturally broken and reaches full colour saturation even at moderate dilution. Users who apply the colour boldly (minimal water, thick application) will notice the subtle silk sheen of the binder – a characteristic of all Gansai Tambi that comes from the water-soluble synthetic resin binder. This binder distinguishes Gansai Tambi from European gum arabic watercolours: the colour sits on the paper surface rather than soaking deeply in, which explains its high reactivatability. Lilac is not formulated for granulation effects – those seeking lively texture in washes should combine this tone with a granulating pigment from another colour in the palette.

Technical Specifications