The second Pantone of the Year is “Ultimate Grey” so this month we are looking at grey. My favourite powertex colour is Lead… so this is a bit of a love letter.

Lead was one of the last of the neutral colours of Powertex I played with, as I used to stick to Bronze, Black or Ivory as my base colours. However once I tried Lead, it quickly became my “go to” favourite colour for a base coat as I love the way is shows off colours and pigments.

Its dries slightly darker than the liquid so really makes pigments “pop” in the same way as you see with Black Powertex, but feels less overpowering at times.

Personally I love the effect of the iridescent pigments as they look almost sheer and translucent.

I find Lead less intimidating than Black, Ivory or White as it feels less like a blank canvas. I also find it’s a great base for those colours on the cool side of the spectrum (here I’ve just Dark Blue, Ultramarine and Turquoise with Silver). For warm colours I still reach for bronze.

During my most recent Powertex training, I started to explore mixing different colours of powertex, using dirty pour techniques. Lead is a great colour to incorporate into these processes as it goes with almost everything.

You can also use it as colour, Pearl White and Silver go perfectly as highlighters for Lead, showing off the texture in your project.

Powertex also do a grey pigment, as well as silver ink and pigments if you want to play with grey further.

Emma W