I primarily work with single-pigment professional paints that have highest lightfastness ratings. Most of them are made from permanent minerals and based on natural gum arabic or pure polymer, without fillers or solvents. Some paints I make myself.
Lightfast Paints and Mediums
Pigments and Paints
My main mediums are acrylic polymers of various properties (fluid, heavy body, and pastes), gum arabic, and distilled water.
Pains I choose by quality and ingredients after a substantial research and testing. Ideal pain for me should be single pigment of lightfastness 8 on the Blue Wool Scale, ASTM excellent, have high pigment load with minimum and only necessary additives.
I often manipulate permanent pigments like iron oxides in my own way by making paints, sticks, pastes, and tools to apply them to pre-treated surfaces.
My palette was always narrow, and I create even more limited color palettes for each series or a single painting. About 9 pigments I keep in the studio permanently, and and my maximum was 24 at a time. I usually choose only 2-5 of them for an artwork, often splitting the range even further for transparent layers.
Brands
In acrylics, my favorite brand is Golden for both fluid and heavy body paints and mediums. I also like French Liquitex, and sometime use Holbein and German Lucas professional.
In aquarelle, I choose tubes from Da Vinci, Winsor & Newton, and Daniel Smith.
Permanent Varnish
Almost all my works are sealed with clear isolation layer, sometimes with additional UV protection for color permanence if needed.