Watercolor Pigments

Watercolor starter kits are available at almost every art retail outlet. They will have the basic pigments and colors in tubes or cakes. I suggest beginning with cakes. They are less expensive and less wasteful and come with a useful easily managed selection of colors. You may also wish to buy a couple of tubes to see what they are like. Buy small tubes at first. I suggest better quality pigments from the beginning. Cheap pigments usually contain much more gum arabic as the paint medium and can end up costing more than better quality pigments. They also don't give the intensity of color that good pigments will.

A few brand names are Winsor & Newton, Holbein, Old Holland, Van Gogh, Cotman, and M. Graham. Cotman as noted elsewhere is Winsor & Newton's student grade pigment. I've had good luck with all of these though color quality varies between brands. My favorite choice is M. Graham. I also have personal preferences of some pigments over others non-dependant on quality, but rather on brightness, hue, or intensity of color.

All paints use a binder or medium to suspend the colored pigment. Gum arabic is most commonly used as the binder for watercolors.

Suggested colors:
Lemon yellow, cadmium yellow deep, yellow ochre, raw umber, sepia, cadmium red, alizarin crimson, permanent green, emerald green, cobalt blue, ultramarine blue, Prussian blue, Paynes grey.

Every starter kit, either cake or tube will come with white. I suggest not using white right away. White is an opaque pigment and is used most often toward the completion of paintings as added highlights. Some strict watercolor purists will contend that white not be used at all. All pigments vary in opacity. Some specialized colors have white in them. I stay away from these as I can add my own white if I like. Pigments with white added are noticable by their paleness or tint and opaqueness.

I'm not fond of using black in watercolor painting , but ivory black would be okay if you feel so inclined.

All colors are fugitive to some degree. It doesn't matter if they're oil or water based. Oil paints are less fugitive because the oil diffuses ultraviolet light to some degree. All commercial pigments are standardized and tested as to the amount they fade from being exposed to ultra violet light over specific periods of time. All tube paints are labeled as to how resistant they are to light. Warm colors such as crimson can be more fugative to light than cool colors. An example of ultra violet light damage are posters you may have seen in store front windows. The warm colors such as the reds and yellows have totally faded and what are left are the cool blues. It is an issue to be aware of, but don't let it stop you from using colors you feel give the aesthetic qualities you desire in your work.

Steven Skinner     bigcityart.com ©2009