Watercolour Paints

Watercolour paints, which many people also search for simply as watercolours, are transparent paints diluted with water. You use them on absorbent watercolour paper, and the light areas in a painting come from the white paper rather than white paint. Here you will find paints in tubes and pans as well as liquid watercolour, individual shades and sets for beginners, students and artists. Brands include Rosa, Maimeri, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Daniel Smith, QOR, Schmincke and Daler Rowney.

Student or artist-grade watercolour paint?

Artist-grade watercolour paint contains more pigment and fewer fillers, so it is richer in colour, mixes more cleanly, and many shades use a single pigment. Student ranges tend to contain less pigment, and some pigments, such as cadmium or cobalt, are replaced with an imitation labelled hue. That is enough for learning and sketching, but for a painting intended to hang on a wall for years, choose artist-grade paint.

Artist ranges here include Rembrandt, Daniel Smith, MaimeriBlu, QOR and Schmincke Horadam. Daler Rowney Aquafine, Graduate and Simply or Schmincke Academy suit getting started and practising. Van Gogh is made by the same company as Rembrandt and is intended for advanced amateurs. The tube or pan also shows the shade's lightfastness and transparency; each brand uses its own symbols, explained on its colour chart.

Tubes, pans or liquid watercolour?

Squeeze tube paint onto a palette to quickly mix plenty of colour for a sky or background. A pan is ready as soon as you moisten it with a brush, and you can keep it with you in a paint box; you can refill an empty pan with tube paint and leave it to dry. Ecoline liquid watercolour is a ready-to-use solution in a bottle, applied with a brush or pen, with very intense colours.

Which shades belong in your first palette?

To start, you only need a small set or a few tubes from which you can mix almost every colour: a warm and cool yellow, a warm and cool red, a warm and cool blue, and two earth colours such as burnt sienna and umber. Ultramarine and phthalocyanine blue are common blue choices for a palette, while sepia or indigo suit dark tones. You will find ready-made colour selections among the watercolour paint sets, and you can replace a used-up or missing shade from the individual watercolour paints.

You can combine watercolour with gouache: gouache is an opaque water-based paint that lets you add white highlights or details on a dark background at the end. You will find opaque paints in the gouache paints category.