Best Brands of Watercolor Paint

My selection of my favorite brands of watercolor paint.

With watercolor paints, there's not only a choice of brands, but also whether you buy it in tube or pan form. Another influence is whether you're using watercolor as your main medium, or for sketching only. For the latter, a small sketching set will likely suffice, while for the former I believe you should buy the best quality paint you can afford. (Remember, student paints are cheaper for a reason: they've usually more filler in them, so the colors aren't as good.) This is a list of my personal favorites when it comes to watercolor paints.

1. Watercolor Paints: M.Graham (Tubes)

View Full-Size Image © Marion Boddy-Evans These watercolor paints are extremely pigmented, so the colors are intense, bright, and saturated. The colors have a high tinting strength, so a little goes a long way. In addition to the more usual gum arabic and glycerine, M.Graham also uses honey in the manufacture of its watercolors. This helps prevent the color drying up in the tube (because honey absorbs moisture from the atmosphere) and helps the paint dilute easily. It also makes the paints thin down very smoothly. Available in 70 colors (see M.Graham'scolor chart and pigment list). Buy Direct

4. Watercolor Paints: Winsor & Newton (Tubes and Pan Sets)

View Full-Size Image © Marion Boddy-Evans W&N are a widely used brand of watercolor more because they're so readily available and competitively priced than because they're the absolute best watercolor paint on the market. If you're extremely serious about watercolor painting, be sure to try some of the other artist's brands too. If you're wanting a pan set for occasional sketching only, a little W&N set does the job nicely. W&N's top quality watercolor paints are branded simply "Artist's Water Colour" while their student's brand is branded "Cotman". Nearly 100 colors available (see W&N color chart), including some in extra large pans, and metal or plastic pan sets. Buy Direct

7. The Colors in My Basic Watercolor Palette

View Full-Size Image © Marion Boddy-Evans Regardless of brand, my personal preference for a six set of primaries (a warm and cool version of each primary) would be: Cadmium yellow and azo yellow Cadmium red and quinacridone red Cerulean blue and phthalocyanine blue or Prussian blue. Obviously you need to work sensibly with cadmium pigments because they are toxic, and you may prefer to use colors based on other pigments.