M. Graham Intermediate 10-Color Watercolor Paint Set, 1/2-Ounce Tube

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I have to admit…when I first started watercolors I agonized over my choice of paints. It can be pretty confusing trying to compare different brands, colors, and all the various characteristics of this beautiful art medium.

Cobalt Teal Blue: PG50 (Semi-transparent & single pigment). This is another beautiful blue-green hue. The paint retains its saturation well after drying. You’ll find the same pigment used in paints with various names, but “Teal” is the pure version of this turquoise color. This paint is quite granular. I don’t think you should select your watercolors without knowing a little bit about what you’re buying first. And that means you need to understand a few basics about the characteristics of watercolor paint.One other small issue I've noticed is that some DS colors (like raw umber) shrink drastically while drying, which wouldn't be an issue except I prefer to squeeze my colors into pans. Because of shrinkage, some of my DS colors have trouble staying put and will pop out of their pans. Common sense and care must be used with any solution you decide to adopt. Do not, for instance, lay rags down on other cellulose materials or place them on an object in direct sunlight during the summer months. Do not place rags near a source of ignition such as a stove or fireplace, etc. In summary, adding violet to Sap Green dulls the green, whilst adding blue cools off or darkens it. Adding orange is more effective than adding red into green to get a warmer green hue. Why I Use M. Graham Watercolors By Mike Bailey AWS and NWS member Mike Bailey @me_bailey_art shares why M. Graham paints permanently reside in his palette in the latest M. Graham blog.

Cobalt Blue: PB28 (Semi-transparent & single pigment) This is less granular than Ultramarine and useful for skies. This blue sits somewhere between a cool and warm blue. Some artists use this as their regular blue color but I use it as a “bonus” blue. Ok… Now imagine you’re looking at a manufacturer’s paint chart. What exactly should you be looking for ?

Later, as you progress you should move towards professional watercolors. Tubes or Pans – Which is Best? MG paints are also very vibrant, particularly when wet, but vibrancy appears similar to other brands once dry. Some artists don’t like MG’s strength, especially when working in glazes, and I do think their pigments stain more easily. However, the paints are easily thinned and the power of these paints makes one tube go a long way. Since MG is already the most affordable of the three brands, this makes these pigments highly economical for artist-grade paints. The color index name is established and published by the American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists and The Society of Dyers and Colourists. The color index name is a generic category and does not refer to a specific pigment. While it enables the artist to form a general idea of opacity, transparency and lightfastness, for a pigment in a certain color space, it does not provide definitive information. Many grades of pigment are available from a number of manufactures with a very wide range of physical attributes. I’m often asked, “What brand of watercolors do you recommend?” Actually, I don’t. There are more than a dozen major manufacturers of artist-grade watercolors, and there are also many small companies producing watercolors. Most of these folks make excellent watercolor paints overall. Whether I glaze or just make spontaneous spots of color, these paints perform better than ALL other manufacturer’s paints, and I have used them all! Wet into wet, dry brush, glazing, mixing on the paper, or any other method I use to deliver the paint to a painting, the results always serve to excite my painting clients (and me!).

Tubes are filled with liquid paint, whereas pans are little containers with dried cakes of paint in them. These pans exist in two sizes known as “full pan” or “half pan”. As an essential ingredient in our binding medium, honey contributes to moistness for smooth, easily controlled applications, increased pigment concentrations, and freedom from over reliance on preservatives. Because of the honey medium, our watercolor resists hardening on the palette, or in the tube. It dilutes easily, often after months of disuse.” Cool Yellow – Lemon Yellow: PY175 (Transparent & single pigment). This is a very light yellow which holds its color value well as it dries. Very useful for mixing bright greens when combined with a cool blue. Secondary Colors:So in the following lines I’ll give you the simple truth about what you need to look for when selecting watercolor paints. The other aspect is how true the colors are. I depend largely on the color wheel for understanding color harmony. The colors I use conform perfectly to the hues on the color wheel by Stephen Quiller that I use. Knowing this, and being a steadfast fan of mixing tones and grays, I gain maximum liveliness of my color mixes with M. Graham’s paint. Mixing the tones on the paper, instead of my palette, offers up some of the most enticing and lively color variations that any artist could ask for. Spontaneous combustion occurs when a drying oil or similar material is combined with cellulose or another material capable of holding onto the oil and the heat generated in the process of drying is not allowed to dissipate. The heat then builds up until it reaches an ignition temperature and combustion occurs. Rags and paper towels are two examples of cellulose material that, when crumpled or folded, can prevent heat from escaping and start to ignite. Ambient temperature can either slow or accelerate the process. In general, the higher the temperature, the more rapidly the oil dries and the greater the possibility of combustion. New England set of 5 contains: Naphthol Red, Cadmium Yellow Light, Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Umber and Hookers Green.

Split Primary Selection – The primaries in this set are divided into warm and cool versions of each primary zone to maximize color mixing flexibility. Indian Yellow/Azo Yellow, Scarlet Pyrrol/Quinacridone Rose, & Ultramarine Blue/Phthalo Green Blue Shade Calcium Carbonate will affect the clarity of the medium as well as the color intensity (it adds a grey/white hue to all colors). It is likely that calcium carbonate will have the least impact on film formation and adhesion but the greatest negative impact on color. In mixing greens, I used the pre-mixed Sap green for the test, instead of using a mixture between Ultramarine and Azo Yellow. Putting Sap Green in the basic set is great because the hue reflects quite closely to the foliage green we see everyday. It is not exactly the green we see in our environment but it is ‘greyed’ enough to be a home-based green to start with while painting foliage.There may be just 5 colors in the basic set, but these form the limited color palettes sufficient to complete a painting. It is light weight and not too cumbersome to carry around if you are painting plein air. The range of colors you get through mixing these basic 5 colors is amazing. Here’s what you can do with a limited palette. MG tends to be more opaque than WN yet not as strongly granulating as DS, but MG is strong enough to mix well with many granulating pigments and hold its strength quite well even when diluted. When asked by M. Graham how I use their paints, I realized that I have never really given much thought to how I use them. I just put them to work upon many hundreds of my watercolor paintings. My mind hardly pays attention to how I use them as much as I pay attention to what they are doing in the act of painting. The best answer is the honest one: I keep M. Graham paints in my watercolor palette and use them every time I paint, which is almost daily. Desert Southwest set of 5 contains: Quinacridone Rust, Yellow Ochre, Indian Yellow, Mineral Violet and Turquoise. When you select your paints, the characteristics you need to take into consideration are the following: