When starting to paint with watercolors, determining where to start can be overwhelming. What brushes should you get? Paper? Paints? 

A good place to begin is getting professional grade primary paints. All of the colors of the rainbow come from the primaries: red, yellow and blue.  Setting up your palette with your own primary colors instead of getting a palette already filled with paints is the best way to start watercolor painting.

• Primary colors - what are they?

• Benefits of professional paints

• Where do I put my paints?
  
  

Primary Colors - What are They?

Introduction to Primary Colors

The primary colors are the colors on the color wheel that all colors come from.  They are red, yellow and blue and no other colors can mix to make these colors.  

When mixing these colors together, you get secondary colors: orange - mixing red and yellow, green - mixing yellow and blue, purple - mixing red and blue.  

Then there are tertiary colors that come from mixing different amounts of the secondary colors together: red-orange = more red than yellow, yellow-orange = more yellow than red, etc.

My Top Primary Color Picks

These are my top choices for primary colors to start building your palette from. The pigmentation, ease of use and the way these paints mix is a dream.

Winsor and Newton Red - Perfect warm, vibrant and opaque red
Winsor and Newton Yellow - Beautiful warm yellow
Winsor and Newton Blue - Cool blue that is granulating which means it has a texture to it which adds a richness to whatever it is mixed with

Warm Colors vs. Cold Colors

The color wheel has a warm side (red, yellow, orange) and a cool side (green, blue, purple). But each color can lean warm or cool too.  For example, cadmium red is warm but there are also reds that lean more purple instead of yellow and those are considered cool.  

If you want to start off with only primary colors, you can branch out by getting a warm and cool of each one and then mix a color wheel from each one so you can see what results all warm primary colors will give you versus using all cool primary colors.

Color Wheel Mixing

The beauty of starting with just 3 professional grade primary color watercolors is that you can have a better experience mixing all of the colors of the rainbow! Getting a good grasp of how colors mix together will give you the best foundation for learning even more about color, value and contrast.  

Pure color is generally referred to as “hue”. The value of a hue is adjusted by the addition of either pure black or pure white.  

Value is the measurement of the amount of black or white a pure hue has mixed. With watercolor it is possible to get a white watercolor paint and mix it in to lighten the value but generally you want to add more water to lighten your colors. The white is from the white of the paper coming through the transparent watercolor washes of paint.

Three Key Benefits to Using Professional Grade Paints Instead of Student Grade Paints

Pigmentation

Getting weak color pigmentation/strength when you finally dive into your watercolor paints is no fun at all.  You want maximum payoff with just the right amount of paint.  

Trying to overcompensate for paint that is already low on pigment is frustrating, annoying and just something you don’t want to deal with when you are trying to just relax and enjoy the process of watercolor painting.

Less Frustration

When you start to paint, it can already be challenging to learn a new skill.  But when you are also dealing with poor quality products, you won’t realize that is the issue and think that you just aren’t understanding how to watercolor paint. 

Or you may think you just aren’t good at painting at all but your art supplies are playing a major factor in your results!  Be easy on yourself and eliminate anything that could be standing in your way by using professional grade watercolor paints from the very beginning!

Fewer Issues with Quality and Consistency

Working against your supplies is not the experience you want when watercolor painting. The dream is to get into a calm state, the paint and water are mixing seamlessly and drying beautifully. 

It’s hard to get to this relaxing zen when your supplies are low grade and poor quality. Start with quality and the odds are already in your favor!

Where Do I Put My Watercolor Paints?

Easy and Ideal Watercolor Set Up for Beginners

You just need a small supplies list to get started with watercolor painting.  

A metal palette with more than 10 wells for paints and a nice amount of room to mix paint mixes
A professional grade primary red watercolor tube paint
A professional grade primary yellow watercolor tube paint
A professional grade primary blue watercolor tube paint
A synthetic blend round tip watercolor paint brush - size 3
A paper towel to blot up your mixes or an area where you used too much paint
A pencil
An eraser
A multimedia sketchbook

Why A Metal Palette is Better Than a Plastic One

When you buy watercolor tube paints, you need to put them on a surface where they can dry. Then you activate the dry paint with a wet brush, take that paint on your palette (a white plate, actual paint palette, etc) and add more water or paint to the mix to make it lighter or darker. 

I recommend a metal palette because they don’t yellow after time like plastic palettes and your mixes don’t bead up together like they do on plastic. On metal you can make your mixes in a line and keep pulling from them without worrying about any beading issues. Perfection!

Ready to start painting?
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Frequently Asked Questions About Watercolor Paints

1. What brands are great for professional grade? The professional brands that have worked for me are Winsor and Newton, Daniel Smith and Holbein

2. What are pans and tubes?
   Pan paints are already packaged dry paints that you can just fit inside of palettes like this. They come in full size (rectangle) or half pan (just half of the full size and square). 
   Tube paints come as small as 5ml, 15ml, etc and the paints are wet inside so you can squeeze them out.  Then you squeeze them onto your palette, wait for them to dry for at least 24 hours and they are ready to activate with a wet brush just like pan paints are.

3. Is there a difference between pans and tubes? Just the difference in brands and the form they come in when you get them. Pans are watercolors in dry form and watercolor paint tubes are watercolors in wet form.

4. What handmade paints are good brands to purchase from? I love to shop Etsy for beautiful handmade paints by independent small businesses, my favorites are Designs by Rachel Beth, Little Reverie Studio and Hydra Colour