A Basic Palette

The palette map and paint list are:

Palette map for the basic palette - paint list for the basic palette

benzimida yellow (either PY151 or PY154)

nickel dioxine yellow (PY153)

cadmium scarlet (or cadmium red light) (PR108)

perylene maroon (PR179)

quinacridone magenta (PR122)

ultramarine blue (PB29)

phthalo blue GS (PB15:3)

cerulean blue (PB35)

phthalo green BS (PG7) or

phthalo green YS (PG36)

gold ochre (PY42) or

yellow ochre (PY43) or

transparent yellow oxide (PY42)

burnt sienna (PBr7) or

transparent red oxide (PR101)

neutral tint, indigo or sepia (mixed pigments, usually PBk6)

(orange)
light red (scarlet, red orange)
medium red
deep red (carmine)
magenta (rose)

Any of these four red paints creates a wide range of interesting, muted browns and tans when mixed with
yellow or yellow green paints (green gold, sap green).

There are only five colorants currently available to provide blue colors in lightfast art materials: (1)
ultramarine blue, (2) iron (prussian) blue, (3) cobalt blues (commonly labeled cobalt blue deep, cobalt blue,
cobalt cerulean, cobalt turquoise and cobalt teal), (4) phthalocyanine blues (red shade, green shade and
turquoise), and (5) indanthrone blue:

red blue (cobalt, ultramarine, indanthrone)

middle blue (cobalt, phthalo, iron blue)
green blue/cyan (cobalt, phthalo)
turquoise (cobalt)

Perhaps the best basic paint choice from this limited selection is PHTHALOCYANINE BLUE GREEN SHADE
(pronounced "thal-oh", PB15:3). This is another extremely useful modern pigment, widely used in color
printing: dark valued, bright across the entire range of tints, very lightfast, and (in the paints labeled "green
shade") close to a cyan blue hue. If the paint manufacturer offers a "red shade" and a "green shade" of
phthalo blue, the "red" phthalo will be darker valued and closer to a middle blue hue. Phthalo blue can be
strongly staining, and has high tinting strength (is powerful in mixtures); it can also be somewhat dull in
masstone, and create backruns in dilute washes.

The major alternative is cobalt blue (PB28), which has a beautiful texture and is extremely lightfast, but is a
little too light valued and weak in tinting strength for a basic blue. It is also relatively expensive. However, it
is an excellent wash pigment, and you may like the subtle textures you can get with it — in this case, the
expressive pigment granulation outweighs the other drawbacks.

Green.

blue green (emerald)

middle green (hooker's, permanent deep)
yellow green (sap, permanent light)
green gold (olive)

My preference for a basic green is PHTHALOCYANINE GREEN BLUE SHADE (pronounced "thal-oh", PG7),
because it is has astonishing tinting strength, is extremely dark in mass tone, mixes well with both the
yellow and blue pigments, and produces intense near blacks when mixed with a red pigment such as
perylene maroon. The primary alternative is viridian (PG18), one of the oldest and most lightfast synthetic
inorganic green pigments. It is exactly same hue as phthalo green BS but is slightly less saturated; it also
has a weaker tinting strength mixtures and is much less staining, so it can be lifted with brush and water.

Getting Started

STEP 1 First, use these four to mix the 12 tertiary colors and the near neutral colors produced by mixing
paints that are opposite each other on the color wheel.

STEP 2 Paint out each mixed color at optimal dilution (with just enough added water so that the dried
mixture is "not black, not white") and then as a tint (heavily diluted with water). This is important: many
paints that are attractive at full strength can be very disappointing in tints.

STEP 3 Mix a dark neutral shade, as close to black as you can get. In most palettes you do this most
effectively by mixing a deep red with a blue green, a magenta with a middle green, a scarlet with a
turquoise or an orange with a middle blue. See Teoh Yi Chie – Mixing Blacks and greys

STEP 4 Use your dark neutral mixture to darken the tertiary color mixtures you have already prepared for
your color wheel, so that each color mixture appears as three color swatches: at maximum chroma, as a
shade (darkened with the neutral mixture), and as a tint (the pure color diluted with water). Set this paint
wheel up in your studio or home, and look at it under different types of light to judge if you like the results.
Test drive the paints in several small format (say 15x22 cm) paintings in a watercolor paper sketch pad. The
goal is not to make masterpieces, but to turn out a variety of colorful sketches.

Paint several different subjects — botanicals, portraits, landscapes or seascapes, whatever your pleasure
— to see how the color mixtures and value range perform in each case. Be sure to paint several examples
of subjects you most enjoy painting. Take your time, because you are learning about color mixing as well as
paints and paint combinations. (You may want to review my intuitive color study when you do.) Really look
at the colors, and ask yourself if you love the mixtures your palette can make. Display your paint wheel and
test paintings where you can study them all in good light, and look them over carefully. Get a glass of wine
or cup of tea, sit down and indulge your eyes. Ask yourself where the total harmony of the colors seems
beautiful and where it seems lacking, both in relation to the character of the subjects you chose to paint,
and the range of colors it was easy or difficult to mix. For example, you may find your mixed greens are fine
if you like to paint florals or landscapes, but too dull if you want to paint parrots. The mixtures with blue
may be too light or too staining. The mixed oranges may look almost brown ... and so on.

As you proceed, if one or more of the paints seems badly chosen, try changing one paint at a time to fix the
problem. If the mixed oranges seem too dull, you can try shifting your red (rose) or yellow paint toward
orange. If the phthalo blue makes dull purples, you can try cobalt or ultramarine blue instead. With this
new palette reproduce the questionable painting, and see if it looks better. It is important actually to try
out various color substitutions: you'll learn the relative saturation costs of the different paint combinations,
and you'll realize how much the colors you can mix with one paint depend on the other cornerstone paints
of your palette.

Expanding the palette

You could select a single orange or red orange paint to straddle the distance between yellow and carmine
red, but this will leave you with less than brilliant deep yellow mixtures. So it's more common to add two
paints, a deep yellow and a scarlet or red orange. For the deep yellow, NICKEL DIOXINE YELLOW (PY153) is
a versatile and gorgeous deep yellow pigment, especially as made by Daniel Smith (under the marketing
name new gamboge) or Rowney Artists (indian yellow). In concentrated form it is almost yellow orange; in
tints it shifts to approximately a middle yellow, producing a really attractive range of color mixing effects.
It's also semi-transparent, with good tinting strength, and very good for mixing natural but glowing middle
to yellow greens. An attractive alternative is isoindolinone yellow (PY110), currently only offered by Daniel
Smith (permanent yellow deep) and M. Graham. This also has a near orange redness in concentrated
applications, but dilutes down to a soft buttery yellow in tints. It is extremely lightfast, semitransparent and
has good mixing strength. It may be the best deep yellow pigment available. Interesting alternatives that
appear dull but produce beautiful green mixtures are the semitransparent nickel azo yellow (PY150) and
quinacridone gold (PO49), now only available from Daniel Smith. (All other watercolor paints with the
marketing name "quinacridone gold" are actually made with nickel azo yellow or yellow iron oxide.) Both
paints range from a dull, nutty deep yellow in masstone to radiant light-yellow tints, making them
especially useful for botanical or landscape palettes, and both paints actually increase in chroma as they
are diluted, making them acceptable for floral painting as well. I don't recommend you use
anthrapyrimidine yellow (PY108), as my 2004 lightfastness tests show it has only marginal permanence (it
darkens somewhat in masstone).

The other choices, such as cadmium yellow (PY35), cadmium yellow deep or hansa yellow deep (PY65) are
also high in chroma and mixing strength, although they seem to me bland by comparison. Finally, you can
push the hue even warmer with benzimidazolone orange (PO62), a yellow orange pigment that is very
saturated and has good lightfastness, although it is rather opaque and mixes dull yellow greens. As I've
already suggested, avoid convenience mixtures (paints made with two or more pigments) called gamboge
yellow or indian yellow. These rarely have anything special to offer in color appearance or mixing
attributes, and are often less lightfast than paints made with the single pigments mentioned above. You
want to choose a warm yellow that gives a strong color contrast to the basic yellow you already have. If
you have chosen a warm "middle" yellow for your four basic colors, you will probably want to go the
opposite direction and choose a cooler, very lemony "light" yellow, as described above. Again, you're not
so much interested in the pure color of the paint (which you rarely have need of) as in the mixing effects of
the yellows with the other red and green paints on your palette.

For the red orange, try CADMIUM SCARLET (sometimes labeled cadmium red light, PR108). Nothing glows
quite like a pure cadmium scarlet, in part because it is close to the warmest hue in the color wheel (at
around hue angle 40). Again, the exact hue varies by manufacturer; the Winsor & Newton shade is the
farthest toward orange and one of the most intense, and the Holbein cadmium red orange is also a great
choice. Cadmium scarlet creates a very effective range of oranges with hansa yellow deep, nickel dioxine
yellow, isoindolinone yellow or cadmium yellow deep, and a complete range of very beautiful reds when
mixed with your basic quinacridone magenta or quinacridone rose. It also makes deep gray neutrals with
phthalo blue, but the combination of these pigments can be rather dull — not necessarily a bad thing,
because you have the equally dark, but transparent and lustrous mixture of quinacridone magenta and
phthalo green BS as a contrast. The most common synthetic organic (less polluting) alternatives are
naphthol scarlet (PR188) or naphthol red (PR170); I do not recommend either paint because they have
marginal lightfastness. And why bother, when pyrrole scarlet (PR255) or pyrrole red (PR254) are both more
lightfast and more brilliant colors? The most saturated pigment on the orange side is pyrrole orange
(PO73), now available as a pure pigment paint from Daniel Smith, M. Graham, Winsor & Newton and
Rowney Artists (warm orange). (My 2004 lightfastness tests indicate that Schmincke's translucent orange
(another pyrrole orange, PO71) has marginal lightfastness. Although pyrrole orange is a stunning pure
color, it makes duller mixtures with magenta or yellow than a cadmium pigment. Finally, perinone orange
(PO43), which comes in both a light (MaimeriBlu's orange lake) and a dark (Daniel Smith's perinone
orange) color, has marginal lightfastness (it tends to darken slightly in masstone).

As I said, some artists choose an orange paint, in this case cadmium orange (PO20), but you may find that
this is too close to the deep yellow hue you already have. It is also one of the dullest cadmium pigments,
when compared to a cadmium yellow or cadmium scarlet: in fact, a few manufacturers (including Winsor &
Newton and Holbein) mix their cadmium orange from red and yellow cadmium pigments. Finally, a deep
red paint is necessary to produce muted reds, dark purples and brownish or ocherish oranges and yellows,
including muted flesh tones mixed with yellow. Here you cannot do better than PERYLENE MAROON
(PR179). It is an exact mixing complement for phthalocyanine green BS and these make a very dark mixture
that can be more intense than carbon black. It is somewhat staining but is typically transparent and has
good tinting strength. Best of all: it has excellent lightfastness. Most painters who prefer alizarin crimson
do so because of its dull color rather than its bluish red hue. Quinacridone magenta (or rose) gives the
watercolorist an intense, lightfast bluish red, but those saturated red violets seem less attractive
substitutes because they don't provide the dull crimson so useful for figure, portrait and botanical painting.
Perylene maroon fills that need perfectly (diagram, right). It is the same hue as alizarin crimson,
quincardione carmine (PR N/A), pyrrole rubine (PR264) or anthraquinone red (PR177), so it makes intense
darks with phthalo green; it has a lower chroma than these other pigments, but this lower chroma makes it
more versatile in color mixtures. It has a stronger red color and a lighter value than burnt umber, and adds
an important reddish-brown range to landscapes and botanicals as well.

How do you use it? Just separate your requirements for high chroma color and dark, rich color. A high
chroma red is mixed from cadmium scarlet with quinacridone magenta, rose or red; a high chroma purple
from quinacridone magenta or rose and ultramarine blue. If you need dark blacks, dark warm mixtures or a
dull crimson tint, use perylene maroon instead — it warms flesh tones, earth colors and vegetable browns.
If you need a true crimson or carmine color, mix perylene maroon with quinacridone red or rose, and
forget any lightfastness worries. Perylene maroon also works well with iron oxide (earth) paints, as these
give the mixtures a granular or powdery quality. Several paint brands (Daniel Smith, Winsor & Newton, M.
Graham, Da Vinci and Rowney Artists) now offer perylene maroon; all are very good. Some artists seem to
prefer quinacridone maroon (PR206) but to my taste it is a little too dull and low in tinting strength, and its
mixtures with phthalo green are not as dark. If perylene maroon is too dull for you as an alizarin crimson
replacement, then quincardione carmine (PR N/A), pyrrole rubine (PR264) or anthraquinone red (PR177)
are excellent color matches with good lightfastness. Earth (Iron Oxide) Colors. Your explorations with the
four basic paints will have taught you many fundamentals about color mixing, and one of these is the
inconvenience of mixing dull warm colors, such as tans, browns and flesh tones. In addition, most intense
(highly saturated) pigments look great at full strength, but (except for the cadmiums) seem to dull and
blotch too much in tints. This explains the enduring popularity of the many earth pigments, nowadays
almost always convenience mixtures of synthetic iron oxides. No basic palette would be complete without
them.

Many artists choose either raw sienna (PBr7) or yellow ochre (PY43) as an earthy or dull yellow paint.
These yellow iron oxides work very well to make warm foundation tints (to provide a warm background
glow behind paints glazed over them), to mix natural subdued greens, and to neutralize blue or red colors
slightly. Either raw sienna or yellow ochre is invaluable for landscape and portrait or figure work, as they
mix beautifully uneven greens and softened flesh tones. They are especially effective in portrait work,
because they reduce the staining intensity of the quinacridone or phthalo pigments, making it easier to
rewet, soften or lift (blot) a passage to model facial features. Some artists dislike the clumpy, slightly greasy
texture of yellow ochre; it is also coarser than phthalo blue or phthalo green, and more likely to separate
from them in juicy mixtures. If you choose raw sienna, get the clear yellow version (Winsor & Newton raw
sienna or Daniel Smith's monte amiata natural sienna) rather than dull grayish color offered by most other
brands.

My favorite earth yellow is Winsor & Newton GOLD OCHRE (PY42), an excellent paint for portrait and
figure painting, capable of creating more expressive textural effects in masstone than yellow ochre or raw
sienna, and valuable for its permanence and versatility. There is also chrome titanate yellow (PBr24) which
has the same dull deep yellow hue but with a natural whitish tone. In very dilute applications both are very
similar to raw sienna, but in masstone they create a rich deep yellow. Chrome titanate is naturally
somewhat whitish, which means you can also use it as a whitening paint in landscapes, much like naples
yellow, and for texturing effects similar to chinese white.

The other indispensable earth color is the dull but glowing BURNT SIENNA (PBr7 or PR101). Nearly all
watercolor palettes include it. It provides a wonderful unsaturated form of red orange (the warmest hue),
mixes to lovely grays and dark browns with many blues (ultramarine blue in particular), subdues all colors
slightly to create subtle warm shadow colors or unsaturated tones, and creates earthy deep green mixtures
with phthalo green. Mixed with a touch of quinacridone magenta and cerulean blue it makes slightly
deeper and redder flesh tones than yellow ochre or raw sienna.

There are some nuances to choosing a "burnt sienna" paint. Most brands of burnt sienna are made with a
brownish, relatively opaque variety of iron oxide (usually listed as ingredient PBr7), which gives a darker,
less saturated but delicious color, close to milk chocolate. The more intense, slightly yellower and
genuinely transparent alternative — which can be used by itself or with a touch of quinacridone magenta
for flesh tones — is made with transparent red iron oxide (PR101, actually manufactured as a wood stain
pigment) available from Winsor & Newton, M. Graham, Rembrandt, Maimeri, Da Vinci or Robert Doak.

Relative color of carmine & magenta paints

Some artists dislike the dullness that results from mixtures with earth pigments. In that case, try the more
saturated and transparent quinacridone orange (PO48), now available from Daniel Smith, M. Graham and
Da Vinci. Cool Colors. Your next step is filling out the cool side of the palette. This is actually the easiest
part, because there are not many good blue or violet paints to choose from, and you've already chosen the
warm colors that the blues and greens will complement. Leading the list is ULTRAMARINE BLUE (PB29).
What a great pigment! This is without doubt one of the loveliest blues you will find: a semi-transparent,
dark and strongly saturated blue violet, a synthetic version of the costly mineral pigment lapis lazuli that
appears in medieval illuminated manuscripts as well as Romantic era watercolors. It can produce a magical
clumpy texture (called flocculation) in washes, and mixes intense dark violets with a rose, magenta or
violet quinacridone. Ultramarine and burnt sienna mix a magically subtle range of brown, gray and indigo
hues — many early 20th century watercolor artists, such as J.S. Sargent or William Russell Flint, were
masters at getting the full expressive range from this color mixture alone. Be sure you test your selection of
ultramarine and burnt sienna paints to make sure they work well together.

Some artists might choose the newer cobalt blue deep (PB72) for their reddish blue. This produces
wonderfully glowing blues, especially in tints (where ultramarine blue seems to dull too quickly), but I find
it is too opaque for really versatile mixing; it also seems to fade if exposed to acidic paper or air. Finally,
indanthrone blue (PB60) is, despite appearances, the same hue as ultramarine blue, but darker valued and
much lower chroma. It is a moody and handsome color in some contexts, but probably too limiting for a
basic palette: it lightens excessively when it dries, and tends to blotch in large color areas.

Most watercolor painters get their textural effects with CERULEAN BLUE (PB35), traditionally a semi-
opaque, grayish green blue. The opacity, saturation and hue of cerulean blue paints differ significantly
across brands (for more information on these differences, see the color notes to this pigment in the guide
to watercolor pigments). A good cerulean blue mixes a lovely range of natural looking, mid valued greens
with all the yellow and earth paints, makes a delicious range of turquoises with phthalo green, and a
glorious sky blue when mixed with a touch of ultramarine blue. It handles very well in washes, but can be
grainy, streaky or opaque in glazes. It is the perfect muting or dulling paint in skin tone mixtures with a
yellow iron oxide and a carmine or rose paint; its granular texture makes these flesh mixtures easier to
adjust with blotting or rewetting after they have been applied.

You will probably find that you don't require any other green paints besides the phthalo green you already
have.

Dark Shades.

The choice here is between a black paint (such as ivory black, carbon black or lamp black), and a dark near
neutral convenience mixture made with mostly black pigment tinted to shift the color slightly toward
brown, violet or blue. However, be advised that none of these paints is a significant improvement over the
transparent, rich blacks you can mix with phthalo green and perylene maroon. Their principal advantage is
convenience. If you rarely use black in your paintings or paint mixtures, then choose one of the alternatives
listed further below. The most common choices among the dark neutral convenience mixtures are payne's
gray (shifted toward blue), sepia (shifted toward brown), indigo (shifted toward blue or green) or the
popular NEUTRAL TINT (shifted toward violet). These paints can adjust any color toward a shadow hue, and
the bluish or violet shades are superb for moody gray skies.

Mix your dark neutralizing tint yourself (from perylene maroon and phthalo green, or cadmium scarlet and
phthalo blue), then this opens up a slot to add a dark earth pigment to your palette.

Suggestion 1: burnt umber (PBr7) is a lovely, very dark and very warm color that is a longstanding favorite
with landscape painters; it also mixes to intense but harmonious darks with ultramarine blue or phthalo
blue and, adjusted with gold ochre or quinacridone magenta as appropriate, makes a useful base color for
yellower or darker flesh tones (asiatic or negroid, depending on the strength and hue of the mixture).

Suggestion 2: venetian red (or english red, PR101). This is a beautiful, opaque and very useful pigment,
loveliest when used in tints (where it can reach a glowing pinkish or salmon color) or wet in wet (where it
can make strong statements because of its opacity). It is also handy for architectural elements such as
masonry, brick or warm woods, is very effective as the "earth" component in flesh mixtures with a more
intense yellow, mixes interesting maroons with quinacridone violet, and is a highly effective mixing
complement for cerulean blue, iron blue (the dark mixture preferred by Winslow Homer) and all shades of
phthalo blue. Note that indian red is darker and even more opaque; the Winsor & Newton light red is an
excellent alternative.

Palette map for the basic palette:

benzimida yellow (either PY151 or PY154)

nickel dioxine yellow (PY153)
cadmium scarlet (or cadmium red light) (PR108)
perylene maroon (PR179)
quinacridone magenta (PR122)
ultramarine blue (PB29)
phthalo blue GS (PB15:3)
cerulean blue (PB35)
phthalo green BS (PG7) or
phthalo green YS (PG36)
gold ochre (PY42) or
yellow ochre (PY43) or
transparent yellow oxide (PY42)
burnt sienna (PBr7) or
transparent red oxide (PR101)
neutral tint, indigo or sepia (mixed pigments, usually PBk6)

If you've followed this discussion and actually made your paint choices, congratulations! You now have a
total palette of a dozen colors that can equal the mixing power and versatility of many much larger
selections of paints. Your last step is to put this palette to work: get out and paint with it! After you've
done one or two dozen paintings of different subjects and using different color designs, you'll have a pretty
clear idea of where the palette still may not quite meet your needs. However, the steps you've taken to
choose the palette will also help you identify the paint choices that may create the problems — in your
fundamental colors, your warm or cool hues, your earths or your darks.

Other palette topics

There are a few final points that are worth keeping in mind as you select colors and choose the brands to
buy:

Manufacturers. I get emails all the time with one question: what is the best brand of watercolor paint? If
you are still on the voyage of finding your basic palette, then this is a misplaced concern. All the major
brands deliver good quality for the price, and are often indistinguishable as finished paintings. The "best"
brand of paint will be the brand with the most lightfast pigments and the best handling attributes for your
painting style. Unfortunately, price and "color" are not reliable guides to paint quality. As a beginning
painter, you should focus on the handling attributes and the lightfastness of the paints. Avoid "colors" with
lightfastness ratings below 6 ("very good") in the guide to watercolor pigments. If you waver on this issue,
at least consider my comments on artistic responsibility. Strive to understand how the paint behavior is
due to pigment attributes — color appearance, particle size, dispersability, specific gravity, tinting strength
and transparency. Learn as you go how these pigment attributes help you to understand the paint behavior
of the most common synthetic inorganic and synthetic organic pigments. You must also master the
fundamental skills of working with paints so that you can do accurate color mixing. Ultimately, by the right
balance of paint and water, and the use of unfussy, confident brushstrokes, you will master the secrets of
glowing color. Paints made only of pure pigments — compounded with water, gum arabic, a little glycerin
or sugar syrup and nothing else — show astonishingly large differences in paint behavior from one pigment
to the next. Unfortunately, the current trend in commercial paints is toward a suffocatingly bland similarity
across all paints in a line. Nevertheless, I prefer some paints with a judicious addition of filler, as the
pigments would otherwise separate from vehicle in the tube, or be too dark or staining. The difference is
between additives that put the pigment on best display, and additives that improve manufacturer profits.

That said, for the palette recommendations provided here, you usually can't go wrong with paints by
Winsor & Newton, M. Graham, Da Vinci, MaimeriBlu or Daniel Smith. These are among the best you can
buy, though every watercolor brand has a few clunkers to avoid. With Holbein, Rembrandt or Utrecht you
need to be a little more selective, but overall their paints are also very good. Some of the Daler-Rowney
paints are also lovely, but others (their dull cobalts and earth colors in particular) can't be recommended.
Schmincke paints look great and handle very well, but I've found some quality problems (lots of air bubbles
and pigment/vehicle separation) in their tube paints. As a personal preference I do not like the "color"
range or pigment quality (lightfastness, color brilliance, or paint handling attributes) of Art Spectrum,
Blockx, Grumbacher, Old Holland, Sennelier and Yarka paints, nor the excessive staining of the otherwise
beautiful Robert Doak liquid watercolors. But by all means try these for yourself if you've heard good
things about them. It's not necessary or even desirable to buy all your paints from the same manufacturer.
I've explained my preferences among the major watercolor brands, which may help you choose the brand
you rely on the most. But you may also find a unique pigment that other brands don't offer —
quinacridone carmine, for example, is currently only available from Winsor & Newton, Schmincke and
Holbein. That doesn't mean you can't choose a cadmium scarlet, burnt sienna or ultramarine blue from
another company, if you like their paint better.

Color Intensity. The natural impulse for many beginning painters is to choose the brightest (most intense)
paints they can find — and many paint brands are advertised as "the brightest" or "the most saturated"
you can buy. Well, that may be true, but very saturated colors are not always your best choice. Quite often
the most intense paint in a particular hue is less lightfast as a result: the sharper reflectance profile that
creates the more intense color is also more vulnerable to prolonged exposure to light. In addition, less
saturated pigments often make better mixers with other colors, because their less saturated reflectance
profile contains more of the other hues they are mixed with. To see this, try mixing greens from the pair
prussian blue (PB27) and phthalo blue (PB15:3), which have the same blue hue but different saturation,
with the yellows nickel azo yellow (PY150) and cadmium yellow (PY35), which have the same yellow hue.
You may find you like the green mixtures from the less saturated prussian/nickel azo pair better! In any
case, chroma is just one aspect of a paint that needs to be taken into consideration with lightfastness,
transparency, staining, and of course the mixing behavior with other paints on the palette.

Two white pigments are available to the watercolorist: zinc or chinese white (PW4) and titanium white
(PW6). Zinc white is warmer than titanium white (which however comes in a toasty "buff" shade, sold by
Daniel Smith). You may also hear it said that zinc white is more transparent than titanium white, but this is
a rule derived from oil painting: in watercolors, I've found that zinc white is actually more opaque, and
both whites can be diluted to gently clouding, semi-transparent glazes. Applied as a glaze over other
paints, whites will veil and soften a color area in an atmospheric haze that can be very effective in
landscape or abstract painting; mixed directly with paints, they opacify and lighten the color, creating a
subtle contrast with the lightening caused by diluted paint over bare paper. Some Victorian artists
innovated the technique of coating the paper with zinc white before painting. This foundation layer
increased the support reflectivity and therefore increased the brightness of "transparent" paints glazed
over it. (This coating cannot be too thick, or worked too aggressively, otherwise it will bleed or smear into
paints laid over it.) Touches of dense white paint are also faster and more calligraphic (expressive) than
scraping or lifting in, for example, describing the foam on curling waves or adding details whites and
highlights to a painting.
Incidentally, with dark paints, you may want to experiment with different mixing proportions and lighting
effects. Use dark pigments sparingly, either in concentrated form as a small dark accent, or diluted in
mixtures with other paints. If necessary, coat very dark areas with a glaze of gum arabic to reduce the
surface scattering. Packaging. The pros and cons of tube vs. pan watercolors depend a lot on the scale and
place of your work. Basically, tubes are more convenient for working on large paintings and paintings in the
studio, and are often more economical at the cash register; pans are best for smaller paintings and
paintings done plein air (in the field), and also waste less paint in use: you never "squeeze out more than
you need." If you're a beginner, I suggest you start with tube watercolors — you'll mostly be working
indoors anyway, and the tubes make color mixing faster and more fun to do. Buy the smaller size tubes (5
to 8 ml.) if they are available from the manufacturer, since you will want probably to try alternative
manufacturers or paint colors before settling on the palette you prefer. But as soon as you have decided
your brand preferences, shift to the larger sized tubes for new paints: they cost more, but are significantly
more cost effective. (As of this writing, only Art Spectrum, Grumbacher, Old Holland, Schmincke, Sennelier,
Utrecht and Winsor & Newton offer smaller sized tubes of paint.)

When you're ready to paint in the field, you can buy an empty metal paint box from any of the major direct
order retailers, and choose the selection of half or whole pan paints you already use in tubes. (The current
suppliers of half pan watercolors are *Daler-Rowney, Maimeri, Old Holland, *Rembrandt, *Schmincke,
Sennelier and *Winsor & Newton; an asterisk indicates whole pans are also available. Yarka only sells
whole pans, and in the USA Blockx is only available in enormous 3" porcelain dry pans intended for studio
use.) If the manufacturer does not offer pan paints (Daniel Smith, Holbein, Utrecht), or does not offer the
paints in whole pan sizes (MaimeriBlu, Old Holland) or half pans (Yarka), you can always make your own by
squeezing tube paints into empty plastic pans and letting them dry for a day or two. You cannot make pan
paints if the tube paints are made with substantial amounts of honey in the vehicle (Sennelier, or Blockx
with the black caps). These will not dry out to a hard cake. Which means that in the palette they will not
dry and so will be difficult to clean!