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

Product Information

Warm Yellow – Hansa Yellow Deep: PY65 (Semi-transparent / single pigment). This pigment gives a beautifully warm, vibrant, and pure yellow appearance. It only undergoes a very slight color shift as it dries, keeping most of its color saturation. Makes fantastic oranges when mixed with warm reds. Ok… Now imagine you’re looking at a manufacturer’s paint chart. What exactly should you be looking for ? Warm Red – Pyrrol Scarlet: PR255 (Semi-transparent & single pigment). This is a very intense warm red color with excellent lightfast qualities. It has consistent handling properties across different brands. Daniel Smith began in 1976 with the manufacture of printing inks, but they have become one of the most popular watercolor brands in the U.S. Daniel Smith's popularity has partly arisen from their massive selection of colors,but also their watercolors are often made with pigments that no other company offers. Quinacridone Burnt Orange: PO48 (Transparent & single pigment). This is a beautiful orange earth color. It has a similar color appearance to burnt sienna, and makes some wonderful colors when mixed with blue.

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. The problem is that I have a very strong bias towards portability in watercolours - it's one of the strengths of the medium - so paints that are difficult to travel with are less interesting to me. MG and Sennelier both make gorgeous watercolours - highly pigmented and lovely and rich - but I wouldn't choose to use them myself simply because they don't 'set' in a palette. Maybe if they were heated a little...? One artist who uses them very happily for plein air just puts a tiny dot of paint in each pigment well and keeps his palette flat so it can't make a mess. Larger quantities of paint staying moist in a palette in humid Sydney are a recipe for mould. 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.So to reduce the price, paint manufacturers use less pigment or cheaper versions which simulate true pigments but have lower manufacturing costs. Yep… It’s the pigments that cost money. Because of WN's longstanding popularity, this brand is very convenient to find; even general craft stores often carry them.Though WN is typically the most expensive of the three, in addition to their 14 ml sizes, WN offers many of their colors in an economical 37 ml size.

Landscape set of 5 contains: Yellow Ochre, Cerulean Blue, Sap Green, Burnt Umber and Dioxazine Purple. 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. 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. I have yet to find a tube of M. Graham paint whose pigment did not squeeze out superbly blended. Frankly, I don’t know why any watercolor painter would not use these pigments. If you haven’t experienced M. Graham watercolors yet, I would strongly encourage you to do so!Ask five watercolor artists which brand they recommend and you’ll probably get five different answers! When you select your paints, the characteristics you need to take into consideration are the following: Adding Azo Yellow to Sap Green in varying amount lightens and brightens the green if you are painting light on trees and grasses. Adding Ultramarine cools off the green and deepens the hue, relatively great for shadows of trees. Alizarin Crimson greys out the green adding more variety to the hue. You may also add mixed orange , violet and even Burnt Sienna to get a broader range of hues and a spectrum of warm and cool greens for your painting. You will also see that from my test, it is easier to add Sap Green to mixed Orange than it is vice versa.

Desert Southwest set of 5 contains: Quinacridone Rust, Yellow Ochre, Indian Yellow, Mineral Violet and Turquoise.

Overview of Daniel Smith Watercolor

The ingredients used to make paint include one, two, three, or sometimes more pigments. Pigments are identified by a color index code. For example, if the paint label says “PB28” this means it contains “Pigment Blue number 28”, which is commonly used to make cobalt blue. Transparency Quinacridone Coral: PR209 (Single pigment, transparent). This is a brightly saturated red and mixes beautifully with yellows and greens to produce a wide range of earthy browns. It has a chromatic appearance somewhere between a warm and cool red.

Basically the hues are brilliant as mentioned. The pigments for all the tubes are so intense you don’t need to squeeze out too much to get a good mixing. Paint texture is very consistent and mixing is easy. Even when the paint is dried on the palette, it is easily dissolved with water again, without loosing any of the paint quality when freshly squeezed from the tube. According to known sources, M Graham’s watercolor paints are manufactured with minimal use of fillers or brighteners, so you get real color intensities and good control when you mix your colors due to its heavy pigment load. The paints retain their brilliance even when diluted out. However it also means that the paints are very staining and therefore difficult to be lifted out when the paint dries on paper.Second Row: Permanent Green Pale, Sap Green, Olive Green, Cobalt Teal, Cerulean Blue, Anthraquinone Blue Warm Blue – French Ultramarine: PB29 (Transparent & single pigment). This hue also counts as a blue-violet, almost purple color. The pigment used for French Ultramarine is quite granular but it’s also a very stable, single pigment, warm blue. Don’t worry… The paint will slowly dry out, and can easily be re-wetted without any loss of handling quality. Prussian Blue: PB27 (Transparent – multiple pigments). This pigment mixes easily with others and I find it great for shading and cool shadows. It produces wonderfully saturated darks. I love this low-key color and I often use it on its own. You often see pans in ready to go palettes. The problem here is that you don’t get to choose your own colors, which I think is restrictive. For a better range of mixing possibilities it’s best to choose your own hues (more on which colors to choose below).