For many of us, when discussions on watercolor paints are brought up, it brings back childhood memories of when we had a pan of watercolor paint made of colored bricks. Here, we would be dishing out everything you need to become the best watercolor paint artist. In the review section above, we brought you the best watercolor paint for amateurs and professionals, so whether you are on the road or in your studio, you wouldn't need to worry about delivering anything short of perfection. This guide will also include how to choose watercolor paints with the best lightfastness.
What is a Water Color Paint?
We can say describe watercolor paint as a translucent medium made of watercolor. This paint medium is made by dispersing a colored pigment in a soluble binder; this binder, in return, adheres the stain to the canvas when it dries out. The type of binder or dye used in the production of a watercolor paint depends on the manufacturer.
What are the Benefits of using Water Color paint?
Here are some of the advantages of using watercolor paints
- They are cheaper than other painting mediums and can even be reused when they dry.
- Watercolor paints are easy to clean off, and the brush used for the job can also be quickly made clean using water and soap.
- Another benefit you stand to gain when using watercolor paints is the ease of transporting them and setting them up whenever and wherever you need to use them.
- They also take less time to dry up and are cost less than other painting mediums, saving time and money.
How to Choose the Best Color Paint
Here are things you should consider and look out for when choosing the best color paint
Quality
When choosing watercolor paints, you need to decide if you need an artist quality or student quality watercolor paint. While artist-quality watercolor paints are usually more expensive, they have the advantage of having a high percentage of finely ground pigments and also tend to have a more extended permanence rating than student-quality watercolor paints.
However, student-quality watercolor paints are more suited for amateurs and beginners who wish to test and improve on their watercolor painting skills.
Color
When it comes down to choosing color and color combinations, it is easy to be drawn to the names used by the various watercolor paint manufacturers, but this should not be a criterion for choosing colors. Instead, since there is a wide selection of colors available, we advise you to choose colors based on the paint recipe, which contains each pigment concentration and mix ratio.
You will also want to opt for single pigment paints since they produce brighter colors when mixed to create more colors, lastly note that color names are not standard across different brands; these names are chosen based on what each manufacturer thinks will sell best.
Tubes Vs. Pans
Although watercolor paints can be sold in bottles and pencils, tubes and pans are the more popular options available today. Tubes contain liquid watercolor paints that you need to squeeze onto your palette. Pans, on the other hand, hold dry cakes of watercolor paint.
So, which is the better of the two, you ask? Based on expert research, if we were to choose, we would opt for tube watercolor paints because they last longer in the long run.
For one, tubes give artists the freedom to either purchase the paint individually or in sets; the same cannot be said for pans. In addition, this means you will have unrestrictive color mixing options available when you opt for tubes.
Although pans have the advantage of being more travel friendly as they are compact, this advantage comes with the disadvantage of dealing with limited mixing space and a tendency for cross-contamination due to how small the pans can be.
Staining Vs. Non-Staining
Watercolor paints that can penetrate the fibers of a paper and which are hard to remove or scrape off can be categorized as staining paint. Non-staining paints, on the other hand, are easy to scrape off as they only dry on the surface of the paper.
Whether to choose staining or non-staining paint is entirely up to you, but it is nice to know which of watercolor painting is staining and those that don't stain; this will help you determine which will require scraping off to reveal the light layer underneath and which wouldn't.
It's also essential we mention that the ability of a paint to stain varies from one manufacturer to another, and it is also dependent on the type of paper you use. To know if your watercolor paint will stain your paper or not, we advise that you test them on a separate piece of paper, allow it to dry, and see how much paint you can remove.
Permanence or Lightfastness
Lightfastness and permanence refer to how the watercolor paint reacts when exposed to light. It is a measure of how long it will take before your painting fades, darkens, or changes color when exposed to sunlight and humidity. Knowing the permanence of your watercolor paint is crucial if you want your artwork to last for a long time.
Since these features are rated by ASTM standards, ensure you only opt for watercolor paints that have permanence or lightfastness graded excellent or very good.
FAQs
Can you mix watercolor with acrylic paint?
Watercolor and acrylic paint can be mixed. However, you remember to always paint acrylic over watercolor paint when mixing acrylic and watercolor paint. This will make the watercolor paint waterproof.
What is the Purpose of watercolor paints?
Watercolor paint finds great use in still-life, landscape, and portrait paintings. They are carried out on a small scale and they enable artists to study how a larger and more complex art painting will look.
Is watercolor easier than acrylic Painting?
Watercolor painting is the hardest to learn of these two mediums of painting. This is because there are more elements to learn and mistakes that may occur while using watercolor paint cannot be easily removed.