What brand water colors do you use?

[sarrowsmith10]

For those who primarily use water color for comics or illustration, what brand and type of water colors do you use? Also, do you use dry water colors that come as cakes (like this), or do you use tubes of water colors that you squeeze out onto a pallet (like this)?

[joannekwan]

In college we used Winsor and Newton tube colors squeezed out onto a tray and dried. I really like their color saturation and they mixed well, all except for cerulean blue, which was just the nature of that pigment and the particles separated at times when sitting on the tray.
I don't think it matters between tube and pre-dried as long as it's a high-quality brand (unless you are using the color straight out of the tube for ultimate saturation I guess). Like I know some of the cheaper dried plate colors are chalky in texture.

[craftymarten]

I use Kuretake pans and clean color watercolour markers mostly. I like Kuretake because they're a nice compromise between quality and price. If you can afford the expensive ones (Sennelier, Daniel Smith, Winsor & Newton etc.) I've heard they're worth it since you get more pigment in them.
(I don't want to self promo here but if you'd like examples of the paints I post a lot of watercolor on my IG https://www.instagram.com/craftymarten/)

[storytimebiondi]

I also use Kuretake (I think -- the green box?). I know the ones I use are Japanese, and they've worked really well for me. Just mixing can be a little tough, I've found.

[MoonSquid]

I have a mix of tubes and cakes, but prefer my tubes. The majority of my supply is Windsor & Newton, but I’ve spent the last year or so replenishing my stock with Daniel Smith. Seriously the most beautiful, intense, and breath taking pigments I’ve ever seen. 10000% recommend Daniel Smith! XD

I do have a bit of grumbacher as well, and find quite a handful of their student quality paints to be quite good, though the useable range tends to stay within the cool tones. This book here is pretty invaluable :

It goes through all of the major brands and their colors, having tested them all for their pigmentation, light fastedness, and other details, and ranks them.

[sarrowsmith10]

In college we used Winsor and Newton tube colors squeezed out onto a tray and dried.

Interesting, so you let the colors dry and then use them?

How common do you think it is for folks to pre-mix and dilute paint like this guy does:

Is that a normal way to paint? He squeezes paint from a tube into a glass and dilutes it with water. Most of the tutorials I've seen have shown folks using dried cakes to paint.

Just curious. He doesn't go into the brand of paint he uses either. (sad face)

I don't want to self promo here but if you'd like examples of the paints I post a lot of watercolor on my IG

Oh man! your watercolor work is so smooth and beautiful!! I'll look into Kuretake thank you!

[MoonSquid]

I also put my tube paints into cups and mix with water; it creates the most even washes this way, which is great if you’re trying to cover a large surface.

I get little cheap Tupperware pots with airtight lids to keep the paint away from outside influences! The paint will still dry up given enough time, but they you can just add less water, and then the paint is heavier and darker and better for detail work

Oh goodness the photo cropped really tight lolol click on it for the cups XD

[joannekwan]

Interesting, so you let the colors dry and then use them?

Yeah. I guess it was easier in a classroom setting so that we didn't have a bunch of individual jars with a million tubes out. I thought it was interesting too. xD

[A-weird-girler]

I use ones called faber castell but they're pencils. I bought them off a bootleg site for a cheaper price

[lil-sea-salt]

I started out using a 24 sakura koi watercolor pan set. I used that for the first few arcs of Little Library Helper. I kind of hit a rough patch as I tried to use it like acryllics for a while. I didn't really understand shading. The problems with it was it was hard to get the colors to not be chalky and I would have to consistently mix batches of colors or use the palette I had. I only used like 12 colors out of the 24 regularly.

Then OMG a palette with tubes changed my game. I have a 18 color plastic palette that I can pick and choose which colors to put in. I can buy more high quality paints and mix them with cheaper paints that I love. If I don't use a color I can just let it dry and put it into storage. The colors are a lot smoother to mix and blend like a dream. I'm starting to understand shading and composition as well as using different types of brushes. I have bought different types of watercolors to try out to see what brand I like.

Tubes with a palette is a lot better for me as I can explore as well as save colors I love. The customizable aspect really speaks to me as well as the smoothness and the ease of blending.

Sorry if that's long, I really love talking about paint.

[spadesart]

artists loft, which arent. great but it comes with a lot of colors.

[phoenixrenaissance]

I use Dr Martins Radiant Watercolor Dyes. They're highly concentrated so you gotta dilute them quite a bit. They come in bottles with a dropper and i keep my diluted colors in bead containers. Almost 300 pages and I haven't had to replace any colors yet.

[Amberday]

i use Reeves but Windsor is a better brand. cakes are convenient but if you want more vibrant colors, use tubed watercolor because you don't need as much water as dry cakes so you get more of the pigment

[Mullana]

I use Schmincke Horadam colors. Mostly in cakes, but I have some tubes, too. But I let portions of those colors dry on my box, so it‘s basically the same. Your can see them used here:

Interactive Irma | Tapas

I also have some liquid watercolors.
Pebeo Colorex are really saturated because they‘re dye-based and you can make very even washes and some nice effects with them. But they‘re not lightfast, so you shouldn‘t want to keep the originals for a long time.
Ph Martens Hydrus are also liquid, but pigment based. So they‘re lightfast but harder to use than the Colorex ones. But you have to shake them like forever before using them and I have difficulties mixing them right.

[teacup_creations]

I use a mixture of Windsor and Newton and Schmincke pans I tend to use a lot of colours on a small area so it helps me reduce waste. It put me through three years of sixth form art with it as my main medium so I suppose it's p. good n_n

I do however have black and white in tubes so that I can up the colour intensity when I need to and I go through those super quickly u..u

[sarrowsmith10]

Dr Martins Radiant Watercolor Dyes

Yikes, a set of these are super expensive. But I suppose they probably last FOREVER and won't dry up like tubes will if you don't use them for a long time?

i use Reeves but Windsor is a better brand

I have a set of Reeves tubes, but some of them dried up. Which makes me sad, at least with cakes you can add water and be on the ball again. I'm not sure what to do with the tube paint when it dries up? I had real issues with the lids cracking and breaking. Do you have that problem? Windsor seems very popular, maybe I should invest in a set of those..

I use Schmincke Horadam colors

My local art store has these, and in a huge selection of colors, so that's pretty nice.

[phoenixrenaissance]

Yeeaah, they're pretty pricey. Family and friends have helped me grow my collection luckily.
Some colors do somehow dry up, but it's easy enough to add some water to the bottles to get them back to normal.

[mybe1oved]

I like watercolor markers and I will take the inks at times from waterbased markers and use the ink to make it into a watercolor. But the real watercolor markers I use are Koi.

[MoonSquid]

Just finished a stream, so here’s an example of my Windsor & newton and Daniel Smith paints with water diluted watercolors in cups

[sarrowsmith10]

Wow, that is REALLY beautiful! Is a recording of the stream still available for viewing? I'd love to watch!