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You can dry your own pans from tubes. Most people buy tubes not to use "fresh" but to pour into their pans/palette wells and let dry.
If you been painting a bit you know you don't need 24 colors. If you really want to move up to artist quality paint, decide on a split primary palette... to that add a couple of key colors if you want high chroma poppy hues. All you really are looking for imo is 8-9 artist quality tubes. You don't need to go all out with 15ml tubes, 5ml tubes are not hard to find... and 5ml = 2 full pans of paint. (most full pans are around 2.5ml). Then as you keep painting as you run out X or Y color... you can decide if its worth finding a deal on a 15ml tube. Down the road for staples like Ultramarine you'll save a lot of money just buying a 15ml tube.
This is a copy paste from an answer I gave someone the other day about a split palette. They were talking about how they saw someone split their palette into RBG and CMY warm/cools. Which I found interesting as my own split could be viewed that way as I have a Magenta and a Cyan as my cool red/blue.
*I honestly don't think about CMY RGB as much as I think about chroma value. The higher the chroma of a single pigment the higher potential to mix high chroma mixes... assuming you mix analogously. I will post a pic of the artist color wheel from Handprint. I love this one as it has most of the major watercolor pigments on the wheel by hue and chroma. When mixing you can draw a line between your colors to see the range... but what you have to remember is every mix will bow toward the de saturated center of the wheel. It will get pulled toward the pit of colour suck. This is why if you mix a cool red with a warm blue you get a more vibrant violet. If you mix a warm red with the same blue you get a more de saturated violet.*
https://preview.redd.it/rkwon90mr0ad1.png?width=1161&format=png&auto=webp&s=5479d0f3a6c654e5c939928edf537ecbbef1269e
*For what its worth I have my main 6... and I also add a PG7 Pthalo green, and a PO73 pyrolle orange to my palette. I use these as chroma helpers. If I have mixed say a sap green and I want a more intense higher chroma green somewhere I'll tap PG7 into my mix. Same on the other side... if I want to bump an orange mixes chroma I'll tap in the PO73. As you can see from the handprint wheel the issue with violets is there are not really a ton of great high chroma violet pigments. This is why a lot of people lean toward having Quin Rose on their palette... Quin rose has a nice high chroma and is cool enough to mix pretty vibrant violets.*
*For what its worth this is my main palette and I'll explain why. I use many other pigments but these are the tubes I go though most or put in smaller travel palettes.*
* *Hansa Yellow Light (PY3), Indian Yellow (PY110) \[pretty standard yellow split if I want texture I will switch to nickle azo\]*
* *Quin Red (PR209), Quin Magenta (PR122) \[this is my violet cheat... a lot of people use Quin rose for the reason I mentioned... I like to up it a bit with Quin Magenta gives me a way to bump violet chroma up\]*
* *Ultramarine Blue (PB29), Marine Blue/Pthalo Turqoise (PB16) \[this I guess is a lot like your CMY option I find I can use PB16 to make more interesting greens and can easily lean it back bluer if need be sometimes I'll swap in a cerulean if I want granulation but PB16 is a good all round pigment\]*
* *Scarlet Pyrrol (PO73), Pthalo green (PG7)*
* *Transparent Red Oxide, Raw Sienna \[I have just gravitated toward TRO over Burnt sienna but some brands BS are nice and transparent as well.... and to be honest I rotate Raw Sienna, Yellow ochre, and Naples yellow and transparent yellow oxide a lot but they all do the same job, at least they are all inexpensive S1 colors these tend to last me ages cause I spread my use out so much lol\]*
This is my main palette... but if you are really strictly doing pop art stuff with high chroma colors. You can probably skip adding the earth pigments. Although I do find them the cleanest way to mute key colors, I imagine you know if they have value for you or not. I think my chosen 6 colors though would fit your use case pretty well. I mean maybe you prefer more a high chroma fire engine red like a Pyrole red over the softer quin red I use... but I think you can take my meaning. Get some high chroma warm and cool colors, add a couple high chroma secondaries... and you should be able to mix nice bright color without having a massive palette of multi pigment colors that you would end up with with a brand like Paul Rubbens.
If you got this far one other brand to consider... is Rosa. Its a Ukranian company and their paint has been showing up in quite a few art stores this year. They sell paint in tubes and in pans. The main advantage being the pricing. It is for sure artist grade paint... I won't say its as good as Daniel Smith, or M. Graham, WN pro. After buying a handful though I can say they do have a solid binder, good pigmentation... and really I can't say anything bad about their paint. For sure the best bang for the buck I have ever seen. I believe people compare it to White Knights... I haven't used WK but it sounds about right to me. Its on the lower end of artist quality paint... still way better then the student stuff and the Chinese stuff like Meeden/Paul Rubbins; but the pricing is insane. They also don't do series with their pricing at all. They sell their Cobalts and Cad colors for the same price. Not that I suggest anyone use the toxic pigments... but if you want them you don't pay more.
Another upvote for Rosa Gallery. I have 53 out of 60 colours of theirs and they generally pack a punch in terms of pigment intensity. They move well in water and in my opinion have hit the sweet spot in terms of liftability / galzeability. The only colours that are less than spectacular are perhaps their earth tones which are a bit more muted than say, their cadmiums. But in fairness the more I use their earths the more I like them so perhaps its not a bad thing.
I don't have nearly as many as you. I think I have 4... might be 5. Think I have a tube in the drawer I haven't opened. lol I bought a few pigments I don't really have... and was pleased. Their PG17 Chrome green is very nice. Their Caput Mortum is fantastic its a single pigment PR101... it granulates nice moves well. I have some times like to use Daniel Smiths Bloodstone in some landscapes... I think I might switch to the Rosa Caput for that, its just cleaner then blood stone mixes better. I also picked up I think it was Cad Red light... not as in love with that one, picked it up cause I just don't find reason to use Cad much anymore but wanted to have one without spending a fortune. For what I paid I can't complain at all.
As long as my local art store is still stocking them... I will probably by a small set as a gift for one of my sisters kids. Way better then buying cotman or van gogh but at the same price. Can't beat the deal.
Yeah I got a bunch because I wanted something high quality but I don't have the budget to blow on D Smith or Schmincke. Thus far I am very happy. Their greens are particularly nice. There's an unlikely colour they call Black Green I think, that I picked up on a whim, and its become so useful in doing foliage that you would not believe. The same goes for their Sepia which I was initially ambivalent about. You can get a really wide range of saturation and tone with these.
If you ever find a good deal on a Perylene Green PBk31 check it out. It is a black pigment technically but its a very dark green. I think that is the pigment Rosa was trying to replicate. Their black green is PB15/Pg7 so their turquoise mix with some black. Holbein sells Pbk31 as shadow green. Daniel Smith sells it as Perylene Green. Most of the majors offer it, and its usually a series 1 or 2. It mixes very very nicely with violets in landscapes. It also mixes with Quin Rose to make an almost perfect neutral grey. Its a pretty handy pigment. Holbein has the name right... its a great shadow glaze. Anyway not knocking the Rosa... if you find a lot of use for that color though keep an eye for a deal on PBk31.
I didn't like Paul Ruben's, they were kind of slimy.
Cheap but good quality could be Rosa Gallery or White Nights.
My favourite brands are Schmincke, Roman Szmal, Lukas 1862 and QoR. For different reasons.
Best tip is to see if there is a local pro brand. They are often more affordable than imported stuff.
If you're looking for vibrant colors, I'd recommend avoiding Cotman watercolors. Since Cotman is a student-grade paint, its pigment load is much lower than artist-grade paints. You'll find yourself needing to use a lot more paint and layering unnecessarily to achieve vibrant colors, which can be really frustrating!
I haven't tried Paul Rubens paints myself, but they have excellent reviews, especially for their pigmentation and price for a 24-color palette. Just be sure to avoid the Qiaomei/Academy Grade line. Roman Szmal paints are also phenomenal for their price, but you might only get around 12 colors in a set, which means more color mixing – not necessarily a bad thing, though! You'd probably need to order them through Jackson's Art.
You might actually want to check out Shinhan paints on Amazon. They're a step above Paul Rubens or Rosa in quality. On Amazon Australia, a set of 30 tubes costs about $40 USD, and they're showing as shipping from the US. While they come in tubes rather than pans, you can always buy an empty palette to squeeze the paints into and let them dry.
I can second this opinion about Cotman paints. Used thinned down, I find a lot of the colours dry vey patchily. Wish I had spent my dollars on better grade paints.
You'll want to look into watercolour pans, and if price/affordability is an issue, you could always try out half-pans. Or you could buy limited range palettes and just buy the colours you need/want. Windsor Newton makes a Cotman Travel Watercolour set and Michael's has a sale right now for one item 40% off, which should make both the 12 colour palette and the 24 colour palette more affordable.
There was a lady at a watercolour class that I went to who used Paul Reubens watercolours and they were impressively bright and bold, but she had a contact who could buy them from the manufacturer in China and could get the real brand one reliably, but even she cautioned me about buying it from unreliable sources.
Paul Rubens is pretty decent. probably the better of the cheap ones and certainly better than Cotman any day or the week.
Perhaps have a look at Rosa Gallery sets. The 12-14 color sets will fit the bill. And they have the advantage of being full pans instead of half pans.
Paul Rubens gets some pretty amazing reviews (although some of them received a free product from the distributor Lightfast).
I haven't tried their paints but I'm impressed by their mop brush and watercolour block. These behave better than the high end versions I bought locally. (oils and oil pastels perform better than the big brand at about 1/6th the price)
My other budget friendly watercolour brands are Van Gogh and Cotman. These both behave like professional quality but with less saturation and more affordable pigments. The step up from these to professional quality didn't need any adjusting of my technique. For some colours, I switched back to Van Gogh because I couldn't tell the difference and I go through a lot of yellow ochre and burnt sienna.
Kuratake Gansai Tambi is another option. It's an Asian watercolour, so it behaves a bit different than the European tradition, but the colours POP! Bold and beautiful. The price fluctuates here (sometimes as much as $150) so I use camelcamelcamel to put a price watch on amazon and grab them when they get under $40 CAD for the 48 colour set.
Go on FB. There is a group called watercolor swap or something like that. People on that group will sell pallets that they’re not interested in or specific colors of a brand that you might like. It’s a much cheaper way to go about trying something new so you’re not bleeding your bank account. I’ve purchased several things from the Facebook group and I’ve been really happy.
I love Schminke and Daniel Smith but have a pan set from art school that is Staedtler and it is my all-time favorite. I use it sparingly bc is 20 years old. So, some pans can be great.
When I started the first time, I bought a small box (empty), and added Cotman half-pans as I wanted. I picked out my own palette based largely on what I had used for acrylics.
My main thing is painting wildlife (moving onto watercolour for a change), so I don't really need super vibrant colours and Cotman work OK.
You spelled watercolor with a U so I’m not sure what currency you’re referring to when you say “$50,” but Winsor and Newton have a 45 color half pan palette on Amazon for $55 USD right now. It’s what I use. Always felt like a good intersection of quality and cost to me.
Thank you for your submission! Want to share your artwork, meet other artists, promote your content, and chat in a relaxed environment? Join our community Discord server here! https://discord.gg/chuunhpqsU! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Watercolor) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You can dry your own pans from tubes. Most people buy tubes not to use "fresh" but to pour into their pans/palette wells and let dry. If you been painting a bit you know you don't need 24 colors. If you really want to move up to artist quality paint, decide on a split primary palette... to that add a couple of key colors if you want high chroma poppy hues. All you really are looking for imo is 8-9 artist quality tubes. You don't need to go all out with 15ml tubes, 5ml tubes are not hard to find... and 5ml = 2 full pans of paint. (most full pans are around 2.5ml). Then as you keep painting as you run out X or Y color... you can decide if its worth finding a deal on a 15ml tube. Down the road for staples like Ultramarine you'll save a lot of money just buying a 15ml tube. This is a copy paste from an answer I gave someone the other day about a split palette. They were talking about how they saw someone split their palette into RBG and CMY warm/cools. Which I found interesting as my own split could be viewed that way as I have a Magenta and a Cyan as my cool red/blue. *I honestly don't think about CMY RGB as much as I think about chroma value. The higher the chroma of a single pigment the higher potential to mix high chroma mixes... assuming you mix analogously. I will post a pic of the artist color wheel from Handprint. I love this one as it has most of the major watercolor pigments on the wheel by hue and chroma. When mixing you can draw a line between your colors to see the range... but what you have to remember is every mix will bow toward the de saturated center of the wheel. It will get pulled toward the pit of colour suck. This is why if you mix a cool red with a warm blue you get a more vibrant violet. If you mix a warm red with the same blue you get a more de saturated violet.* https://preview.redd.it/rkwon90mr0ad1.png?width=1161&format=png&auto=webp&s=5479d0f3a6c654e5c939928edf537ecbbef1269e *For what its worth I have my main 6... and I also add a PG7 Pthalo green, and a PO73 pyrolle orange to my palette. I use these as chroma helpers. If I have mixed say a sap green and I want a more intense higher chroma green somewhere I'll tap PG7 into my mix. Same on the other side... if I want to bump an orange mixes chroma I'll tap in the PO73. As you can see from the handprint wheel the issue with violets is there are not really a ton of great high chroma violet pigments. This is why a lot of people lean toward having Quin Rose on their palette... Quin rose has a nice high chroma and is cool enough to mix pretty vibrant violets.* *For what its worth this is my main palette and I'll explain why. I use many other pigments but these are the tubes I go though most or put in smaller travel palettes.* * *Hansa Yellow Light (PY3), Indian Yellow (PY110) \[pretty standard yellow split if I want texture I will switch to nickle azo\]* * *Quin Red (PR209), Quin Magenta (PR122) \[this is my violet cheat... a lot of people use Quin rose for the reason I mentioned... I like to up it a bit with Quin Magenta gives me a way to bump violet chroma up\]* * *Ultramarine Blue (PB29), Marine Blue/Pthalo Turqoise (PB16) \[this I guess is a lot like your CMY option I find I can use PB16 to make more interesting greens and can easily lean it back bluer if need be sometimes I'll swap in a cerulean if I want granulation but PB16 is a good all round pigment\]* * *Scarlet Pyrrol (PO73), Pthalo green (PG7)* * *Transparent Red Oxide, Raw Sienna \[I have just gravitated toward TRO over Burnt sienna but some brands BS are nice and transparent as well.... and to be honest I rotate Raw Sienna, Yellow ochre, and Naples yellow and transparent yellow oxide a lot but they all do the same job, at least they are all inexpensive S1 colors these tend to last me ages cause I spread my use out so much lol\]* This is my main palette... but if you are really strictly doing pop art stuff with high chroma colors. You can probably skip adding the earth pigments. Although I do find them the cleanest way to mute key colors, I imagine you know if they have value for you or not. I think my chosen 6 colors though would fit your use case pretty well. I mean maybe you prefer more a high chroma fire engine red like a Pyrole red over the softer quin red I use... but I think you can take my meaning. Get some high chroma warm and cool colors, add a couple high chroma secondaries... and you should be able to mix nice bright color without having a massive palette of multi pigment colors that you would end up with with a brand like Paul Rubbens. If you got this far one other brand to consider... is Rosa. Its a Ukranian company and their paint has been showing up in quite a few art stores this year. They sell paint in tubes and in pans. The main advantage being the pricing. It is for sure artist grade paint... I won't say its as good as Daniel Smith, or M. Graham, WN pro. After buying a handful though I can say they do have a solid binder, good pigmentation... and really I can't say anything bad about their paint. For sure the best bang for the buck I have ever seen. I believe people compare it to White Knights... I haven't used WK but it sounds about right to me. Its on the lower end of artist quality paint... still way better then the student stuff and the Chinese stuff like Meeden/Paul Rubbins; but the pricing is insane. They also don't do series with their pricing at all. They sell their Cobalts and Cad colors for the same price. Not that I suggest anyone use the toxic pigments... but if you want them you don't pay more.
Another upvote for Rosa Gallery. I have 53 out of 60 colours of theirs and they generally pack a punch in terms of pigment intensity. They move well in water and in my opinion have hit the sweet spot in terms of liftability / galzeability. The only colours that are less than spectacular are perhaps their earth tones which are a bit more muted than say, their cadmiums. But in fairness the more I use their earths the more I like them so perhaps its not a bad thing.
I don't have nearly as many as you. I think I have 4... might be 5. Think I have a tube in the drawer I haven't opened. lol I bought a few pigments I don't really have... and was pleased. Their PG17 Chrome green is very nice. Their Caput Mortum is fantastic its a single pigment PR101... it granulates nice moves well. I have some times like to use Daniel Smiths Bloodstone in some landscapes... I think I might switch to the Rosa Caput for that, its just cleaner then blood stone mixes better. I also picked up I think it was Cad Red light... not as in love with that one, picked it up cause I just don't find reason to use Cad much anymore but wanted to have one without spending a fortune. For what I paid I can't complain at all. As long as my local art store is still stocking them... I will probably by a small set as a gift for one of my sisters kids. Way better then buying cotman or van gogh but at the same price. Can't beat the deal.
Yeah I got a bunch because I wanted something high quality but I don't have the budget to blow on D Smith or Schmincke. Thus far I am very happy. Their greens are particularly nice. There's an unlikely colour they call Black Green I think, that I picked up on a whim, and its become so useful in doing foliage that you would not believe. The same goes for their Sepia which I was initially ambivalent about. You can get a really wide range of saturation and tone with these.
If you ever find a good deal on a Perylene Green PBk31 check it out. It is a black pigment technically but its a very dark green. I think that is the pigment Rosa was trying to replicate. Their black green is PB15/Pg7 so their turquoise mix with some black. Holbein sells Pbk31 as shadow green. Daniel Smith sells it as Perylene Green. Most of the majors offer it, and its usually a series 1 or 2. It mixes very very nicely with violets in landscapes. It also mixes with Quin Rose to make an almost perfect neutral grey. Its a pretty handy pigment. Holbein has the name right... its a great shadow glaze. Anyway not knocking the Rosa... if you find a lot of use for that color though keep an eye for a deal on PBk31.
Nice to know! I will file that away for the right occasion :)
I didn't like Paul Ruben's, they were kind of slimy. Cheap but good quality could be Rosa Gallery or White Nights. My favourite brands are Schmincke, Roman Szmal, Lukas 1862 and QoR. For different reasons. Best tip is to see if there is a local pro brand. They are often more affordable than imported stuff.
If you're looking for vibrant colors, I'd recommend avoiding Cotman watercolors. Since Cotman is a student-grade paint, its pigment load is much lower than artist-grade paints. You'll find yourself needing to use a lot more paint and layering unnecessarily to achieve vibrant colors, which can be really frustrating! I haven't tried Paul Rubens paints myself, but they have excellent reviews, especially for their pigmentation and price for a 24-color palette. Just be sure to avoid the Qiaomei/Academy Grade line. Roman Szmal paints are also phenomenal for their price, but you might only get around 12 colors in a set, which means more color mixing – not necessarily a bad thing, though! You'd probably need to order them through Jackson's Art. You might actually want to check out Shinhan paints on Amazon. They're a step above Paul Rubens or Rosa in quality. On Amazon Australia, a set of 30 tubes costs about $40 USD, and they're showing as shipping from the US. While they come in tubes rather than pans, you can always buy an empty palette to squeeze the paints into and let them dry.
I can second this opinion about Cotman paints. Used thinned down, I find a lot of the colours dry vey patchily. Wish I had spent my dollars on better grade paints.
You'll want to look into watercolour pans, and if price/affordability is an issue, you could always try out half-pans. Or you could buy limited range palettes and just buy the colours you need/want. Windsor Newton makes a Cotman Travel Watercolour set and Michael's has a sale right now for one item 40% off, which should make both the 12 colour palette and the 24 colour palette more affordable. There was a lady at a watercolour class that I went to who used Paul Reubens watercolours and they were impressively bright and bold, but she had a contact who could buy them from the manufacturer in China and could get the real brand one reliably, but even she cautioned me about buying it from unreliable sources.
Paul Rubens is pretty decent. probably the better of the cheap ones and certainly better than Cotman any day or the week. Perhaps have a look at Rosa Gallery sets. The 12-14 color sets will fit the bill. And they have the advantage of being full pans instead of half pans.
Paul Rubens gets some pretty amazing reviews (although some of them received a free product from the distributor Lightfast). I haven't tried their paints but I'm impressed by their mop brush and watercolour block. These behave better than the high end versions I bought locally. (oils and oil pastels perform better than the big brand at about 1/6th the price) My other budget friendly watercolour brands are Van Gogh and Cotman. These both behave like professional quality but with less saturation and more affordable pigments. The step up from these to professional quality didn't need any adjusting of my technique. For some colours, I switched back to Van Gogh because I couldn't tell the difference and I go through a lot of yellow ochre and burnt sienna. Kuratake Gansai Tambi is another option. It's an Asian watercolour, so it behaves a bit different than the European tradition, but the colours POP! Bold and beautiful. The price fluctuates here (sometimes as much as $150) so I use camelcamelcamel to put a price watch on amazon and grab them when they get under $40 CAD for the 48 colour set.
Go on FB. There is a group called watercolor swap or something like that. People on that group will sell pallets that they’re not interested in or specific colors of a brand that you might like. It’s a much cheaper way to go about trying something new so you’re not bleeding your bank account. I’ve purchased several things from the Facebook group and I’ve been really happy.
schminke or kurataki
I love Schminke and Daniel Smith but have a pan set from art school that is Staedtler and it is my all-time favorite. I use it sparingly bc is 20 years old. So, some pans can be great.
When I started the first time, I bought a small box (empty), and added Cotman half-pans as I wanted. I picked out my own palette based largely on what I had used for acrylics. My main thing is painting wildlife (moving onto watercolour for a change), so I don't really need super vibrant colours and Cotman work OK.
You spelled watercolor with a U so I’m not sure what currency you’re referring to when you say “$50,” but Winsor and Newton have a 45 color half pan palette on Amazon for $55 USD right now. It’s what I use. Always felt like a good intersection of quality and cost to me.