Winsor & Newton : Professional Watercolor Paint

<p>Since 1832 when Henry Newton and William Winsor introduced the first moist watercolors to the world, much of Winsor & Newton's reputation has stemmed from the Professional Watercolor range. Since then, Winsor & Newton Professional Watercolor continues to be formulated and manufactured according to its founding principles; to create a top-quality watercolor range which offers artists a wide and balanced choice of pigments with excellent permanence.</p> <p>Each color in their extensive range has been selected and formulated to offer the greatest choice so that artists can use a unique palette that best suits their work.</p> <p><strong>Sizes available<br /></strong>The Professional Watercolor range offers a wide and balanced spectrum of 109 colors in Half Pans, Whole Pans and in 5ml and 14ml tubes. A limited range of 30 colors are available in 37ml tubes. <p><strong>Professional Watercolor Tubes or Pans</strong><br />Both Winsor & Newton Professional Watercolor tube and pan colors are made individually to the highest standards. Pan color is often used by beginners because it can be less inhibiting and easier to control the strength of color. Tube color is more popular overall, used by artists who use high volumes of color or stronger washes of color. Many painters have both - this is because pan colors are useful when traveling and sketching. Of course, artists can use both tube and pan together if they wish.</p> <p><strong>Formulation</strong><br />In simple terms, a watercolor is produced by combining (or suspending) a pigment with a binder, for example, Gum Kordofan, a type of Gum Arabic. The formulations for Winsor & Newton Professional Watercolors are each unique and vary according to the nature and behavior of each individual pigment. With this in mind, and with a range which has thousands of different applications by millions of artists worldwide, they rely on expert chemists who have excellent knowledge in understanding and formulating Professional Watercolor.</p> <p>These chemists have learned from the chemists before them who also spent their working lives at Winsor & Newton - since William Winsor died in 1865, they have only had four chief chemists! Thanks to their experience and expert knowledge, they can continue to formulate a high-quality range using the best pigments.</p> <p><strong>Pigment Choice</strong><br />Watercolor more than any other medium relies upon the variable characteristics of the pigments used. As it is essentially a staining technique, everything rests on the handling properties of the pigments; whether they can produce a smooth wash or a textured wash; how opaque or transparent they are; the brilliance and strength of their color; and so on. With this in mind, it has always been - and will continue to be - Winsor & Newton's aim to provide artists with the widest possible range of pigments to give them the greatest choice and flexibility.</p> <p><strong>Single Pigments in the Range</strong><br />Wherever possible, single pigments have been used in Professional Watercolor to ensure that Winsor & Newton offer the widest choice of colors and pigment characteristics or positions, such as hue, particle size, transparency, tinting strength, etc. This helps broaden the artist's options. Single pigment formulations are purer in hue and cleaner in color than mixtures of pigments, providing a larger number of color mixes before resulting in muddy effects. With 80 single pigment colors in the range they offer the widest range of modern and traditional pigments for clean color mixing.</p>

<p><strong>Mixed Pigments</strong><strong><br /></strong>Although mixed pigments inevitably lose some degree of chroma or brightness, there are many reasons why they still choose to formulate with them. In some instances, they can achieve a higher level of permanence over a single pigment alternative, e.g., Permanent Alizarin Crimson and Hookers Green. In other instances, some pigments have to be mixed to achieve a given formulation. For example, Quinacridone Gold where the pigment itself is no longer available.</p> <p><strong>Color Series</strong><br />The Winsor & Newton Professional Watercolor range is split into 4 groups termed 'Series'. The series indicates the relative price of the color and is determined mainly by the cost of the pigment. Series 1 is the least expensive color and Series 4 the most expensive.</p> <p><strong>Color Strength</strong><br />The strength of each color in the Professional Watercolor range has been maximized by combining the most advanced color manufacturing techniques with the most recent developments in pigment technology. Optimum color strength offers the artists greater tinting possibilities.</p> <p><strong>Color Range</strong><br />Winsor & Newton choose their colors according to mass tone (color from tube), undertone (bias of color when in a thin film), color strength, relative opacity and the character of the pigment in water color, ie. granulating, staining or even wash. The resultant color spectrum ensures the largest number of colors can be mixed from the range.</p> <p>Today the Professional Watercolor range benefits from continued advancements in pigment technology and production methods to enable Winsor & Newton to build upon their already high standards to produce even brighter, more transparent and more stable colors. Equally important, many of their formulations remain the same - proving that they cannot be bettered.</p>

<p><strong>Transparency & Opacity</strong><br />Winsor & Newton watercolors exhibit unrivaled transparency due to the unique pigment dispersion in the manufacture of the color. This is particularly important because transparency is the key characteristic of watercolor. As a result of the thinness of the watercolor film, all colors have a transparent quality on paper, allowing the reflective white of the paper to shine through. However, pigments do retain their natural characteristics to some degree. For example, transparent pigments refract light in much the same manner as stained glass, making jewel-like brilliance and clean mixing. Opaque colors such as cadmiums are likely to cover significantly more than transparent colors.</p> <p>The varying transparency and opacity of a pigment will affect the optical character of the individual color as well as how the color mixes with other colors. The most transparent colors will enable you to create a pure glazing effect by applying a number of washes on top of one another. The more opaque colors give flatter washes and greater covering over previous washes. Opaque colors are also useful for toning down color mixtures.</p>

<p>The addition of Gum Arabic will also increase transparency. By adding Gum Arabic to a color wash, you will achieve even greater transparency and luminosity from your washes.</p> <p><strong>Granulation</strong><br />Some pigments show a characteristic called granulation, where the way in which the pigment particles settle in the paper creates a mottled effect. For many artists, granulation is highly desirable because it adds visual texture to their paintings. Even within granulating colors, different effects are apparent when they are brushed out onto paper. Some fine pigments rush together in huddles, more commonly called “flocculation”, whilst other heavy pigments fall into the hollows of the paper surface.</p> <p>As a general statement, the traditional pigments granulate, e.g., cobalts, earths, ultramarine, etc... The modern organic pigments do not, e.g., Winsor colors. Granulating colors are marked on hand painted and printed color charts with a “G” beneath the color chip. They are also detailed in the Color Charts and the Spectrum Color Lists. Granulation Medium gives a mottled or granular appearance to colors that usually give a smooth wash, such as Winsor Blue (Red Shade). By adding Granulation Medium to colors that already granulate, such as French Ultramarine, the effect is further enhanced.</p>

<p><strong>Staining<br /></strong>As watercolor relies upon the relative absorbency of the paper surface for stability, more powerful colors such as Prussian Blue, Alizarin Crimson, and the modern organic pigments such as Winsor colors, penetrate or stain more than others. These colors cannot be lifted completely with a damp sponge. The traditional inorganic colors and earths tend to lift more easily from the paper. Those colors that are more likely to stain a surface are marked “St“ on the Professional Watercolor Chart.&nbsp;</p><p><strong>Permanence</strong><br />Since 1832, one of Winsor & Newton's founding principles has been to offer a range of Professional Watercolors that has the greatest possible permanence. 106 out of 109 colors in their Professional Watercolor range are classed as 'permanent for artists' use', rated AA or A for archival permanence to ensure that these colors used today will appear the same for generations to come.</p> <p><strong>Opera Rose</strong><br />Sometimes certain desirable or historical colors cannot be achieved or matched unless less lightfast materials are used.</p> <p>In the past, this was much more common and the ethic of Winsor & Newton was that they must provide choice. After all, many artists may not need the original work of art to be permanent in itself, e.g., illustrators or designers.</p> <p>Opera Rose is a case in point. Quinacridone Red and Quinacridone Magenta are vivid, lightfast violets which have proved to be hugely useful to botanical artists who specifically require their original work of art to be lightfast. Opera Rose, however, offers a brightness beyond any of these lightfast colors and is so desirable because it can represent the most vivid colors in the garden. Although a B rating, Opera Rose is in fact significantly more lightfast than any of the older pigments of its type. This is one new color where the hue will be more desirable for some artists than the ultimate longevity of the color.</p> <p>The quest for permanence has turned watercolor from a less lightfast, delicate media into one which is equal to oil color despite the extreme dilution of the paint film. Recently available pigments have enabled Winsor & Newton to meet that quest.</p> <p>It's worth remembering that Opera Rose, even with its astonishing brilliance, is equal to or superior in permanence than many of the commonly used 19th century pigments.</p>