A big pile of watercolor blocks, sketchbooks, and paper packs.
Good paper can make a huge difference in your quality of life as watercolorist. Paper designed for other media just can’t take the amount of water that watercolor requires. Think about it: water is terrible for paper! Water makes most paper melt, tear, and break down, so you get little fuzzy bits of paper mixed in with your paint. Getting high quality paper can be the simplest path to getting great results from the paints you picked out so carefully.
When I first started shopping for watercolor paper, I was bewildered by all the specs. I’ll break it down so you can figure out what you’re buying and how it will work with your watercolor style.
I just can’t get enough dot cards! Last time, I explored Daniel Smith’s, and now I’m onto the German company Schmincke, named for its 1881 founder Hermann Schmincke. Horadam is the name of their artist grade watercolor line, named for another of their founders, the chemist Josef Horadam.
The Dot Card in question, complete. They got it all done in 2 pages!
General Brand Impressions: Schmincke has a smaller catalogue than Daniel Smith (140 colors vs 238), but still quite extensive, and nothing feels like it’s missing. (I think DS just has 100 useless colors, tbh.) All of the hits are here, as well as some interesting mixes. I found the line overall quite internally consistent, with most colors being highly pigmented and non-granulating. There were very few duds. On the other hand, as a beginner, I found them comparatively difficult to swatch out because they are easily to over-dilute, creating harsh paint lines. Basically they’re huge drama queens about too much water. I think if I were better at water control, this might be my favorite line, but Daniel Smith is friendlier for a person of, ah, inconsistent quality.
Allergy note: All Schmincke’s paints contain isothiazolinones (presumably in the binder), which some people are allergic to.
The most important key to getting the results you want in watercolor is understanding how water interacts with your paint. More or less water can completely transform your results. So it’s important to understand how much water you’re adding, and where you’re adding it. In this post, I’ll tell you as much as I’ve learned so far about this skill – although ultimately it’s one of those things where you just have to get your brush wet and get a feel for it!
A note on terminology: Most people call this skill “water control.” Personally, I’ve been trying to get away from the language of power and control when I talk about watercolor. I don’t like to feel adversarial with the materials, as if I’m struggling with them or subduing them. I prefer to think of water as my collaborator. After all, I am asking it to do some of the work and add its own creativity! So I’ve decided that when I refer to the amount of water you add to your painting, I will use the word I heard used for it in French language Youtube videos, dosage. (French accent optional.)
There are three places you can put more or less water to change your results: in the paint, on the paper, or on the brush.
After seeing some information about nontoxic alternatives to the common color Cadmium Red, I began to wonder: are watercolors toxic? Should I be concerned?
Of the major categories of watercolor supplies (paint, paper, brushes), brushes were the last ones that I got into. Actually, I put it off, improving my paints and papers while continuing to use cheapo brushes from the discount bin (which I chose based on the color of their handle.) It just seemed complicated! There are so many brushes with various attributes, and I had no way of telling what’s good and bad about them.
Well, I’ve now done my research, so if you’re still stuck where I was six months ago, let me break it down for you!
Lists of watercolor supplies usually including “masking tape,” but what’s it for? Why do you need it? What do you do with it once you’ve got it? And what’s the best kind to get? When I was first gathering watercolor supplies, I often found myself frustrated with the vagueness on supply lists. I wanted more detail so that I could get it right the first time. Since I did not get it right the first time, let me pass my hard-won wisdom onto you!
I spend a lot of time researching paints before I buy one, planning how it will fit into one of my existing palettes: what niche it will fill; how it will play with my other paints; what I’ll be able to paint and mix with it that I can’t do now, or can’t do as easily. I’ve had some triumphs (THIS COLOR IS AMAZING) as well as some missteps (Huh, I just… never use this one.) So I have A Lot Of Thoughts on how to build a palette from the ground up that works for you, full of lovely paints you’ll enjoy and that will be versatile enough for everything you want to do!
tl;dr All this is subjective. There are no rules. Get the colors you want.
Six well-loved tubes of paint from the Daniel Smith Essentials collection.
One of the most important supplies for watercolor is paint itself. Oh, okay, you could go back and forth all day with galaxy brain paint hipsters about whether the real most important supply is the paper, the brushes, or the water, mannnnn. But paint is pretty important, anyway.
A bin containing far too many tubes of watercolor paint.
Swatches of earth tones overlaid over Daniel Smith dot cards on a messy desk.
Previously: After swatching out all the colors from my 238-color Dot Card, I gave my thoughts on all the exciting color categories: yellow, red, purple, and so on. Now, I give my thoughts on the earth tones and grays. I know these can be important colors, especially in realistic landscape and portrait paintings (neither of which I have admittedly really done), but gosh, it’s hard to get excited about them.
Since I started painting I have actively resisted getting into earth tones and browns; the closest I get is having Quinacridone Gold which many people would consider more of a warm yellow. I just always want bright colors instead! Which is honestly not a bad impulse in watercolor, because you can always make muted tones from brights (by mixing complementary colors), but you cannot go the other way around. Anyway, life’s too short to buy paints that don’t spark joy.
But maybe I am missing something? Maybe earth tones CAN spark joy? Will this dot card change my mind??!
