Watercolor and Gouache
Artist working on a watercolor using a round brush.Watercolor (US) or Watercolour (UK) (and "aquarelle" in French) is a painting method. A watercolor is the medium or the resulting artwork, in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water soluble vehicle. The traditional and most common support for watercolor paintings is paper; other supports include papyrus, bark papers, plastics, vellum or leather, fabric, wood, and canvas. In East Asia, watercolor painting with inks is referred to as brush painting or scroll painting. In Chinese, Korean, and Japanese painting it has been the dominant medium, often in monochrome black or browns. India, Ethiopia and other countries also have long traditions. Fingerpainting with watercolor paints originated in China.
Gouache paints come in many colors and are usually mixed with water to achieve the desired working properties and to control the opacity when dry. Gouache (rhymes with "squash"), the name of which derives from the Italian guazzo, "water paint, splash" or bodycolor (the term preferred by art historians) is a type of paint consisting of pigment suspended in water. Gouache differs from watercolor in that the particles are larger, the ratio of pigment to water is much higher, and an additional, inert, white pigment such as chalk is also present. Like all watermedia, it is diluted with water. (Gum Arabic is also present as a binding agent just like in water color.) This makes gouache heavier and more opaque, with greater reflective qualities.
Contents
• 1 History
• 2 English Watercolor school
• 3 Europe
• 4 20th Century
• 5 Gouache History
• 6 Materials
• 6.1 Paint
• 6.2 Brushes
• 6.3 Paper
• 7 Techniques
• 7.1 Washes and glazes
• 7.2 Wet in wet
• 7.3 Drybrush
• 7.4 Diluting and mixing watercolor paints
• 7.5 Minimal palettes
• 7.6 Paint Lightfastness
• 8 References
• 8.1 History
• 8.2 Tutorials & Technique
• 8.3 Materials
• 9 See also
• 10 External links
History
Although watercolor painting is extremely old, dating perhaps to the cave paintings of paleolithic Europe, and has been used for manuscript illumination since at least Egyptian times but especially in the European Middle Ages, its continuous history as an art medium begins in the Renaissance. The German artist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) who painted several fine botanical, wildlife and landscape watercolors, is generally considered among the earliest exponents of the medium. An important school of watercolor painting in Germany was led by Hans Bol (1534-1593) as part of the Dürer Renaissance.
Despite this early start, watercolors were generally used by Baroque easel painters only for sketches, copies or cartoons (small scale design drawings). Among notable early practitioners of watercolor painting were Van Dyck (during his stay in England), Claude Lorrain, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, and many Dutch and Flemish artists. However, botanical and wildlife illustrations are perhaps the oldest and most important tradition in watercolor painting. Botanical illustrations became popular in the Renaissance, both as hand tinted woodblock illustrations in books or broadsheets and as tinted ink drawings on vellum or paper. Botanical artists have always been among the most exacting and accomplished watercolor painters, and even today watercolors—with their unique ability to summarize, clarify and idealize in full color—are used to illustrate scientific and museum publications. Wildlife illustration reached its peak in the 19th century with artists such as John James Audubon, and today many naturalist field guides are still illustrated with watercolor paintings.
"Guazzo" was originally a term applied to the early 16th century practice of applying oil paint over a tempera base.[3] The term was applied to the watermedia in the 18th century in France, although the technique is considerably older. It was used as early as the 14th century in Europe.
English watercolor school
Several factors contributed to the diffusion of watercolor painting during the 18th century, particularly in England. Among the elite and aristocratic classes, watercolor painting was one of the incidental adornments of a good education, especially for women. By contrast, watercoloring was also valued by surveyors, mapmakers, military officers and engineers for its usefulness in depicting properties, terrain, fortifications or geology in the field and for illustrating public works or commissioned projects. Among the many significant watercolor artists of this period were Thomas Gainsborough, John Robert Cozens, Francis Towne, Michelangelo Rooker, William Pars, Thomas Hearne and John Warwick Smith. William Blake published several books of hand tinted engraved poetry, illustrations to Dante's Inferno, and also experimented with large monotype works in watercolor.
The confluence of amateur activity, publishing markets, middle class art collecting and 19th century painting technique led to the formation of English watercolor painting societies: the Society of Painters in Water Colours (1804, now known as the Royal Watercolour Society), and the New Water Colour Society (1832). These societies provided annual exhibitions and buyer referrals for many artists and also engaged in petty status rivalries and esthetic debates, particularly between advocates of traditional ("transparent") watercolor and the early adopters of the denser color possible with bodycolor or gouache ("opaque" watercolor). The late Georgian and Victorian periods produced the zenith of the British watercolor, among the most impressive 19th century works on paper, by Turner, Varley, Cotman, David Cox, Peter de Wint, William Henry Hunt, John Frederick Lewis, Myles Birket Foster, Frederick Walker, Thomas Collier and many others. In particular, the graceful, lapidary and atmospheric genre paintings by Richard Parkes Bonington created an international fad for watercolor painting, especially in England and France, in the 1820s.
Europe
Watercolor was less popular on the Continent, though many fine examples were produced by French painters, including Eugène Delacroix, François Marius Granet, Henri-Joseph Harpignies and the satirist Honore Daumier.
Self-portrait CezanneUnfortunately the careless and excessive adoption of brightly colored, petroleum derived aniline dyes (and pigments compounded from them), which all fade rapidly on exposure to light, and the efforts to properly conserve the 20,000 Turner paintings inherited by the British Museum in 1857, led to an examination and negative re-evaluation of the permanence of pigments in watercolor. This caused a sharp decline in their status and market value. Nevertheless, isolated exponents continued to prefer and develop the medium into the 20th century. In Europe, gorgeous landscape and maritime watercolors were produced by Paul Signac, and Paul Cézanne developed a watercolor painting style consisting entirely of overlapping small glazes of pure color.
In America, the most famous watercolor painters from this period include Maurice Prendergast, Frederick Childe Hassam, Charles Webster Hawthorne and John Singer Sargent, considered by many the finest watercolor painter of all time.
20th Century
Among the many 20th century artists who produced important works in watercolor, mention must be made of Wassily Kandinsky, Emil Nolde, Paul Klee, Egon Schiele and Raoul Dufy; in America the major exponents included Charles Burchfield, Edward Hopper, Charles Demuth, Elliot O'Hara and above all John Marin, 80% of whose total output is in watercolor.
Materials
A set of watercolors.Paint
Watercolor paint consists of four principal ingredients:
• colorant, commonly pigment (an insoluble inorganic compound or metal oxide crystal, or an organic dye fused to an insoluble metal oxide crystal);
• binder, the substance that holds the pigment in suspension and fixes the pigment to the painting surface;
• additives, substances that alter the viscosity, hiding, durability or color of the pigment and vehicle mixture; and
• solvent, the substance used to thin or dilute the paint for application and that evaporates when the paint hardens or dries.
The term "watermedia" refers to any painting medium that uses water as a solvent and that can be applied with a brush, pen or sprayer; this includes most inks, watercolors, temperas, gouaches and modern acrylic paints. The term watercolor refers to paints that use water soluble, complex carbohydrates as a binder. Originally (16th to 18th centuries) watercolor binders were sugars and/or hide glues, but since the 19th century the preferred binder is natural gum arabic, with glycerin and/or honey as additives to improve plasticity and dissolvability of the binder, and with other chemicals added to improve product shelf life. Bodycolor is a watercolor made as opaque as possible by a heavy pigment concentration, and gouache is a watercolor made opaque by the addition of a colorless opacifier (such as chalk or zinc oxide). Modern acrylic paints are based on a completely different chemistry that uses water soluble acrylic resin as a binder.
Watercolor painters before c.1800 had to make paints themselves using pigments purchased from an apothecary or specialized "colourman"; the earliest commercial paints were small, resinous blocks that had to be wetted and laboriously "rubbed out" in water. Modern commercial watercolor paints are available in two forms: tubes or pans.
Thanks to modern industrial organic chemistry, the variety, saturation (brilliance) and permanence of artists' colors available today is greater than ever before.
Many artists are confused or misled by labeling practices common in the art materials industry. The marketing name for a paint, such as "cobalt blue" or "emerald green", is often only a poetic color evocation or proprietary moniker; there is no legal requirement that it describe the pigment that gives the paint its color. To remedy this confusion, in 1990 the art materials industry voluntarily began listing pigment ingredients on the paint packaging, using the common pigment name (such as "cobalt blue" or "cadmium red"), and/or a standard pigment identification code, the generic color index name. This allows artists to choose paints according to their pigment ingredients, rather than the poetic labels assigned to them by marketers. Paint pigments and formulations vary across manufacturers, and watercolor paints with the same color name (e.g., "sap green") from different manufacturers can be formulated with completely different ingredients.
Staining is another characteristic assigned to watercolor paints: a staining paint is difficult to remove or lift from the painting support after it has been applied or dried. Less staining colors can be lightened or removed almost entirely when wet, or when rewetted and then "lifted" by stroking gently with a clean, wet brush and then blotted up with a paper towel. In fact, the staining characteristics of a paint depend in large part on the composition of the support (paper) itself, and on the particle size of the pigment. Staining is increased if the paint manufacturer uses a dispersant to reduce the paint milling (mixture) time, because the dispersant acts to drive pigment particles into crevices in the paper pulp, dulling the finished color.
Granulation refers to the appearance of separate, visible pigment particles in the finished color, produced when the paint is substantially diluted with water and applied with a juicy brush stroke; pigments notable for their watercolor granulation include viridian (PG18), cerulean blue (PG35), cobalt violet (PV14) and some iron oxide pigments (PBr7). "Flocculation" refers to a peculiar clumping typical of ultramarine pigments (PB29 or PV15). Both effects display the subtle effects of water as the paint dries, are unique to watercolors, and are deemed attractive by accomplished watercolor painters. Regrettably the trend in commercial paints seems to be to suppress pigment textures in favor of homogeneous, flat color.
Commercial watercolor paints come in two grades: "Artist" (or "Professional") and "Student". Artist quality paints are usually formulated less fillers (kaolin or chalk) which results in richer color and vibrant mixes. Student grade paints have less pigment, and often are formulated using two or more less expensive pigments. Artist and Professional paints are more expensive but many consider the quality worth the higher cost.
As there is no transparent white watercolor, the white parts of a watercolor painting are most often areas of the paper "reserved" (left unpainted) and allowed to be seen in the finished work. To preserve these white areas, many painters use a variety of resists, including masking tape, clear wax or a liquid latex, that are applied to the paper to protect it from paint, then pulled away to reveal the white paper. White paint (titanium dioxide PW6 or zinc oxide PW4) is best used to insert highlights or white accents into a painting. If mixed with other pigments, white paints may cause them to fade or change hue under light exposure. White paint (gouache) mixed with a "transparent" watercolor paint will cause the transparency to disappear and the paint to look much duller. White paint will always appear dull and chalky next to the white of the paper, however this can be used for some effects.
Paper
Most watercolor painters before c.1800 had to use whatever paper was at hand: Thomas Gainsborough was delighted to buy some paper used to print a Bath tourist guide, and the young David Cox preferred a heavy paper used to wrap packages. James Whatman first offered a wove watercolor paper in 1788, and the first machinemade ("cartridge") papers from a steam powered mill in 1805.
All art papers can be described by eight attributes: furnish, color, weight, finish, sizing, dimensions, permanence and packaging. Watercolor painters typically paint on paper specifically formulated for watermedia applications. Fine watermedia papers are manufactured under the brand names Arches, Fabriano, Hahnemuehle, Lanaquarelle, Saunders Waterford, Strathmore, Winsor & Newton and Zerkall; and there has been a recent remarkable resurgence in handmade papers, notably those by Twinrocker, Velke Losiny, Ruscombe Mill and St. Armand.
The traditional furnish or material content of watercolor papers is cellulose, a structural carbohydrate found in many plants. The most common sources of paper cellulose are cotton, linen, or alpha cellulose extracted from wood pulp.
The basis weight of the paper is a measure of its density and thickness. It is described as the gram weight of one square meter of a single sheet of the paper, or grams per square meter (gsm). Most watercolor papers sold today are in the range between 280gsm to 640gsm.
All papers obtain a texture from the mould used to make them: a wove finish results from a uniform metal screen (likea window screen); a laid finish results from a screen made of narrowly spaced horizontal wires separated by widely spaced vertical wires. The finish is also affected by the methods used to wick and dry the paper after it is "couched" (removed) from the paper mold or is pulled off the papermaking cylinder.
Watercolor papers come in three basic finishes: hot pressed (HP), cold press (CP, or in the UK "Not", for "not hot pressed"), and rough (R). These vary greatly from manufacturer to manufacturer.
• Rough papers are typically dried by hanging them like laundry ("loft drying") so that the sheets are not exposed to any pressure after they are couched; the wove finish has a pitted, uneven texture that is prized for its ability to accent the texture of watercolor pigments and brushstrokes.
• Cold pressed papers are dried in large stacks, between absorbent felt blankets; this acts to flatten out about half of the texture found in the rough sheets. CP papers are valued for their versatility.
• Hot pressed papers are cold pressed sheets that are passed through heated, compressing metal cylinders (called "calendaring"), which flattens amost all the texture in the sheets. HP papers are valued because they are relatively nonabsorbent: pigments remain on the paper surface, brightening the color, and water is not absorbed, so it can produce a variety of water stains or marks as it dries.
These designations are only relative; the CP paper from one manufacturer may be rougher than the R paper from another manufacturer. Fabriano even offers a "soft press" (SP) sheet intermediate between CP and HP.
Watercolor papers are traditionally sized, or treated with a substance to reduce the cellulose absorbency. Internal sizing is added to the paper pulp after rinsing and before it is cast in the paper mould; external or "tub" sizing is applied to the paper surface after the paper has dried. The traditional sizing has been gelatin, gum arabic or rosin, though modern synthetic substitutes (alkyl-ketene dimers such as Aquapel) are now used instead. The highly absorbent papers that contain no sizing are designated waterleaf.
Most art papers are sold as single sheets of paper in standard sizes. Most common is the full sheet (22" x 30"), and half sheets (15" x 22") or quarter sheets (15" x 11") derived from it. Larger (and less standardized) sheets include the double elephant (within an inch or two of 30" x 40") and emperor (40" x 60"), which are the largest sheets commercially available. Papers are also manufactured in rolls, up to about 60" wide and 30 feet long. Finally, papers are also sold as watercolor "blocks" -- a pad of 20 or so sheets of paper, cut to identical dimensions and glued on all four sides, which provides high dimensional stability and portability, though block papers tend to have subdued finishes. The painter simply works on the exposed sheet and, when finished, uses a knife to cut the adhesive around the four sides, separating the painting and revealing the fresh paper underneath. Finally, the best art papers are designated archival.
Some types of Yupo paperTechniques
Watercolor painting has the reputation of being quite demanding; it is more accurate to say that watercolor techniques are unique to watercolor. Unlike oil or acrylic painting, where the paints essentially stay where they are put and dry more or less in the form they are applied, water is an active and complex partner in the watercolor painting process, changing both the absorbency and shape of the paper when it is wet and the outlines and appearance of the paint as it dries. The difficulty in watercolor painting is almost entirely in learning how to anticipate and leverage the behavior of water, rather than attempting to control or dominate it.
Many difficulties occur because watercolor paints do not have high hiding power, so previous efforts cannot simply be painted over; and the paper support is both absorbent and delicate, so the paints cannot simply be scraped off, like oil paint from a canvas, but must be laboriously (and often only partially) lifted by rewetting and blotting.
Watercolor paint is traditionally and still commonly applied with brushes, but modern painters have experimented with many other implements, particularly sprayers, scrapers, sponges or sticks, and have combined watercolors with pencil, charcoal, crayon, chalk, ink, engraving, monotype, lithography and collage, or with acrylic paint.
Many watercolor painters, perhaps uniquely among all modern visual artists, still adhere to prejudices dating from the 19th century rivalry between "transparent" and bodycolor painters. Among these are injunctions never to use white paint, never to use black paint, only to use transparent color, or only to work with "primary" color mixtures. In fact, many superb paintings flout some or all of these guidelines, and they have little relevance to modern painting practice.
Perhaps only with the exception of egg tempera, watercolor is the painting medium that artists most often compound themselves, by hand, using raw pigment and paint ingredients purchased from retail suppliers and prepared using only kitchen utensils.
Gouache generally dries to a different value than it appears when wet (lighter tones generally dry darker, while darker tones tend to dry lighter), which can make it difficult to match colors over multiple painting sessions. This, combined with its quick coverage and total hiding power, mean that gouache lends itself to more immediate techniques than watercolor.[4] "En plein air" paintings take advantage of this, as do works of J.M.W. Turner and Victor Lensner. It is used most consistently by commercial artists for works such as posters, illustrations, comics, and for other design work. For example, comics illustrators like Alex Ross use mostly gouache for their work. Industrial Designer and Visual Futurist Syd Mead also works primarily in gouache. Most 20th-century animations used it to create an opaque color on a cel with watercolor paint used for backgrounds, and gouache as "poster paint" is desirable for its speed and durability.
Washes and glazes
Basic watercolor technique includes washes and glazes. In watercolors, a wash is the application of diluted paint in a manner that disguises or effaces individual brush strokes to produce a unified area of color. A glaze is the application of one paint color over a previous paint layer, with the new paint layer at a dilution sufficient to allow the first color to show through. Glazes are used to mix two or more colors, to adjust a color (darken it or change its hue or chroma), or to produce an extremely homogenous, smooth color surface or a controlled but delicate color transition.
Wet in wet
Wet in wet includes any application of paint or water to an area of the painting that is already wet with either paint or water. In general, wet in wet is one of the most distinctive features of watercolor painting and the technique that produces a striking painterly effect.
The essential idea is to wet the entire sheet of paper, laid flat, until the surface no longer wicks up water but lets it sit on the surface, then to plunge in with a large brush saturated with paint. This is normally done to define the large areas of the painting with irregularly defined color, which is then sharpened and refined with more controlled painting as the paper (and preceding paint) dries.
Wet in wet actually comprises a variety of specific painting effects, each produced through different procedures. Among the most common and characteristic:
• Backruns (also called blossoms, blooms, oozles, watermarks, backwashes or runbacks). Because the hydrophilic and closely spaced cellulose fibers of the paper provide traction for capillary action, water and wet paint have a strong tendency to migrate from wetter to drier surfaces of the painting. As the wetter area pushes into the dryer, it plows up pigment along its edge, leaving a lighter colored area behind it and a darker band of pigment along an irregular, serrated edge. Backruns are often used to symbolize a flare of light or the lighting contour on an object, or simply for decorative effect.
• Paint Diffusion. Because of osmotic imbalance, concentrated paint applied to a prewetted paper has a tendency to diffuse or expand into the pure water surrounding it, especially if the paint has been milled using a dispersant (surfactant). This produces a characteristic feathery, delicate border around the color area, which can be enhanced or partially shaped by tilting the paper surface before the water dries, shaping the diffusion with surface water flow.
• Pouring Color. Some artists pour large quantities of slightly diluted paint onto separate areas of the painting surface, then by using a brush, spray bottle of water and/or judicious tilting of the painting support, cause the wet areas to gently merge and mix. After the color has been mixed and allowed to set for a few minutes, the painting is tipped vertically to sheet off all excess moisture (the lighter colors across the darker ones), leaving behind a paper stained with random, delicate color variations, which can be further shaped with a wet brush or added paint while the paper is still wet. (The technique was actually invented, and used for similar effect, by J.M.W. Turner.)
• Dropping In Color. In this technique a color area is first precisely defined with diluted paint or clear water, then more concentrated paint is dropped into it by touching the wet area with a brush charged with paint. The added paint can be shaped by tilting or stroking; backruns can be induced by adding pure water or concentrated paint, or the color can be lightened by wicking up paint with a moist brush. A striking, tesselated effect is produced when many precisely defined and interlocking areas are separately colored with this randomly diffusing technique.
• Salt Texture. Grains of coarse salt, sprinkled into moist paint, produce small, snowflake like imperfections in the color. This is especially effective when the color area is a wash that displays the texture more clearly. It should be remembered when using salt that salt will rot the paper eventually. A similar effect can be produced by spraying a moist (not shiny but still cool to the touch) paint area with water, using a spray bottle held two or three feet above the painting surface, or by sprinking a wet paint with coarse sand or sawdust.
Drybrush
At the other extreme from wet in wet techniques, Drybrush is the watercolor painting technique for precision and control, supremely exemplified in many botanical paintings and in the drybrush watercolors of Andrew Wyeth. Raw (undiluted) paint is picked up with a premoistened, small brush (usually a #4 or smaller), then applied to the paper with small hatching or crisscrossing brushstrokes. The brush tip must be wetted but not overcharged with paint, and the paint must be just fluid enough to transfer to the paper with slight pressure and without dissolving the paint layer underneath. The goal is to build up or mix the paint colors with short precise touches that blend to avoid the appearance of pointilism. The cumulative effect is objective, textural and highly controlled, with the strongest possible value contrasts in the medium. Often it is impossible to distinguish a good drybrush watercolor from a color photograph or oil painting, and many drybrush watercolors are varnished or lacquered after they are completed to enhance this resemblance.
Scumbling (in the 19th century, called "crumbling color" or "dragging color") is an unrelated technique of loading a large, moist flat or round brush with concentrated paint, wicking out the excess, then lightly dragging the side or heel of the tuft across the paper to produce a rough, textured appearance, for example to represent beach grass, rocky surfaces or glittering water. The amount of texture that can be produced depends on the finish or tooth of the paper (R or CP paper works best), the size of the brush, the consistency and quantity of the paint in the brush, and the pressure and speed of the brush stroke. Moist paper will cause the scumbled color to diffuse slightly before it dries.
Minimal palettes
Palette is also the term for a specific selection of paints (or "colors"). Though commercial watercolor brands typically include up to 100 or more paint colors in tubes, subtractive pigment mixtures can produce a complete range of colors from a small number of specific paints. Indeed, as a matter of economy, convenience or technique, painters have often preferred palettes comprising the smallest practical selection of paints.
The smallest practical palette consists of one dark neutral paint, typically including a carbon black pigment or, in works before 1800, a sepia ink. As this single paint can only communicate value gradations from full strength (dark) to white paper, it produces monochrome images, often supplemented and sharpened by an underdrawing or additions in pen and ink.
A familiar choice is the "primary" palette consisting of a magenta (traditionally but inaccurately identified as "red"), yellow and cyan (traditionally "blue") paint, each representing a subtractive primary color. This palette can mix all possible hues, though the purple, orange and green mixtures are characteristically rather dull or dark, and most color mixtures require use of all three paints. The primary palette is therefore useful to demonstrate that compactness also affects convenience (the difficulty involved in mixing any common color) and color saturation (generally, the paint mixture gamut or total number of unique colors it is possible to mix with a palette). Note that Leonardo, in his notebooks, cited red, yellow, green and blue (along with white and black) as the "painter's primaries", though he may not have had a specific palette in mind; but replacing the cyan paint with a deep blue paint (such as ultramarine blue), and adding a green paint, greatly improves the saturation of both purple and green mixtures in a compact four paint selection, and allows a dark neutral or black to be mixed directly, using only red and green.
In the 19th century a six paint "split primary" palette was introduced and is still advocated today as a solution to the mixing limitations of the three paint "primary" palette. It is based on the three traditional subtractive primary colors (red, yellow and blue), each in a "warm" and "cool" version (specific pigments listed as examples for each color choice):
• "warm" yellow: Cadmium Yellow Medium (PY35)
• "cool" yellow: Cadmium Lemon (PY35)
• "warm" red: Cadmium Scarlet (PR108)
• "cool" red: Quinacridone Carmine (PV19)
• "warm" blue: Ultramarine Blue (PB29)
• "cool" blue": Phthalo Blue (Green Shade) (PB15)
This selection was advocated so that bright or saturated mixtures could be produced by related primary colors, e.g. the brightest orange is the mixture of a yellow with some red in it (warm yellow) and a red with some yellow in it (warm red); the brightest green is the mixture of a yellow with some blue in it (cool yellow) with a blue with some yellow in it (cool blue). This palette is nearly always justified with the specious argument that paints are "impure" carriers of "primary color", a misunderstanding of subtractive color mixture that appears in Michel-Eugene Chevreul's "Simultaneous Color Harmony and Contrast" published in 1839.
A modern approach to the six paint palette (trademarked in the printing industry as a "hexachrome" palette) jettisons the "impure paint" rationalization and simply focuses on obtaining the largest gamut from a limited selection of available pigments. This leads to a more equal spacing of paints around the hue circle, and the inclusion of a green paint. As a result the mixture of any two paints adjacent on the hue circle usually produces the most saturated color mixtures for every hue between them (specific pigments listed as examples for each color choice):
• yellow: Cadmium Yellow Pale (PY35 or PY37) or Benzimidazolone Yellow (PY151 or PY154)
• red orange: Pyrrol Orange (PO73) or Cadmium Scarlet (PR108)
• magenta: Quinacridone Magenta (PR122) or Quinacridone Rose (PV19)
• blue violet: Ultramarine Blue (PB29)
• cyan: Phthalo Turquoise (PB16) or Phthalo Cyan (PB17)
• green: Phthalo Green (PG7 Blue Shade or PG36 Yellow Shade)
Paint Lightfastness
A final consideration is lightfastness, or the ability of a pigment to retain its original color appearance under exposure to light. This is usually indicated as a numerical rating, from I (high lightfastness) to III or IV (low lightfastness), on the paint tube or in the paint technical information available from the manufacturer. Lightfastness is a crucial issue with watercolors, because the paint pigment is not surrounded by a protective dried binder (as in oil or acrylic paints) but is left exposed on the surface of the paper. Watercolors acquired in the 19th century a market reputation for relative impermanence that continues to suppress their price today, and painters who admire this medium will make choices to improve its market status: in fact, lightfast watercolor paints on archival papers are more durable than any oil painting on canvas. The most stable painting medium is pastel, but modern lightfast watercolors are now more stable than oil or acrylic mediums.
Unfortunately, paint manufacturer lightfastness ratings are not always trustworthy. However, because they have been demonstrated to be impermanent in watercolors, certain pigments (paints) should never be used under any circumstances. These include: aureolin (PY40), alizarin crimson (PR83), genuine rose madder (NR9), genuine carmine (NR4), genuine vermilion (PR106), most naphthol reds and oranges, all dyes (including most "liquid watercolors" and marker pens), and paints premixed with a white pigment, including paints marketed under the names naples yellow, emerald green or antwerp blue. Most of these are colorants invented in the 19th century or before that have been superseded by far more durable modern alternatives, and these are usually sold as "hue" paints (e.g., "alizarin crimson hue" is a modern pigment that resembles alizarin crimson). Industry labeling practice is to include a lightfastness rating on the paint packaging, and painters should only use paints that have a lightfastness rating of I or II under the testing standards published the American Society of Testing and Materials (now ASTM International).
References
History
• Andrew Wilton & Anne Lyles. The Great Age of British Watercolours (1750-1880). Prestel, 1993. ISBN 3-7913-1254-5
• Anne Lyles & Robin Hamlyn. British watercolours from the Oppé Collection. Tate Gallery Publishing, 1997. ISBN 1-85437-240-8
• Christopher Finch. American Watercolors. Abbeville Press, 1991. ASIN B000IBDWGK
• Christopher Finch. Nineteenth-Century Watercolors. Abbeville Press, 1991. ISBN 1558590196
• Christopher Finch. Twentieth-Century Watercolors. Abbeville Press, 1988. ISBN 089659811X
• Eric Shanes. Turner: The Great Watercolours. Royal Academy of Arts, 2001. ISBN 0-8109-6634-4
• Martin Hardie. Water-Colour Painting in Britain (3 volumes: I. The Eighteenth Century; II. The Romantic Period; III. The Victorian Period.). Batsford, 1966-1968. ISBN 113184131X
• Michael Clarke. The Tempting Prospect: A Social History of English Watercolors. British Museum Publications, 1981. ASIN B000UCV0XO
Tutorials & Technique
• Rex Brandt. The Winning Ways of Watercolor: Basic Techniques and Methods of Transparent Watercolor in Twenty Lessons. Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1973. ISBN 0-442-21404-9
• David Dewey. The Watercolor Book: Materials and Techniques for Today's Artist. Watson-Guptill, 1995. ISBN 0-8230-5641-4
• Donna Seldin Janis. Sargent Abroad: Figures and Landscapes. Abbeville Press; 1st edition (October 1997). ISBN 978-0789203847.
• Charles LeClair. The Art of Watercolor (Revised and Expanded Edition). Watson-Guptill, 1999. ISBN 0-8230-0292-6
• Royal Watercolour Society. The Watercolour Expert. Cassell Illustrated, 2004. ISBN 1844031497
• John Ruskin. The Elements of Drawing [1857]. Watson-Guptill, 1991. ISBN 0-8230-1602-1 (Reprints from other publishers are also available.)
• Pip Seymour. Watercolour Painting: A Handbook for Artists. Lee Press, 1997. ISBN 0-9524727-4-0
• Stan Smith. Watercolor: The Complete Course. Reader's Digest, 1995. ISBN 0-89577-653-7
• Curtis Tappenden. Foundation Course: Watercolour. Cassell Illustrated, 2003. ISBN 1844030822
• Edgar A. Whitney. Complete Guide to Watercolor Painting. Watson-Guptill, 1974. [Dover Edition ISBN 0-486-41742-5]
Materials
• Ian Sideway. The Watercolor Artist's Paper Directory. North Light, 2000. ISBN 1581800347
• Jacques Turner. Brushes: A Handbook for Artists and Artisans. Design Press, 1992. ISBN 0830639756
• Sylvie Turner. The Book of Fine Paper. Thames & Hudson, 1998. ISBN 0500018715
• Michael Wilcox. The Wilcox Guide To The Best Watercolor Paints. School of Colour Publications, 2000. [ISBN 978-0967962801]
External links
• Victoria and Albert Museum. http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/paintings/galleries/materials/watercolour/index.html. Retrieved on 2007-08-21.
