When I replaced some of the colours in my Winsor & Newton bijou watercolour box last year, some of the original selection weren’t available so I thought that it would be worth doing another set of swatches to familiarise myself with the new palette.
I’m always impressed by the variety of colours that can be mixed from such a small selection; basically a warm and a cool version of the three primaries with a few useful secondaries, such as sap green and my go-to colour for so much natural history, yellow ochre. I find neutral tint useful too; more versatile than black.
It’s always good practice for me to paint swatches, and to try and hit that midway point between the two colours that I’m mixing. It’s also rather therapeutic to settle down for a while, listening to Radio 3 as I mix colours.
Link
Winsor & Newton Professional watercolours
Hi Richard. I like this selction of colours, and I’m thinking of using similar ones in my watercolour tin. I can’t help wondering though; is that actually Raw Umber you’ve used, as it looks more like Burnt Sienna to me?! Hope you don’t mind me asking!
Yes, that’s it, Winsor and Newton raw umber, just taken it out of the box to check. There’s a burnt umber too, which, as you’d expect is a bit blacker.
Ah, that’s great, thanks for checking. It’s amazing how one colour can vary so much in appearance when looking at different websites.
It’s useful that the names of the colours are printed on the containers. With those earth colours it would be difficult to distinguish between them.