# What are your favorite colors for watercolor



## Scott R Nelson

I've read quite a few books on watercolor painting and each seems to give different advice for what colors to use and how many to use. Often they'll recommend a warm and cool version of red, yellow, blue, green, and some browns from the Sienna or Umber families. I've seen advice to use as few as three colors for a painting as well as to use as many as you want.

I've found that I've settled into four colors that do just about everything I want, because they mix so well. For some reason the ones I like best are only available in the more expensive and smaller tubes from Windsor & Newton rather than from Grumbacher.

My four favorite colors:


*Quinacridone Magenta*
I found this one on my own when I found that I couldn't make a decent pink to paint pink Plumeria blossoms. But it mixes so well with other colors, that I use it all the time.
 


*Quinacridone Gold*
I never would have picked this one out on my own, but an instructor in a watercolor class that I was taking let me use a tiny bit of it and I was amazed how it could be used directly for brown through light yellow colors and also mixes amazingly well with other colors.
 
*Antwerp Blue*
I was never quite happy with the blues that I had been using, and tended to use Ultramarine a lot. This is another one that I learned about in the watercolor class and like the clean bright color that it produces as well as how it mixes nicely with other colors.
 
*Hooker's Green*
This is the only less expensive Grumbacher color. Used plain it produces a nice bright green, but also mixes well.
 
I've found that I can get almost any color I want using these four. For example, if you mix the magenta and green evenly it produces a neutral grey color that looks more interesting than something like Paynes Grey. I'm also able to get some nice browns, although I can't tell you what percentage of each I use to get there. There is definitely some magenta and gold involved.

What I originally wanted was the magenta, cyan, and yellow used in CMYK printing, which theoretically should be able to be mixed to get any other color, as long as you don't want to go too dark. I have the magenta that I want, but not the other two, and have stopped looking.

I would like to hear from other watercolor artists as to which colors you like best and why.


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## DLeeG

my favorite color is clear.


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## corydulos

DLeeG said:


> my favorite color is clear.


Haw har har!


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## ncartco

My favorite color is Cobalt Blue .


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## pencils

Depends what I`m painting....it varies, I like Prussian blue for skies when I`m doing landscapes but almost never use for anything else. I love vermillion for parts of my nebulae works but find it can be overpowering on landscapes. Same goes for most colors I use, really comes down to subject and mood plays a role as well. But I never met a color I didn`t like.


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