Winsor & Newton Designers Gouache are the range of opaque water colours, popular among designers, illustrators and commercial artists to create vibrant illustrations in solid colour. It is also widely used in fine art painting, both on its own and with transparent watercolours. This range is made by selecting only the very best pigments and highest grade of gum arabic and wetting agents to imparts a creamy, flowing consistency that glides across grounds and dries quickly to a flat, velvety, non-streaky finish with exceptional tinting strength and which give a matte finish.

Winsor & Newton have been producing Designers Gouache since 1935 and they continue to offer the finest artists' gouache range available. Today the Designers Gouache range benefits from significant developments in technology and is smoother, flatter, more opaque and more brilliant than ever before.

Winsor & Newton Designers Gouache comes in tantalising range of 82 opaque water colours in 14ml Tube which offers a wide and balanced spectrum of colours including bright colours for designers, more lightfast ones for fine artists, and a number of unique, ultra-bright colours such as Opera Pink and Opera Rose ensuring that all artists can obtain the palette that best suits their work.

Pigments

Winsor and Newton used 64 different pigments in their Designers Gouache range out of which 34 are single pigment colours in order to provide the widest handling properties and maintain clean mixing. W&N always try to use single pigments wherever possible as they are purer in hue and cleaner in colour than mixtures of pigments. This provides a larger number of clean, vibrant colour mixes before resulting in muddy colours, which is a major benefit to artists. In addition to the single pigment colours there are 48 colours that are produced using carefully selected mixtures of pigments. W&N therefore provide these mixed colours to ensure the widest spectrum, without compromising brilliance and opacity.

Permanence

Designers Gouache has the same ratings as the other Winsor & Newton Artists’ quality ranges. AA and A rated colours are recommended as permanent for fine artists, guaranteeing that work created using these colours will last for centuries. Some of the brighter colours within the range are only available as B or C rated. This is because in certain areas of the spectrum, particularly magenta, pigments are not available to achieve permanence as well as brightness and opacity.

Pigment strength

The Winsor & Newton Designers Gouache range is opaque due to the exceptionally high levels of pigmentation in the formulation, which results in unsurpassed covering power and clean colour mixing. As a result of upgrading many colours in the range, they now have increased pigment strength.

Inter-mixability

All Winsor & Newton Designers Gouache colours are intermixable with each other and are fully compatible with Winsor & Newton Professional Watercolors and Cotman Watercolors for the matt, flat colour effect. They may also be mixed with Winsor & Newton Professional Acrylics and Galeria Acrylics. Care should be taken, however, as some gouache colours may react adversely with acrylics. Combinations should be tested on palette paper prior to use in a painting.

Spectrum

One of the main reason’s artists choose Winsor & Newton is their wide colour spectrum. The Designers Gouache range offers a wide and balanced spectrum of 82 tube colours. These colours have been chosen according to mass tone (colour from tube), colour bias (undertone), colour strength and relative opacity. The range includes bright colours for designers and more lightfast ones for fine artists. The resultant colour range ensures that all artists can obtain the palette which best suits their work, and that all colours can be safely intermixed.

Series

Due to the wide range of pigments used in the range it is necessary to use a series system. The series indicates the relative price of the colour and is determined mainly by the cost of the pigment. Designers Gouache has four series with Series 1 being the least expensive and Series 4 the most expensive.

Surface Sheen

As a result of the high level of pigmentation and the Gum Arabic binder Designers Gouache dries to a matt finish. This reduces reflection when photographing gouache art work.