Winsor & Newton Professional Water Colour offers artists the widest and most balanced choice of pigments with the greatest possible permanence. The brilliance, transparency and purity of colour is unparalleled to any other watercolour. Since 1832 when Henry Newton and William Winsor introduced the first moist watercolours to the world, much of Winsor & Newton's reputation for supreme quality has stemmed from the Professional Water Colour range. Each colour within this wide and balanced spectrum of 109 colours, has been selected and formulated to offer the greatest choice so that artists can use a unique palette that best suits their work.

The Professional Watercolour range offers a wide and balanced spectrum of colours in Half Pans, Whole Pans and in 5ml, 14ml & 37ml tubes.

Pigments

Winsor & Newton use single pigments wherever possible. Single pigments ensure the widest choice of colours and pigment characteristics or positions, such as hue, particle size, transparency, tinting strength, etc. This helps broaden the artist’s creative expression. Single pigment formulations are purer in hue and cleaner in colour than mixtures of pigments, providing a larger number of colour mixes before resulting in muddy effects. Within the new Professional Watercolour range there are 80 single pigments amounting to 74% of the range.

Permanence

Since 1832, one of Winsor & Newton's founding principles has been to offer a range of Professional Watercolours that has the greatest possible permanence. Fortunately, the 20th century featured enormous improvements in the lightfastness of colours, helping W&N in their quest. 106 out of 109 colours in the Professional Water Colour range are classed as 'permanent for artists' use'. This means that 97% of our Professional Water Colour are rated AA or A for permanence to ensure that the colours used today will appear the same for generations to come.

Transparency & Opacity

Winsor & Newtons Professional Watercolours exhibit unrivalled transparency due to the unique pigment dispersion in the manufacture of the colour. This is particularly important because transparency is the key characteristic of water colour. As a result of the thinness of the water colour film, all colours have a transparent quality on paper, allowing the reflective white of the paper to shine through. However, pigments do retain their natural characteristics to some degree. For example, transparent pigments refract light in much the same manner as stained glass, making jewel-like brilliance and clean mixing. Opaque colours such as cadmiums are likely to cover significantly more than transparent colours.

The varying transparency and opacity of a pigment will affect the optical character of the individual colour as well as how the colour mixes with other colours. The most transparent colours will enable you to create a pure glazing effect by applying several washes on top of one another. The more opaque colours give flatter washes and greater covering over previous washes. Opaque colours are also useful for toning down colour mixtures.

The addition of Gum Arabic will also increase transparency. By adding Gum Arabic to a colour wash, you will achieve even greater transparency and luminosity from your washes.

Colour Series

The Professional Watercolour range is split into 4 groups termed 'Series'. The series indicates the relative price of the colour and is determined mainly by the cost of the pigment. Series 1 is the least expensive colour and Series 4 the most expensive.

Granulation

In water colour, colours with granulating properties are marked as ‘G'. Many artists use granulation to add visual texture to their paintings. Traditional pigments granulate, e.g. cobalt’s, earths, ultramarines and modern organic pigments do not, e.g. Winsor colours.

Staining

As water colour relies upon the relative absorbency of the paper surface for stability, more powerful colours such as Prussian Blue, Alizarin Crimson, and the modern organic pigments such as Winsor colours penetrate or stain more than others. These colours cannot be lifted completely with a damp sponge. The traditional inorganic colours and earths tend to lift more easily from the paper.

Lifting

Lifting colour entails sponging water colour from a surface. It can include anything from a complete wash down under running water, to getting a “smoky“ background, to the sponging out of a small area in order to lighten or rescue it. Winsor & Newton Lifting Preparation helps ensure that colours, including those that stain, can be more easily lifted from paper with a wet sponge or brush. Lifting Preparation must be applied to the paper first and allowed to dry before removal.