Smalt is one of my favourite colours. It’s a common PV15 but whatever they did to it makes it really unique on the colour wheel. Has its own spot between blue and violet. I have it on all my palettes as when mixed with Naples yellow or Naples yellow deep in the same brand (not tried with other brands Naples yellows) it creates this stunning soft unusual grey like no other. A kind of delicate pigeon gray. Try it. 🥰

Low key narrative... 10/10. No chatty bullshit... 10/10. Objectivity... 10/10. I'm off to see your website and swatch cards. It might save me making mine, or at minimum give me cues to making my own.

For me, Winsor and Newton is hard rock, Schmincke is classic, and Daniel Smith is jazz. Every brand is unique and beautiful.

I was in a rabbit hole of watching watercolor swatches since I want to add more colors to my palette wisely, your video is the most informative, the most visualy inspiring and the most soothing one! I've learned so much listening to your introducing all the colors, thank you so much for this video!

Thank you so much vor this in deep review! I think W&N paints are highly underrated. In Germany they cost as much as Schmincke paints. Sometimes even cheaper. I love their Magnesium Brown and their Cobalt Blue Deep. You can mix Magnesium Brown with Phtalo Blue and get amazing deep and granulating blues and greens.

Winsor and Newton were my first professional brand and are still one of my favourites for their perylene colours. I got super lucky when I was first making a professional palette and found most of their range on clearance at my local art store which allowed me to try out a lot of their colours. Im currently saving to make a new winsor and newton palette this year as I had to sell my original one last year.

W & N is like and old friend...never disappoints. I ADORE mauve, cobalt green, windsor red deep (my absolute favourite), smalt blue, windsor blue...quinacridone gold, omg!

Love Winsor Newton, especially since I love English landscape painters and it’s hard to follow tutorials with other brands. I’m gradually switching over to WN for basic landscape colors, but you’ve given me lots of other must haves! Thanks.

This video was a ton of fun to watch and useful. I also really enjoy your own personal voice over style.

Hi Kim! I would love a comparison video with one single pigment/colour from several brands, like Potter’s Pink or Mars black, where you swatch each brand’s version together with other colours (like Potter’s pink together with for example a phtalo blue (non granulating) and also a separate swatch with another granulating colour like for example together with viridian), to see what the different effects will be from using the different brands (ie how the granulation looks when mixed, which brands’ version of that pigment create colour separating mixes when using it together with other paints, and just generally what the appearance every brand’s individual paint of that pigment creates). You’re a pigment goddess and you have such deep knowledge about how paints and pigments work, and I’ve spend honestly hours on your website watching the different swatch cards and reading your information about individual pigments 😅 but there’s also something special about seeing a paint “in action” in a video as it moves through the water over the paper, and I love hearing your analyses while swatching, like in this video 😊 I really like the swatches you inserted in this video where you had mixed some of these colours together; it makes it easier to understand what using that pigment from this brand would bring to a painting 😊 Thank you as always for your amazing videos! 😊

Ah, I really miss your videos! I truly hoe you are well, Kim ♥

That aqua green is also in my palette and so different from any other color I’ve found from soooo many brands. I don’t stick to any one brand, so Windsor & Newton have a few of my favorites. I also love rose madder genuine and don’t care that it’s fugitive. If I start thinking “I’m gonna sell this” my work goes south in a big hurry. I have to paint for me and my love of watercolor, staying in the moment w/my piece. I get fantastic results in my sketchbook and am very happy working this way.

Oh wow, I wish I’d thought to learn about the pigments and science behind watercolour paints print to buying my palette and additional paints. Never mind. I’m super super new. Never drawn or painted anything ever. I love watching you swatch so much that I think I’ll just swatch instead of painting things haha

I can't get enough of your channel! Thank you for all that you do for us learning folk! Xx

Oh wow! Thank you for the detailed information in this one video. I'm glad I found you. Watching this made me reconsider my scatter gun approach to watercolour.

Be still my beating heart! 💖 This is a beautiful pallette and as a UK based artist W&N is the most readily available professional paint brand. As someone looking to upgrade to pro-grade from student, this palette very much speaks to me. Time for me to draw up a budget!

This was such an interesting and informative video. Thank you for all the pigment information and swatches - so helpful!

Nice review. At first I thought WN was kind of ho-hum, but have really come to appreciate them for their usefulness in botanical and landscape paintings. And they layer so beautifully. They may not be as flashy as Daniel Smith, But they can be wonderful.

So many lovely colours!! I could easily become broke from buying so many of the pretty paints you show on your channel 😂 You show each paint’s individual strengths and suddenly I want them all! 🙈

Your switching vids are the BEST!! I will definitely be getting the Cobalt Green Deep to try out. Thanks so much! 🙏😊

My fav W&N Pro colors are their Cerulean Blue (more turquoise and granulating than other cerulean), Winsor Violet (more subtle than other dioxazines) and their yellows tend to have a wonderful glow. I still mourn the discontinued versions of yellows, New Gamboge PY153 and Transparent Yellow PY97, both so transparent and glowing, but I still like their Winsor Yellow and Lemon Yellow. I've been wanting to try some of the colors you highlighted, like Caput Mortuum, Smalt and some of the newer colors. Thanks for sharing your impression!

Another wonderful video!💗That madder brown is so pretty!

Winsor and Newton are my favourite, love that Cobalt Blue Deep, thank you for the helpful video

Fantastic review! You've intrigued me with some of these!

I noticed your reviews on amazon (and was even motivated by them to buy some sets) but these video reviews are amazing! so much depth

Absolutely love your gradient background. Would you consider doing a tutorial on this & other gradient backgrounds? It would be eternally appreciated!❤️ Thanking you from the bottom of my heart!

Also, I really like their granulating Lemon Yellow Deep!

So awesome! What a gorgeous collection of colours. I love how you review paints and then do a painting. It really demonstrates how the colours can be used. ❤️

Love your review; more information about pigments than expected and that was a delight.

I loved watching you paint the parakeet!

Again love your in-depth approach. Also hadn’t thought about establishing a primary trio when trying a new brand, makes lots of sense! Thanks

I appreciate your knowledge and sharing it with us.

I’m putting together my first professional grade watercolor palette and this was invaluable, thank you.

Thanks, great review & saved me $$$! Will definitely get some of these special pigments!

Thank you for your technical analysis... add a new facette to my new hobby!

I’ve had along 15 year Hiatus from watercolour. I’ve been quite surprised with the prices and interesting colours, Metallica, iridescents , duo-Chrome, minerals etc. The price increase is rather shocking too. When I put my paints away ... Winsor Newton watercolours were the best of the best... So I am so very pleased to see you feature W&N.. some wonderful new colours in the brand. Thank you for the swatching ... very helpful. Cheers from 🇨🇦

What a great video and new subscriber now. I use mostly DS paints since I live near their factory and store, but I will add a couple more WN after watching this. Py 150 and Pbk31 are always on my palette. I think my most interesting personal split primary palette ever had PY129 and PY150 as my yellows. I missed having an easy to grab mid yellow, but, oh, the mixing range with those two! Off to check out more of your videos!

this is very helpful, some really beautiful colors you chose. That color wheel pallette is great

Lovely video! I use Windsor & Newton pans. I feel this was easy to follow and very helpful. Loved the illustration! Much appreciated!

I love their rose dore and their Payne’s Gray.

I just started painting and went with Winsor and Newton professional watercolors. I absolutely love your selections, this is a beautiful palette.

What a beautiful little parrot

WOW What a wonderful presentation of Color's, Congratulations 💜🌺💐🌹

what a beautiful painting. you truly captured how pretty budgies are, reminds me of my own hehe. such good review, I actually got some of my Roman Szmal selections bec of you, thanks for what you do

I have brought almost every colour you have mentioned on your suggestions here and I must say most of these are my favourites. Thank you for this video. 😊

Beautifully explained video. Thank you so much! Most helpful as my favorite brand of watercolors is W&N.❤️

Kimberly I just loved the tutorial on water colors. Thank you so much. Love Terri Simmers.

Purple is my favorite color; this background is the bomb!!!! Thanks for the highlights from this brand, it's fun to try, but so expensive here in the US so this is good guidance.

I’m o e of those people who only have a few tubes or pans of W&N, so I appreciate this look at some of their more unique paints. Thank you!

Thanks. This is the best review. Color chart is the best!

I have smalt. Every time I see it in person it makes me gasp. One of the nicest colours I’ve ever seen. Annoyingly I’m also in love with rose madder genuine, which is not lightfast and has no substitute I’ve yet found. Paint price shouldn’t be used entirely to judge quality, it varies so much depending on your location. I try and assume all professional brands are similar in quality, it just comes down to local availability and cost.

Thank you for being so detailed! I feel like I've learned so much from this one video. Jackson's are having a W&N sale at the moment so I was looking to get one of these, both to try an artist-grade paint (as my current 12-set is student-grade) and also to expand my colours. I might go for that lovely Cobalt Turquoise Light! I agree with what you said as I've really struggled to mix something like that with the colours I have. I can get a colour in the general region of it but nothing near as bright/clear. Thanks again, this was really helpful :)

Thank you for this overview! Beautiful colours. Last Christmas I treated myself to one 5ml tube of W&N professional, doubted for days what colour to choose, and suddenly I picked Brown Madder. And I love it! To me it's brick colour, and now I really have to stop trying to put it in every painting I do, lol. For some unusual pigments you could take a look at Jackman's handmade watercolours in the UK. From Rembrandt I have a tube of PBr8 called umber greenish, and that's a lovely lovely colour too. A non-red umber. I played with it and phthalo blue and brown madder, and got all these thundersky colours, yay!

I use W&N paints a lot and thought I had a good range of colours. You have introduced me to some lovely new ones and I think I may be shopping for some more soon!

Amazing video. Thank you for sharing

Thank you for sharing. It's really helpful.

Extremely helpful, thanks!

Your channel is what I've needed and didn't know I needed. I've wasted so much money on pallettes that were recommended by top channels and now I realize I need a different approach after using them and being disappointed. Newbie mistakes! Thanks for the hard work you have put in from this new subscriber, I'll be sure to follow carefully along 🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩

Wonderful new find. I really enjoy how you review.

This is great! Thx for sharing

thank you doing this. of course now I need a few more colours, LOL Thanks again, be well. P.S. Love your art and videos

I have to say that I personally didn't think you over-granulated the painting. I paid really close attention during the painting part of the video because of your concerns. I'll bet if you took a subbie poll, you find that most of us think the painting was lovely as it is. Full Disclosure: The fact that I ADORE PURPLE, may have some bearing on my assessment. You know what? F*ck That! I think it's great painting and that's all she wrote! So there! 😄😄😄😄😄 Oh yeah, I agree with you about W&N too. I don't use them much because of the prices and difficulty finding pigment info on their site and dot cards. Rather than worrying about corporate espionage they should spend their time improving their Cotman line. Just sayin.

Hi Kim, I’ve been watching watercolour reviews for years and somehow never happened upon yours. Your in-depth knowledge of the pigments is second to none. And your demonstrations are such a wonderful complement! Brings it all to life… These colours look amazing. I have very few Winsor and Newton colours but this may change! Do you mind if I ask how you amassed such an encyclopedic knowledge of pigments? This seems like a big black box to me. Hard to know how to create a framework from which to build. Thanks again.

WN is my fav. They were some of the first I bought 30+ years ago and they are still the majority of my watercolors. I like their history & tradition.

I only recently found that Smalt by W&N and I absolutely love it. Great selection of colours. Thanks for sharing 👍🏼

Thanks for such an informative video! I just ordered a few of my first W& N pigments and I tried to pick ones that were unique.(or hard to find available in other brands right now like potters pink) Happy to see my picks were in your list! I am hoping the transparent orange will be lightfast as I really loved the look and qualities if that color.

So strange these are so expensive in the USA. A 5ml tube of W&N costs about or less than two White Nights pans here, around the equivalent of 5$ or so. I think you made a great selection of their colours. Even though I don't usually use sap green, I find theirs to be the best premade out there, absolutely great for portraiture. I am also very fond of their newly released Perm. carmine which uses only PV19 and is a perfect alizarin alternative, their cobalt green deep is unnecessary but very fun, and their pb16 is a staple for me (though it would be completely redundant in your palette that already uses aqua blue). Oh, and their pr264 is easily the best version of this colours I could find, much less dull than other makes.

Lovely budgerigar!

I love this video. Hopeful for other brands :)

Very helpful video. I too noticed they have some really nice colors that are better bthannin other brands, cobalt teal light being on of them, also green gold. I'm love to see them compared to White Nights. I just bought their Caput Mortum and Perylene violet. So it would be great to know which colors you recommend from one or the other brands where they both carry them, having that White Nights are much cheaper.

I found out about WN transparent orange from this video and it's sooooo good! I'm interested in Aqua as well since it also appears to be unique in the world of watercolor. It's also great advice to get pans of potter's pink and other colors that dry "rock hard" Thank you for going through all these paints in such granular detail.

Thank you. Can you please provide a list of the colours you finally selected? I chose transparent yellow and Aqua green too, though the now discontinued Quin gold has even deeper mass tones. I like mixing it with Opera Rose which although slightly fugitive, creates a lovely grey like a wood pigeons breast feathers in his courtship plumage - very slightly pinkish. It's easy to tip the grey into any colour by varying quantities of the separate colours. I'm thinking of changing to use.the more predictable Winsor Blue Green Shade depending on the subject in a painting. Manganese Blue Hue and Opera Rose give the post amazing pale violets, while Quin Violet is so intense it's unparalleled and is perfect for pansies. I'm changing over from Naples yellow (eith white added) to Naples Yellow Deep and add Titanium White to suit the subject. I've just added Lightvred to my palette for earthy red roofs though I also chose Perylene Maroon. In all, I have 32 colours which is a lot. I've divided a 12 pan old Daler Rowney palette for sketching into 3s for each pan, glued with plastic dividers. That gives me upto 36 colours. TgecWinsor and Newton professional paints give me enough pigment to select half a dozen for any landscape or seascape. Cobalt Turquoise Light and Cobalt green made it in. I only have one mixed paint. 50:50 paynes grey and hookers green to give me a super dark green (i call Debs green). I'm using both colours quite a lot so that's my alternative to perylene green. I love my slip it in my pocket palette I just wish they still made this structure. It has 2 brush Wells and I use eyelash glue filled with masking fluid and a couple of shaved sides pencils.

I'm a beginner... and when I bought the DS and WNP Dot cards I compared and swatched 'em all... I'm in love with Aqua Green, greens, ph. Turquoise... shades of blue... Winsor Blue ( green shade) poppy Winsor red... Cobalt green deep..Prussian Blue - Ultramarine... DS's Ph. Turquoise, Ph. Green, Quinacridone Gold, Q. Lilac, Q. Pink, Sennelier Magenta and for a new try at florals with Dr. Martens INKS ... Q. Magenta, yellow, violet, and iridescent Jade... beautiful color... wish I could find an equivalent watercolor that is closest to the jade. I think it's a Sennelier shade... Just found your site and loved your insight on WNP. I see other paints you previewed!!! AWESOME. I have a lot to learn... but just love watching artists create amazing works. Bless you for sharing, a California gramma ❄❄❄💕

Beautiful

Amazing!

Mesmerizing

Thankyou for the tutorial winsor is the best

If I buy winsor and newton watercolor tubes to pour into pans, I ALWAYS add a few drops of glycerin to it in the pan and sir it in with one of my bookbinding needles. They rewet like any schmincke watercolor poured would. If I put winsors potter pink or Viridian into pans... I add an extra drop. Now when I say drops, I don't mean a big drop straight from the glycerin bottle lol. Plus I only do full pans, but I use very small drops from a 1ml pipe. Anyway, have a great one 🙂

Beautiful! Thank you for this very informative video. I swore to myself that I won’t buy anymore paint, but your video has convinced me otherwise. 😉

Sooooo much information...will have to watch more than just a few times. I have most of these and i will have to get out to paint along...now that will be a LOT of rewinding and pausing....thank you for showing all you have found.

I think I’ll just stick to my mejello and white nights. The watercolors are beautiful though. I love your primary choices!

I love your colour wheel, but I live in the UK ! This would be so useful.

Such an interesting palette. I've been wanting to create a nice granulation palette but I just never got around to it. I can definitely add a few of the ones here to that project and still have a beautiful unique colour. I never thought of doing this before - Are you going to do one for Daniel Smith's watercolour paints? I tfeel like that would be an amazing idea! :D

Ooh, this is a fun one! I've not tried W&N yet, but I might pick up a few pans or small tubes from my local art shop - I like the look of the the perylene violet. I'm always tempted by unique pigments, too, so I'll almost certainly get the ones W&N have. I love the colors you chose for your palette! I find myself wanting very "non-standard" palettes right now, though I haven't quite figured out what that means for me yet. Some shimmers, some pastels, fun colors that aren't in your standard intro sets... I don't care if I can't mix the full colour spectrum, you know? I paint mostly loose florals and exclusively to have fun, I don't necessarily need a lot of versatility or even lightfastness right now. Also! I love how you painted your palette map/swatch card, with the three stages of dilution. Makes it easier to see the shades when they're isolated like that rather than a gradient, at least for me. I'll definitely incorporate that in my own future palette maps!

We miss you! ❤

When swatching my W&N full dotcard yesterday, I found some reeeeeally nice colors among them. I already own a couple of W&N colors, one pan, the rest in tubes, because thats usually way cheaper. Sadly there's that whole issue with the different formulation of pan and tube colors. A real big bummer for me! Regardless, I'll be getting the Rose Dore, Rose Madder Gen, Smalt and cobalt green for sure, they are marvelous and pretty special colors imo. 🤩🤩 I really gotta add them to my collection, but I am unsure yet if I'll be getting them in tubes or pans.

Thank you for that tip about pans. I have particularly wanted to try WN's Potter's Pink and Cobalt Violet since many people prefer it to Daniel Smith's (which is what I have)

thank you

Love your product reviews, for me mostly have DS, but I do have a few of the W&N Pro. Would love to order from your site, but unfortunately I live overseas. 😩

W&N's Winsor Lemon is a unique pigment I've only found in the hard to find Daniel Smith Lemon Yellow, and W&N's Brown Madder is also a fantastic unique color. I started with W&N tubes and have slowly been moving away to other less expensive companies except for Payne's gray, in addition to the two aforementioned colors. I just enjoy the deep navy tone of W&N's Payne's gray.

I've discovered I have a weak spot for the deep shades like sepia, indigo, payne's grey etc so the Perylenes are calling me... but I think I will try to mix something similar first. I got the dot cards with the intention of using them as a reference but haven't played with it yet. WN professional is the only artist quality paint I have local to me in individual tubes and even then only about 60 shades.. the only other being Grumbacher Academy. Anything else I have to order online. The WN price (some are $11 for only a 5ml tube) is very high though so I don't see myself buying many of them.

Impressed! I don't own any W&N as I had heard they were difficult to re-wet (compared to M. Graham and Daniel Smith). However, I have admired / thought about purchasing Caput Moruum for some time. Didn't realize W&N had so many granulating colours (which I like). Would enjoy knowing more about W&N Van Dyke Brown - another I've considered.

W&N's pan version of Cobalt Violet (PV14) is amazing! There is definitely a difference between that one and the one in the tube. If you prefer filling your pans/palettes from tubes I would instead recommend Rembrandt's PV14, they are pretty much identical in hue and it seems to rewet well, also you're supposed to be able to find that one in 20ml tubes. I just got it, so I'm not sure how I will like it over time. For now I still prefer my W&N PV14 (for some reason), but that might just be that I'm biased since I already love it. I guess I'll see. ☺️

You surprised me with a couple of those colors! I consider myself a total pigment nerd and there were a couple colors that weren't on my radar. I'm not a huge fan of Winsor and Newton, mainly because I think they are overpriced and rely far too much on their long history in the UK. And then there's the issue of the cadmium-free colors not giving pigment information. That's NOT okay. In addition I find it silly that they don't want you using their tube colors in dry form, since that is what the rest of the world does--that's bitten me more than once. One of which was PV14--an incredible color--but a rock when dried from tube paint. All told, I only buy Winsor and Newton when they have a color or a version of a color I can't get anywhere else. Otherwise I avoid them. All that said, I'm always up for watching you paint swatches and then a painting. As usual, you knock my socks off with your skills. And I truly don't think there is such a thing as too much granulation. Just saying! Love your work! And I guess I should confess that after seeing how easily your full pan of PV14 activated, that I'm considering investing in a pan of it for myself. That color is just so special!

This was super interesting and I learned a lot. Thanks so much!

The only Winsor and Newton I have is a small sketch palette of Cotman, it was so cheap and small (like 13 euros) that it was ideal for me to take to the beach as I know it will get full of sand and it would pain me for this to happen to my other paints. There is a lot of divided opinions on Cotman as they are not professional but all I can say is that they are very pigmented and work fine for sketching in a sketchbook. As for their professional paints like the ones you have here, I appreciate seeing them, there are some nice colours and I really want to try their cobalt violet at some point, the aqua green looks nice too though similar to others I already have. I'm not sure what it is, but as I've said before, they just don't excite me enough to pay all that money for them and I would prefer to spend it on Schmincke or Daniel Smith

Kim you are an invaluable resource, not just your paint testing! May I ask what you use for your rubber swatch stamps? As in is it an ink or a paint? I see that it doesn't move when you paint over it. Haha, I didn't know paint swatching could be ASMR! Very calming and enjoyable.

Also, are you planning on doing a Winsor and Newton Lightfast Video?

I have most of these, i think i picked up at least 5 when they did a re-release of discontinued colors. I really like the cobalt violet, maybe i got lucky but my panned tube rewets beautifully. I also notice that some of the same colors look and react differently from tube to tube, its a bit concerning.

Does the Manganese Blue have the glow in the dark under a blacklight qualities?