Which watercolours are transparent

Are you an aspiring watercolor artist and want to know what kind of watercolors you have? One test is to paint a long black stripe on your paper and let it dry. Once it dries, using small perpendicular strokes, paint over the black stripe with color. Now, look at the paint. Does it look like it is on top of the black stripe or below it?

If on top, you have opaque watercolors. They provide an effective painting framework for small touches of saturated color, which scintillate against the softer earth hues. They shift in value very little as they dry, making washes and mixtures easier to hit correctly on the first application. They remain effective colors even when diluted, whereas saturated colors can appear flimsy or flat as tints.

Finally, they form more natural and varied color harmonies than more saturated colors, which can easily clash or jar through their brilliance. I've been inclusive in preparing this list; many of the pigments listed are not true earth colors, but all the colors work well together and all have the attributes just described. I wanted to offer a large enough list to encourage your exploration of these paints.

Select a handful of paints, such as the earth palette described in the guide to watercolor pigments, and try a painting for yourself. You may be pleasantly surprised at what you get. The table shows the earth pigments around the 12 color points of the tertiary color wheel.

Remember that these pigments in general, but the warm earths in particular, are effective when strongly diluted. Although they are not exactly transparent colors, they become transparent when used as tints, and can produce some wonderfully evocative, atmospheric results. See, for example, the paintings by Trevor Chamberlain to appreciate what can be done with this kind of palette.

Some pigments do not dry to the smooth finish we know from housepaints: they form subtle textures, caused by the size and shape of the pigment particles. Textured pigments are relatively out of fashion today.

In the effort to emulate the brilliance of acrylics or the precision of photography, textured pigments are often seen as undesirable. I love these paints. To me an expressive resource unique to watercolors lies in the subtle textures of granulating paints left undisturbed to dry. The table shows the major flocculating or granulating pigments around the 12 color points of the tertiary color wheel. It also lists some characteristically transparent or smooth pigments that can, if applied near full strength, produce a texturing effect that is caused by an unusually strong color contrast between different sized globules or clumps of paint.

This list attempts to be comprehensive. There is a wide variety of texturing effects possible with watercolors; these pigments do not respond to wet-in-wet applications the same way. Pigment textures also vary considerably by manufacturer. I urge you to explore and learn to pay attention to the subtle textures of paints after they have dried. Many expressive resources are available through their thoughtful application. So, after providing you with these tables of pigment attributes, it's worthwhile to consider how pigments should be combined in a palette.

The primary question is how consistently you paint in a single style, and what that style is. If you are a flashy modernist, then saturated paints are probably best for you; if you do a lot of lifting or sponging of color, then earth or texturing pigments are probably more interesting to you than staining pigments.

I don't share Kosvanec's specific prohibitions about combining pigments for example, to avoid mixing a staining pigment with an opaque pigment. Creating broad prescriptions is only a way to narrow the opportunities of art. And if you paint in different styles, or different types of paper, then the preferences you establish in one approach may not work in others.

This means selecting "good all purpose paints" as the core of your palette, with a few added paints for special effects you love. I've described the palettes of many working artists in the section on palette paintings. That may be a good place to start your search. Look for painting styles that intrigue you, study the palettes those artists use, and take those as a point of departure for your own explorations and experimentations.

Art is about your personal temperament. Choose what gives you pleasure. PB15 PB Watercolor transparency is very dependent on pigment dilution. A normally opaque pigment like Cadmium Orange can be diluted to a point where it becomes quite transparent. Likewise, a transparent pigment becomes more opaque the heavier it is applied. These two gradations of pigment show the effect of dilution on watercolor transparency.

The first color, Cadmium Orange in this case gouache is considered an extremely opaque color, but when diluted and painted over a stripe of black ink, a shift to transparency can be seen. The second color, Quinacridone Gold watercolor, is normally considered transparent, but when applied heavily enough, also becomes opaque. The band of warm Orange over glaze in this detail is a dilute wash of Cadmium Orange Gouache.

Not a pigment we would normally choose for a transparent glaze, but when thinned right down it has a wonderful warming effect. Watercolor Ideas.

Ring 1 — Transparent Non-Staining Colors. Click the Share Buttons to help spread the word. Thanks much! Share on Facebook Share. Share on Twitter Tweet. Send email Mail.