Hi Everyone,

I've never purchased a huge array of colors, just bought them as I needed them.  Could anyone suggest a good list of must have colors? I mostly paint (drybrush) landscapes, buildings, and would like to do more with glass and water reflections.  Thank you so much for any help you can give.

Grace

I find that the best colours for me are ones that I mix not necessarily ones that I buy. But here is my basic palette.

Quinacrodone Red ( makes beautiful purples when mixed with Windsor or Pthalo Blue, also is one of the least prone to fading reds there is)

Cadmium Red.

Pthalo or Windsor Blue - makes nice greens with cad yellow or cad yellow light

Prussian Blue

Cadmium yellow light

Cadmium Yellow Med.

Burnt Umber

Burnt Sienna

Paynes grey (although I am learning to mix my own greys so I use this less)

Naples Yellow (flesh tones etc)

I have found I can do almost anything with these colours. If you paint a lot of glass you may want a chinese white although using a white paint or guache is often frowned on in w.c. circles. You are supposed to try to use the white of the paper.

Nita Leland is not only a fine traditional watercolor artist, she has published books on the subject of EXPLORING COLOR that have a wealth of information of value to artists regardless of the medium used. And she has very generously posted a web site with much of the information-plus some- found in her book.

http://www.nitaleland.com/

Not only that, she is kind enough to answer email queries from her web page.