What's on my Palette? - Tips for Choosing the Perfect Watercolor Paint Colors

I'm revealing all the colors on my favorite 18-well palette and sharing the secrets to choosing the perfect assortment of colors for your own watercolor palette!
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These are the colors on my current palette:
Watercolor Paints
🎨 Daniel Smith Extra Fine Watercolors
🎨 Holbein Watercolors

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[Blick_Art]

One of the best explanations we've heard yet of what colors to choose and why! Watercolors are not like oils, acrylics, or gouache- how each color interacts with the paper is a key property that must be considered. We wanted to also say how proud we are to see our affiliate links on this great channel!

[mindofwatercolor]

Aaah! I see you quietly hit the 100k subscriber mark. Congratulations! Excellent palette selection BTW.😊

[alexhackmann]

Thank you for your great help with us, beginners! Great advice!

[sigriston]

Love the Holbein colors, that’s a paint brand I’ve always wanted to try…

A pigment I find intriguing is PY129, available as DS Rich Green Gold or W&N Green Gold, it’s a single-pigment green (RARE) that makes for some beautiful backlit leaves/foliage! 😻

[ericakauffman]

Sennelier is my favorite brand because of the large number of transparent colors. I don't have a real pallet like yours because I am all over the color wheel with my florals.

[kizzykat]

It's been a while since you put out this video. Someone may have already shared this product, but just in case, I have found that the Turner Acryl Gouache Palette Cleaner works great for getting rid of stains.

[mjpete]

Hullo Emily, I am enjoying your videos and seeing this color choice video is quite insightful! I will try to find any videos you have made from DaVinci paints, Have you tried any of Denise Soden's palettes? I would love to see what you make from her newest Embracing Opaque watercolors palette, Have you tried it? Perhaps you have the colors she chose in your collection? I would like to see what you think of her choices and what you might create with them! Thank you and Please have a Lovely Day!

[Horsewoman-ptku]

Yay. I’ve been wanting to know your choice of colors. Let us know if u change any out.

[shinyshinythings]

I’m so new to all this, the only palette I’ve got is a mini Van Gogh travel box. This video will help me to understand the colors I’m using. Thanks!

[gigiartstudiowithartistvir]

I have several professional brands that I enjoy but my go to are Qor and Daniel Smith. I love the quinacridones because they move so well on the paper. I use a lot of the same colors you do, and I also use a lot of different shimmery pigments made by various people in small batches.

[AbbyFitz]

I’ve just started removing a couple colors I never use. I’ve also held off refilling the colors I do use because I’m toying with switching to a different palette. I have the next size mijello palette than yours and I want to size down. But I’m afraid of commitment lol. my palette is like a comfy old shoe but a fresh new palette with pretty paints sounds so appealing. Artist problems 😂

[themightierpencil]

I got Da Vinci's Earth Friendly palette by Denise Soden and never really looked back; it has everything I need as someone that paints a lot of people and animals 🥰

[deborahobrien]

Thank you, Emily. I always find your tutorials most helpful.

[adrianaapetrei]

A super useful video. I also love to mix-up my primaries to get just the color that I want. I love the Daniel Smith primary set with the cool and warm colors.❤ Thank you so much for this video.

[Andidejager.]

You’ve explained this really well! Wish I’d seen this video before I bought my first set of half pans! I understood the difference between warm and cool yellows and reds but I didn’t know what kind of blues were warm and which were cool so I accidentally got two cool blues😅 which is actually lucky because the art shop is far away so I had to use their website to fix my mistake and all the ultramarines were sold out so I got delft blue instead and it’s now in my top 3 most used colours! So happy accident I guess 😂

I got a free QOR 5ml ultramarine once with an order and it’s beautiful but I never use it. The only way I can describe it is aggressive. It just overpowers all the other colours and moves so fast and is explosive! Which is probably great for certain styles but for me, the unpredictability stressed me out 😂 I use schmincke so maybe it’s just schmincke that gets dominated by qor and other brands are fine with it 😅

[janjans]

My current favourites (my palette looks very much like yours) are Sennelier Red and Sennelier Yellow green. I have two Paynes grey Schminke for a blacker base and Maimeri for a bluer tone. I just bought some Horadam paints (earth and perylene green) and a permanent rose by Shin Han ❤️ paints

[britthartart]

I love seeing other artists palettes and their favorite colors! Thanks for sharing! Some of the colors I can't live without are Winsor Red Deep (the perfect red!), Perylene Green or Shadow Green, Jaune Brilliant #1, and Indian Red.

[lucymacdonald]

My favourites: Holbein Cerulean for it's perfect summer sky colour and doesn't granulate too much, Holbein Ultramarine deep for ot's rich chromatic colour, schminke vandyke brown perfect for wild animal fur tree bark and great for mixing dark greys and blacks, Holbein imidazalone lemon for its fresh lemon colour, schminke pure yellow for a mid tone yellow great for mixing greens and oranges, quin Gold another great for mixing greens and a dynamic colour in itself. Quin Magenta for a perfect cool pink, schminke raw umber for a shade of light brown that isn't too yellow and I can never be without a paynes grey, currently I have Holbeins paynes grey. Oh and I also use a lot of Daniel Smith sap green deep because it's so hard to mix a dark green for foliage. Oh and I use quite a bit of Holbein Cobalt Violet light for it's perfect hue for the pinks in skies. I wish it didn't granulate so much though. I have lots of other convenience colours but these are the ones I am most often reaching for. I could have included a deep cool red like alizarin or madder but I'm not always using this as much as the other colours. Depends what I'm painting.

[scoobydoozie]

💕 Love this! I now have a list of your palette colors with a conversion to my brands. What is especially nice is most of the color names are consistent across brands. Others that I do not have or are named different, I was able to identify visually by color. Very valuable! :)

[TracieWho]

That transparent brown oxide is on my short list to obtain. Well, at least when I am over my no-buy that is. This was a super informative episode. Thank you!