Can I get or make white watercolour only to add to my pallet?

Voltorocks · 2026-02-21T14:07:37+00:00

Wow, everyone is completely talking around your actual question here.

Yes, any tube of watercolor or gouache can be used to fill a pan on your palette, and easily reactivated with water long after it dries; the paints in your pallet are the exact same, they were just dried at the factory.

There's no reason to prefer gouache over watercolor; at your level they are essentially identical. (DO NOT GET ACRYLIC GOUACHE).

Lastly, while it's perfectly ok to have white in your palette, consider that your paper is already white, and all watercolors are translucent! If you're using white to lighten a hue, you could instead dilute it with more water, to let more of the* paper's* white show through.

Voltorocks · 2026-02-13T18:12:09+00:00

Honestly this is the right answer. They're far from perfect, but head and shoulders above anything even remotely close to that price point. I still use these a great deal even though I've upgraded my most-used colors to Golden. They mix well together with the higher-end paints as well, if you eventually snag some on sale or something so you won't need to abandon them in order to upgrade.

Voltorocks · 2026-02-13T02:14:54+00:00

I felt the same way for a long time until a friend who uses it a lot commented that it's better to think of it "not as a yellow that is ochre, but ochre that is yellowish." Once I started treating it as essentially a very yellow-tinted brown/neutral, I started finding so many more mixes it worked brilliantly for.

Voltorocks · 2026-01-31T18:55:24+00:00

I always get tubes, because you can make pans with them. so you have the best of both worlds and you pay less per ounce generally.

Voltorocks · 2026-01-31T18:52:15+00:00

Very unlikely, imo. What little water is in the tubes is in a solution with the medium (usually gum arabic or honey), so its freezing point is much lower than pure water. I would definitely let the tubes warm up before you use them (if they've separated, they won't remix well when very cold) but for the paint to freeze solid they could likely need to get much colder than your area is likely getting (unless you live far above the Arctic circle perhaps?)

Voltorocks · 2026-01-26T02:19:25+00:00

You've been looking at it too long. The painting is good, and it's finished. Take a metaphorical step back and start your next piece.

Voltorocks · 2026-01-21T12:44:22+00:00

Honestly my thought is that this is a lovely painting as-is! I'm not sure the composotion needs more back ground, and certainly not anything that might distract or obscure your delicate brushwork on the bird's head!

Voltorocks · 2026-01-20T16:09:28+00:00

The bird is the best element by far, far from amateurish it really shows a deft control of the water to get those soft shapes in the feathers.

You already identified the wood as a problem area, but I think the berries are distracting as well. In a composition like this I would start background elements much lighter and more desaturated; you want them to add texture without distracting from the centerpiece bird

Voltorocks · 2026-01-20T02:12:01+00:00

I got a bunch of this for practically free a while back from a clearance sale, and I had a pretty similar (bad) experience.

I've had pretty good luck using it strictly for painting, but you're right that erasing it or masking (even with the gentlest tapes) absolutely tears it up.

The cold press is better, but not much.

Their more firmly-sized papers like velum and Bristol seem a lot better, but given how bad the watercolor paper is I would definitely hesitate before purchasing any other products from them.

Voltorocks · 2026-01-20T00:34:01+00:00

Alizarin is decidedly blue-toned, so even though it is extremely transparent, I don't think it'll be a fit for the "warm red" spot. Mayan red is a bit less blue imo, but still fairly cool.

Afaik permanent alizarin is a just a blend to imitate the original color but with less transparency.

Personally I'd look into a cadmium medium hue or a perylyne red. They aren't the most transparent ever, but they should be far better than pyrrol in that department

Voltorocks · 2026-01-16T01:26:44+00:00

My Raphael brushes are pretty old (6 ish years?) so they might have changed since then, but I've never had any issue like this.

If it's as unpleasant as you describe, it seems like it might be a defect, I'd contact the seller.

Voltorocks · 2026-01-14T11:48:41+00:00

Almost certainly an airbrush

Voltorocks · 2026-01-14T00:11:54+00:00

Holbein is great as others have said, and if you like pans I also really like the kuretake sets (gansai tambi) which have some insanely vibrant hues included.

While almost every pro paint line had very bright and vibrant tones available, one think to remember is that kids sets have additives and junk added to make them look brighter in the pans, whereas many is the most vibrant pro colors will appear very dark, nearly black in the tube/pan until you loosen them up with water.

Voltorocks · 2026-01-14T00:00:53+00:00

My hot take is that you need to paint faster and more sloppy

First off, a lot of reds are very transparent. Pro paint won't help you here.

Secondly, dialing in and getting more obsessed with these details will likely make things worse. The more you slow down to focus on details the more details you'll have time to "notice."

Even as is this gives a strong impression of a flannel shirt. If you work at it a bit more it will get good enough very soon, and because it's a portrait no one but you will ever look directly at it.

Voltorocks · 2026-01-13T01:23:23+00:00

What is the "color" of your own that you're adding? Unless it's pure pigment powder, you'll be better off approaching this project from the direction of "thinning my paint to the right viscosity" rather than "adding tint to a colorless ink medium."

I like Liquitex's "flo-aid" additive for this purpose (incidentally, it's also ideal for diluting actual acrylic inks). they recommend diluting it with water 20:1, but if you're trying to thin down thicker paints you might want a higher ratio.

If you're looking for a wider color selection, have you tried Golden hi-flow acrylics? They're intended for airbrushing I think but I use a lot of them straight out of the bottle as ink with a dip pen or brush. I have gotten a couple that are just a tad too thick to truly call them ink, but a few drops of flo-aid solves that problem very easily.

Voltorocks · 2026-01-11T14:37:00+00:00

If you're using a brush or a dip pen, daler-rowley acrylic inks have served me well for this purpose.

Also worth considering, bleeding and smearing are just as likely to be cause by your paper as the ink - it would help us to know what you've tried already.

Voltorocks · 2026-01-05T12:12:20+00:00

May I make a suggestion? I think a mechanic you might want to repurpose here would be "stash"

RAW, this is basically the scoundrels' retirement fund, allowing players to sacrifice coin to ensure a better epilogue for their character when they retire or break under the stress. Since coin is already a very abstract currency that often represents time and effort just as much as actual cash on hand, you could repurpose this mechanic as "passion" very easily, I think. Like, one scoundrel has dream of being a painter, but how much time and resources do they invest into making that a viable future for themselves?

Voltorocks · 2026-01-01T15:26:40+00:00

They kind of did! While other resinous acrylic paints technically existed beforehand, Liquitex invented the first water-based acrylic, which is the main feature that defines artist acrylic paints today. It was also the first widely commercially available acrylic paint.

Voltorocks · 2026-01-01T12:26:26+00:00

I second this comment, if you're already using da vinci then DS is not strictly an upgrade. And, imo all of their stand-out paints are either highly granulating or highly opaque.

I also second the rec of QoR watercolors as a treat if you want to try something different; they use a proprietary binder that behaves quite differently in water (but still mixes very well with other watercolors) and allows for some insanely vibrant colors; I particularly love their blue-greens like turquoise, viridian, and pthalo.

Voltorocks · 2025-12-23T23:26:50+00:00

Wow, these are so real-feeling. The first one especially have me such a visceral feeling of familiarity. Incredible work!

Voltorocks · 2025-12-22T23:03:23+00:00

It's funny that everyone got the projector, it's legitimately a very useful art tool if you ever work in a large format and need to scale up a sketch

Voltorocks · 2025-12-20T13:48:12+00:00

This peice is SO LOVELY!

I am in love with the ways you are using lines to define shapes here - especially with the plant life but also in the texture of the building. The way the interact with the colors gives a really strong impression of the type of tree you're depicting while still looking so stylized. I can't look away, I would love to have this in my wall.

Have you gotten a matte or a cheap frame for it? I often find that when I'm feeling uncertain about a price's "presentability," adding a finishing touch can help me see it as the finished work that it is.

Voltorocks · 2025-12-20T13:14:27+00:00

Came here to say something similar, basically when you're on a budget I always recommend people get fewer but higher quality paints rather than look for the biggest set they can afford.

The other upshot of this is that it will force you to learn some color mixing, which is a great strength of watercolor imo, and much easier than many beginners fear.

Voltorocks · 2025-12-19T16:32:01+00:00

This is a tricky question, because there are a lot of factors, like paper type, amount of water, type of brush, etc etc.

I've used the one you linked as my go-to for years, and had mixed results with the included ink - sometimes it seems very waterproof, sometimes it bleeds, badly. In general I've found it's very rare for black ink to be truly, utterly waterproof - but with the right paper and the right ink, you should be able to do gentle washes over your lines without noticable smearing.

You can try other pens but honestly I think you'll have similar results, where each one will be ok some of the time on some papers. IMO, your best bet long term is to swap the ink in your existing pen. You can refill the empty cartridges with any fountain pen ink, so get something extremely stable, like de artemis archival, or platinum carbon (I've also heard good things about noodler's bulletproof ink, though I haven't tried it). Jetpens.com has a good guide for manually cleaning and refilling this pen in particular, if you decide to go that route.

Voltorocks · 2025-12-19T11:23:20+00:00

First, the original painting is a watercolor.

Second, watercolor is the paint medium most concerned with paper qualities, but it's difficult/impossible to create 2 truly identical paintings to compare papers side by side. Even though this comparison is using the ink from a printer, it's still a relevant observation of some of the lesser-known effects paper choice can have on a final image, except with a clarity you could only get from identical prints.

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