Choosing paint can be a daunting task for a beginner.

Not all pigments are created equal. Some stain and some lift. Some overpower every mix they are in, and some must be added in quantity to make any change at all. Some are textured and some go on smooth. Some transparent watercolors really are transparent and some are rather less so.

Nor are all paints created equal. Knowing what pigments are in what paint is vital. Some, the good ones, are just one pigment. Some are mixes. Some are mixes of lower quality pigments. And brand matters. Cobalt blue even if it is the very same pigment behaves differently depending upon the manufacturer and the grade of paint.

The name of the color does not necessarily answer any of these questions.

Fortunately some of this information is standardized. The Society of Dyers and Colorists and the American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists have indexed the pigments. The index number is found on almost every quality paint tube. Cadmium yellow, for example is not one but one of two possible pigments PY35 and PY37. PY35 is a little greener. Some paints also include the American Society for Testing and Materials lightfastness rating. One is good and five poor.

But for the beginner, too much of this kind of information is simply overwhelming. It overwhelmed me. So I cribbed. A little over a year ago when I first started painting, I entered the art store with a list of paint colors drawn from the basic palettes of two or three artists who’s how to paint books I admired.

After my heart recovered from cost of buying all that paint at once ($295.99 or so), I made a chart of all of my brand new paints. First I painted each color across the page horizontally. When the page dried, I painted a vertical stripe of each color down the page. It looked like a multi-colored loosely woven basket. The idea was to show the colors and all of the mixing possibilities. I never looked at it again. And I have no idea where it is.

Then at direction of Butch Krieger, Watercolor Basics: People, I made a tonal value chart of flesh tones in paint. It was a lovely chart and I learned a lot about mixing flesh tones making it. I never looked it again either. It’s probably with the color chart.

Colored paint remained a mystery.

Sometime after that, I bought a copy of Blue and Yellow Don’t make Green, by Michael Wilcox. The book consists almost entirely of color swatches from a dozen basic colors. His basic colors are cadmium red light (PR108), quinacridone violet (PV19), cadmium yellow light (PY35), Hansa Yellow Light (PY3), cerulean blue (PB36:1), and ultramarine blue (PB29). To these he adds yellow ochre (PY43), raw sienna (PBr7), burnt sienna (PBr7), Phtalocyannie Blue (PB15), and Phthalocyanne Green (PG36). It’s a good list and I almost wish I had started with it, but I did learn somethings from my broader first palette and I still used many of the colors in it including one that Wilcox specifically warns against, Alizarin Crimson (PR83). (Alizarin crimson is subject to fading.)

And Wilcox did teach me a great deal about mixing paint. After reading Wilcox, I didn’t need a chart. I had a much better idea of how to mix colors although I didn’t do any of his color mixing exercises.

But mostly I learned about color by using very restricted one to three color palettes. Using only a few colors at a time I learned something about those colors. I add new colors to my basic palette slowly. Anyone who actually reads my pigment notes can’t help but notice that cobalt blue, french ultramarine, phthalo blue, burnt sienna, raw sienna and yellow ochre are my favorites. I think I have the blues and yellows sorted out. In addition to the above colors I use cadmium yellow and hansa yellow light. I still haven’t settled on the reds, but I’m leaning towards the quinacrones for the violet reds and windser for the orange reds.

In the meantime, my new paint bible is Hilary Page’s Guide to Watercolor Paints. Page tested all of the artist quality paints of all of the major manufacturer’s for light fastness. But that’s just the beginning. Her paint swatches show the value range, lifting capacity, transparency, and the wet into wet spreading pattern of each paint.

The swatches are conveniently divided into chapters by color and color temperature. Each chapter includes general notes on the pigments’ painting and mixes characteristics and toxicity.

She also includes: a color wheel of the pigments currently on the market; color curves for many pigments; and lists of staining, transparent, semi-transparent, semi-opaque, opaque, textural and two toned paints.

Truly a fantastic book, though perhaps only for real paint geeks. My only complaint was that it was last published in 1997. But as I’ve since discovered that she published a web update in 2000, I have no complaints at all. Hilary Page.com

She is my guide whenever I am tempted my a new color of paint. Dioxazine purple is my latest find. It’s beautifully transparent and there is no good mixed substitute. She gives it the thumbs up.