The 10 Best Watercolor Paint Sets

For a first set, the Cotman Sketchers' Pocket Set is where many teachers and sketchers start. A dozen student-grade half pans sit in a white box small enough for a jacket pocket, and the lid folds out into three mixing wells. Winsor & Newton swaps some costly pigments for cheaper look-alike colors, so the paint looks a bit softer than artist paint. The pans lift out for refills. The tiny brush inside is too short for real work.

Painters ready for artist-grade color can step up to the Winsor & Newton Professional Tin, a dozen small tubes in a metal box whose lid opens into a palette. The maker rates nearly every color in this range as permanent, and the set uses its cadmium-free yellow and red. Squeezed paint dries in the wells and rewets like a pan set later. There's no brush, and the tubes run out fast on big washes.

Illustrators and hand-letterers tend to reach for the Kuretake Gansai Tambi II, a Japanese set of big square pans in a soft, old-fashioned palette inspired by art nouveau. The paint is more opaque than classic watercolor, so it layers boldly and shows up on tinted paper, and the wide pans take a large brush. It comes in a card box with a green paper sleeve. Thin glazes look chalky, and dried pans can crack.

The Schmincke Horadam 12 is a German artist-grade box with a dozen half pans and empty slots to double the palette later. Schmincke has made artists' colors since the 1880s, and this selection pairs warm and cool primaries with earths, a green and a black. The metal box has a built-in mixing tray, and the pans refill from the brand's tubes. It's pricey for a dozen colors, and two of them contain cadmium.

Built for painting outdoors, the Sakura Koi Field Sketch packs two dozen student-grade half pans with a water brush that carries its own water in the handle, plus a sponge for blotting. The lid works as a mixing tray, and a thumb ring underneath lets you hold the box in one hand while you paint with the other. Colors are bright but lean a little opaque, so washes look flatter than with transparent paint.

Tubes make sense once you paint bigger, and the Cotman Tube Travel Set is a low-cost way in. It holds a dozen student-grade tubes and a small round brush in a plastic box with a wide mixing lid. Fresh paint from a tube gives strong color quickly for broad washes, and leftovers dry and rewet on the palette. The box can be stubborn to open, and several colors are cheaper stand-ins for costly pigments.

This U.S.-made set, the Golden QoR Introductory, swaps the usual gum arabic binder for a synthetic one that the maker says keeps colors brilliant after they dry. The dozen small tubes cover warm and cool primaries, a burnt orange, a magenta and natural earths, which gives a wide mixing range. They ship in a metal tin with a clear plastic tray of mixing wells. It's a premium buy for small tubes.

To teach color mixing, the Daniel Smith Essential Mixing set pairs six artist-grade tubes, a warm and a cool version of each primary, with a printed guide. From those you can mix clean oranges, violets and greens, a lesson a big box of ready-made colors skips. A bottle of white ground lets you paint on wood, metal or cardboard. There are no earth colors or black, so plan to add a brown.

If you want lots of colors in tubes for little money, the Arteza 60 Tube Set covers pastels, brights, jewel tones and earths in one box. Each tube carries its pigment code, a transparency mark and a fade rating, so you can see what you're mixing. The tubes are larger than artist-size ones, so the paint lasts. Those ratings come only from the maker, and some colors can turn chalky or muddy in mixes.

As a gift or a first try, the Artistro 50-Color Kit comes ready to paint: a metal tin of pans, a handful of brushes, a water brush, a pencil, a sponge and a swatch sheet. The colors are bright, with a few shimmering metallics, and the tin closes flat for a backpack. It's a newer hobby brand with no outside data on how its colors hold up, so keep finished art out of sunlight.