Go see it. Full stop. If there’s a showing near you as you’re reading this, stop reading and just go.

The craftsmanship on display is mind-boggling. Every frame of the over-two-hour runtime is filled with handcrafted props, characters, and worlds animated one frame at a time. Pre-production began in 2011, over fifteen years ago, and actual animation took five years to complete (McLean, 2026). The vision and dedication required to bring a project like that to fruition is beyond my comprehension. I’ve never had a job that lasted fifteen years, let alone a single project.

In the age of fast and disposable AI slop — and lazy non-AI filmmaking besides — that level of dedication and craft means something.

A Meld of New-School and Old-School Tech

The focus on being hand-made doesn’t mean there’s no modern technology involved. Quite the opposite. The faces, for instance, were first animated in CG — using live-action reference, a common practice in animation — then 3D-printed for every frame. Literally, every frame. That adds up to more than 142,000 faces for the whole film (SBNEnter, 2026). The eyes, on the other hand, were actual eyeballs integrated into the head and animated manually (McLean, 2026).

That balance is fascinating, allowing for facial performances to be directed and locked down before the body animation has even begun. Can you imagine the amount of forethought and coordination required to make that work? I can’t.

I’m reminded of Mad Max: Fury Road, which was rightly lauded for doing real stunts, using real functional vehicles, and shooting in the real world. And yet, nearly every frame of that movie has CG in it (Failes, 2015). It’s in the background, or filling in gaps, or removing safety harnesses and other filmmaking artifacts. But the key is that the action you’re focused on — the part carrying actual weight — is as real as a film can ever be.

The same happened with Top Gun: Maverick. Despite what you may have heard, that film was dripping in CG — but for the most part it was used to enhance and support the real, not to conjure it from nothing (The Movie Rabbit Hole, 2023).

You can feel the difference. It’s visceral, with fewer of those little cues to let your brain register that what you’re watching is fake. Even in full replacement shots like those in Top Gun: Maverick, the use of real reference makes a massive difference.

Now, clearly as an animation nothing in Wildwood is “real” in the sense of being real people doing real things. And yet, what you’re watching is real. It’s a physical reality with weight and texture and absolutely accurate light and shadows because — despite being designed and heightened as all cinematic lighting is — you are looking at real light and shadows. That physical reality registers alongside the artistry of the animated world and performances in a way no other medium can quite match.

Fire, smoke, fog, expansive backgrounds, and at least a small portion of the animation toward the end (I’m trying not to spoil anything) simply must be animated using means other than stop-motion. That’s true of any epic film, no matter how the principal filming is achieved. But the point is that to the extent possible, this movie is handcrafted by actual people. Mostly physically, occasionally digitally, but always by people with artistic purpose and vision.

Another little tidbit that didn’t really fit into the flow of the above: Most of the puppets had air bladders built into them that allowed them to breathe and flex muscles. It’s another of those details you don’t really notice, but you feel the difference.

But, Is It Any Good?

All of that makes Wildwood a technical and artistic triumph, but is it a good film?

Emphatically, yes. VERY.

It’s been a long time since a movie has carried me away so thoroughly. It’s easy to forget that you’re watching puppets. Thinking back, some scenes in particular exist in my memory as scenes between real life actors. When the various factions came together in desperation to defend their world, I got goosebumps at the high drama. My adrenaline spiked during a final battle that reached a scale I wouldn’t have thought possible for stop-motion. I’m not embarrassed to say I was brought to tears more than once in quiet moments of grief and longing. The film craft is everything you could want from an epic feature.

And the story. Oh, the story.

It’s not particularly original in its particulars; it draws heavily from the entire canon of epic fantasy. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and the Brothers Grimm, to name just a few. But that’s window dressing. The heart of it all — the characters behind the action and their interrelationships — was as alive and affecting as you could hope for.

In the end it’s about love and loss and growing up and trying and failing and still showing up when it really matters. How we deal with an unfair world, whether we embrace the chaos or try to force our preferred order upon it.

The story takes place in and near Portland, Oregon. If you’ve ever been to Portland — one of my favorite cities to visit — you’ll know they absolutely nailed it.

So yeah, go see it.

It’s one of the best movies in years, and a pinnacle of artistic expression and achievement. As of this writing it has taken in just under $32 million against a reported $100 million budget (The Numbers, 2026).

That it’s not blowing up the box office is a crime.

Sources

• Failes, I. (2015). A graphic tale: The visual effects of Mad Max: Fury Road. [online] fxguide. Available at: https://www.fxguide.com/fxfeatured/a-graphic-tale-the-visual-effects-of-mad-max-fury-road/ [Accessed 3 Nov. 2026].
• McLean, T. (2026). ‘Wildwood’: The making of LAIKA’s magical stop-motion world. [online] Animation Magazine. Available at: https://www.animationmagazine.net/2026/10/wildwood-the-making-of-laikas-magical-stop-motion-world/ [Accessed 3 Nov. 2026].
• SBNEnter (2026). Wildwood (2026) Behind the Scenes: The Making of LAIKA’s Stop-Motion Animation. [online] YouTube.com. Available at: https://youtu.be/yuzanGtUIQc?si=gKH5V2gJuHp_vCKX [Accessed 3 Nov. 2026].
• The Movie Rabbit Hole (2023). “No CGI” is really just invisible CGI (1/4). [online] YouTube.com. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ttG90raCNo [Accessed 3 Nov. 2026].
• The Numbers (2026). Wildwood (2026) — Box Office and Financial Information. [online] The Numbers. Available at: https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Wildwood-(2026) [Accessed 3 Nov. 2026].
• Wikipedia Contributors (2026). Wildwood (film). [online] Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildwood_(film) [Accessed 3 Nov. 2026].

“Wildwood” Is Everything That’s Good About Cinema was originally published in Babel on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Important: This is part 3 of 3. Read Part 1 — Paint, and Part 2 — Color first.

Also, links in this article may be affiliate links. If you use them to buy something, your price won’t be affected, but I’ll earn a small commission.

Now that we have our paints, we need the tools of the trade to make use of them.

Paper

Paper choice is probably the most consequential factor in a successful watercolor painting. It’s not the most complicated — I just spent nearly 8,000 words on paint selection, after all — but paper is literally the foundation of every watercolor painting, and the number of options and terminology can be daunting.

The right paper will enhance your efforts, while the wrong paper will make your job harder than it needs to be, and may worsen or even ruin your final result. With a limited budget, you’re better off buying student paints and professional paper. Brushes, which we’ll get to next, fall somewhere in the middle. Very important, but you only need to invest in a few to start with.

When evaluating paper, there are four qualities to be aware of:

1. Material
2. Finish
3. Weight
4. Format

1. Material

Watercolor paper is usually made from one of two materials — cotton or wood pulp — or a mix of the two.

Important: Regardless of paper type, always ensure your paper is acid-free. If it isn’t, it’s likely to discolor surprisingly quickly.

Cotton

Good quality watercolor paper is made from 100% cotton. Always. Cotton paper is durable, less likely to be mangled by excessive working and reworking, and absorbs and holds watercolor paint more reliably when compared to wood pulp paper.

Important: If the paper isn’t clearly labelled as “100% Cotton,” then it probably isn’t cotton paper. The mini Legion pads in the picture above are an exception (the full size pads include far more information about weight, content, etc.).

Wood Pulp

Most paper is made from wood pulp — often referred to as “cellulose,” but cotton is technically cellulose too, so “wood pulp” is more descriptive (Wikipedia Contributors, 2019). It is less expensive than cotton paper, but also less durable and less absorbent. That lack of absorbency makes it harder to lay down smooth washes and gradients, and means paint will pool and puddle.

Cheap “student grade” watercolor paper and “mixed-media” papers are usually heavyweight wood pulp paper.

It may be useful to keep some around for testing colors or doing quick sketches, but it should be avoided for real watercolor work.

Blended

Sometimes you’ll find blended watercolor papers. Blended papers contain some percentage of cotton, with the rest made up of wood pulp. Blended papers are intended to strike a balance between quality and affordability.

Higher cotton percentages will improve durability and absorption. If budget allows, 100% cotton paper is the gold standard.

Cotton-Top

Cotton-top papers are like two pieces of paper stuck together. One side is wood pulp and makes up the bulk of the paper’s thickness. The other side is a thin layer of cotton paper, giving you a better surface to work on. The goal is to produce a more affordable paper that still functions like expensive paper.

Cotton-top papers aren’t common — I’ve only seen them offered online — and I haven’t tried or even touched them myself. Because a cotton paper’s thickness aids in both stability and moisture retention, the compromise may not be worth it.

2. Finish

Watercolor paper is available in three finishes: Hot press, cold press, and rough.

Rough

Rough paper is exactly what it sounds like, a highly textured surface. The toothy, uneven surface will add a strong texture as paint pools in it and dries. This is especially noticeable with granulating pigments, which will show strongest on rough paper. Blends will also be more “active” as the mixing pigments interact with the texture before settling.

TIP: A good choice if you want a highly textured result that emphasizes the physical nature of the medium. It’s not suited to all styles, though.

Cold Press

Cold press paper is pressed without the use of heat, resulting in a surface that is notably smoother than rough paper, but still has a definite texture and tooth to it. This is the most common finish for watercolor paper — it strikes a good balance between creating an interesting surface to work on without imposing too strong a texture on the paint.

TIP: If you don’t have a preference already, start with cold press paper.

Hot Press

Hot press paper is pressed using heat — essentially ironed — following production, resulting in a smooth, even surface. Hot press paper is not as smooth as printer paper, but is far smoother than cold press paper. Hot press papers are easier to lift colors from, easier to scan and photograph, and will interfere the least with the inherent properties of the paint. Note that this smoothness will also mute granulation and will impact how wet on wet effects and washes blend.

This is my personal preference in most cases. It most closely resembles my favorite paper for drawing — marker paper — which is very smooth. I’m trying to branch out, though, especially after seeing how hot press can cause problems with smooth washes.

3. Weight

Watercolor paper is thick. A typical sheet of copier or printer paper will be around 14–24lb (52–90gsm). For watercolor, anything less than 140lb (300gsm) is generally unsuitable as it will warp under heavy washes. Thicker is often better — but that’s the minimum. Anything thinner will not stand up to the amount of water used in watercolor painting.

Many mixed-media papers are around 98lb (160gsm) — which does feel heavy compared to most drawing papers — which will buckle and start to fall apart under a heavy wash.

Watercolor papers up to 300lb (640gsm) are readily available, for a price. The advantage to such heavyweight paper is that it will stand up to even more water than regular watercolor paper without curling or buckling. The downside is that it will absorb and hold more water, meaning it will dry more slowly. It’s also more expensive and takes up more space, meaning fewer sheets per block or pad.

NOTE: The simple takeaway is: Never use paper less than 140lb (300gsm) for serious watercolor work, and heavier paper may or may not be better, depending on your needs.

4. Format

Watercolor paper is available in at least three general forms, each with its own uses.

Pads & Books

These are your typical sketchbooks or sketchpads, bound on one edge with a spiral binding, or a sewn or glued binding. These are convenient and inexpensive, but are generally not the best for finished work. The spiral bound options in particular nearly always have wood pulp or blended paper, trading quality for convenience.

Blocks

Blocks are by far the best way to do watercolor on the go.

Blocks are unique to watercolor, as far as I can tell. Watercolor blocks are like sketchpads, except they’re bound on at least two sides to a thick, stiff backing board. This keeps the top sheet flat, preventing curling and excessive wrinkling when it gets wet. When you’re done with that sheet, run a palette knife, or something similarly thin, all the way around under it to cut it free from the next sheet.

Avoid using an actual knife, as it’s far too easy to cut into the next sheet down.

TIP: I’ve seen people — even some highly experienced artists — separate sheets from a block by forcing their finger in between the sheets, often while complaining about how difficult it is. Don’t do that, it is difficult, because it’s wrong. It also risks wrinkling your work. Use a tool of some sort as described above.

Loose Sheets

Loose sheets are available in large sizes ideal for larger works. They give you the greatest flexibility, and can be cut into multiple smaller sheets. If you want, you can find instructions for turning large sheets into various styles of sketchbooks. If you’re crafty this can be an economical way to get a compact pad with very good paper at a reasonable price.

Another trick you can’t do with a sketchbook or block is to soak the sheet, then tape it down securely to your desk or a board as it dries. This will pre-stretch the paper and force it to dry flat, making it much more stable as you start painting.

Paper Recommendations

Considering all of this together, here is what I suggest investing in to start with, and as you grow as an artist.

Bulk Cheap Paper

• 0–100% cotton paper
• 140lb (300gsm) minimum
• Around 7”×10” to 9”×12”

This isn’t going to be great paper, but for the price per sheet it serves a purpose. Use paper like this as scratch paper, or for testing paints and mixes. This is the one time I would consider paper that’s not 100% cotton. Do not use it for finished work, regardless.

• 150 Sheets 100% Cotton Watercolor Paper Bulk -140lb/300gsm Art Paper-8.5”×11”— Bulk individual sheets. Not great, and my own experience with it casts doubt on the 100% cotton claim, but it’s not bad given the price (I have theories, but that’s a rabbit-hole for another article). This is the cheapest way I’ve found to get lots of useable scratch paper.
• Canson XL Series Watercolor Paper, Wirebound Pad, 7”×10”, 30 Sheets (140lb/300gsm) — A spiral bound sketchbook with heavyweight wood pulp paper. Not great, but both affordable and portable.

Small Block

• 100% cotton paper
• 140lb (300gsm) minimum
• 4”×6” to 8”×10”

This will let you practice on good paper without spending a lot. Small blocks in particular are good for carrying around if you want to try plein-air painting (painting outdoors). Most of the options below are available in a number of sizes and finishes.

• PaperPop Watercolor Block 5”×7”–20 Sheets, 160lb 100% Cotton — My personal favorite so far. Slightly heavier than normal watercolor paper, but just a little, for a great price.
• Fluid 100 Watercolor Block 4”×6”–15 Sheets, 140lb 100% Cotton — Another good choice with some smaller sizes. Also available with 300lb paper.
• FLUNBRATO Watercolor Block 4.7”×4.7”–80 Sheets, 140lb 100% Cotton — This affordable block has surprisingly good paper for the price. It’s also bulky and doesn’t have a cover, so it’s not great for carrying around. I keep it on my desk so I always have decent paper on hand for doing quick tests of new paints or mixes.
• Stonehenge Aqua 100% Cotton Mini Pad Set — Stonehenge paper is high quality at any size (Rainey, 2017, p. 6), but my favorite product is their mini pads. They’re small enough to tuck into any kit so you can always have a bit of nice paper with you. This sample set includes three each of: 140lb Cold Press, 140lb Hot Press, 300lb Cold Press, and 140lb Cold Press Black paper.
• Saunders Waterford Legion Watercolour Block 7”×10”–20 Sheets, 140lb 100% Cotton — I haven’t tried this paper myself, but it comes highly recommended as a more affordable alternative to Arches.
• Arches Watercolor Block 7.9”×7.9”–20 Sheets, 140lb 100% Cotton — Arches is generally regarded as making the best watercolor papers. You pay for the privilege though.
• Arches Aquarelle Travel Pad 6”×10”–15 Sheets, 140lb 100% Cotton — Just for something different, here’s a spiral bound pad. Pricey, but a spiral sketchpad with good watercolor paper is a rare thing.

Large Block

• 100% cotton paper
• 140lb (300gsm) minimum
• 9”×12” or larger

Same as above, but on a larger scale. Though all watercolor blocks are portable, starting around 9”×12” they start to get a bit unwieldy, in my opinion. And given the price, I leave these for more serious studio work (which means I’ve rarely used them, as I’m still learning).

• Arches Watercolor Paper Block 9”×12”–20 Sheets, 140lb 100% Cotton — Just a bigger version of the previous Arches block.
• Arches Water Colour Block, 300lb. 9”×12” — The same as above but twice the paper weight. Note that since the paper is twice as thick, there are half as many sheets (10 instead of 20).
• Arches Aquarelle Watercolor Block, 140lb. 18”×24” — I wanted to include one of the larger sizes as well. Given the high price, I have yet to pull the trigger on one of these.

Brushes

Brushes are one of those areas that can get very deep, but can also be kept pretty basic and still produce decent results.

First, getting a few definitions out of the way will help with clarity:

• Snap — The tendency of a brush to return to its original shape after being bent (Rainey, 2022). With larger brushes, loading it with water and giving it a quick flick (but not in the direction of anything water-sensitive!) will return a quality brush to its original shape (Alnock, 2026).
• Ferrule — The part of the brush that holds the bristles to the handle. In many brushes this is a metal tube crimped around the end of the handle, and often filled with glue that holds the bristles. Cheap brushes will drop bristles after some use. Higher quality brushes will have better ferrules that are less likely to drop bristles (if well cared for). One simple sign of a good ferrule is the lack of a seam (Roebuck, 2018).
• Belly — The widest part of the brush between the ferrule and the tip. A larger belly will allow the brush to hold more water and pigment at once, allowing you to paint for longer without refilling your brush.

With that, let’s look at four defining features of brushes:

1. Material
2. Shape
3. Size
4. Form Factor

1. Material

When talking about brush material, we’re talking about what the actual brush bristles are made from. All brush bristles can be grouped into two broad categories: Natural and synthetic.

Natural

Before the wide availability of plastics, the only option was natural fibers. In a word, hair (or fur, technically). Many artists still swear by natural hair brushes, which tend to have superior performance in the areas that really matter to painters.

Natural hairs retain their shape well, readily snapping back into shape. Due to their slightly rough microstructure, natural hairs hold a surprising amount of water and pigment, and lay it down in a controlled manner (Wee Paint Brush, 2023).

The downsides include price, and the source of the hair. Obviously, natural hair has to come from somewhere. That “somewhere” is the international fur trade, with all the possible ethical concerns that entails (Bullaro, 2017). The whole issue is complicated, and I’m not going to take a stand one way or the other here — it’s up to each of us to decide how we feel about that, and act accordingly.

Common Types:

• Sable — Sable hairs come from sables, martens, or weasels, and are generally considered the best natural bristles for most brushes. Sable brushes have excellent snap and water retention. Sable brushes are the best choice for detail and control.
• Kolinski Sable — Sourced from Siberian weasels, these are considered the best of the best, and are priced accordingly.
• Squirrel — Squirrel hair bristles are more affordable than sable but have less snap due to their relative softness. Squirrel brushes work well for washes, and are probably the best option for a newcomer looking at natural bristle brushes.
• Hog & Ox — Used in flat brushes that benefit from being very stiff. Used far more in oil brushes than watercolor.
• Goat — Goat bristle brushes are very soft and don’t really fully snap back. Used mostly in Japanese calligraphy.

Synthetic

If you want to avoid natural bristles for ethical or cost reasons, there are plenty of synthetic options to suit your needs. Many good synthetics are designed to mimic the feel and function of natural fiber brushes; i.e., synthetic sable is stiffer and good for control while synthetic squirrel brushes are softer and good for washes (Rainey, 2021b).

Given the vast number of synthetics on offer, which vary significantly by manufacturer, a full accounting is beyond the scope of this article.

What about the handles?

Brush handles are usually made from wood or plastic. They can be fat, skinny, long, or short. Both the shape and length of the handle are a matter of personal preference and don’t directly impact performance.

I prefer handles on the shorter side for ease of handling. Think the length of a pencil, or a bit longer. That’s as good a place as any to start, but it’s entirely up to you.

2. Shape

Brushes come in a dizzying variety of different shapes, each of which is intended for a particular use. There also tend to be multiple names for many shapes. What I’m listing here are the ones I’ve seen the most often. Just be aware this isn’t an exhaustive list. For more, see Blick Art Materials (2025).

• Round — The most versatile shape is a pointed round brush. The point allows for detail, while the “belly” of the brush can be used to make wide strokes. If you only buy one brush, make it a round brush.
• Flat — As the name suggests, these brushes have a flat-ish rectangular or oval cross section and a flat tip. These are good for washes.
• Filbert — A flat brush with a rounded, instead of a flat, tip, making it a bit more versatile.
• Dagger/Striper — A flat brush cut at an angle rather than flat. These are highly versatile but take a more practiced hand to control than a round brush.
• Cat’s Tongue/Oval Wash — Basically a pointed brush with the cross section of a flat brush.
• Mop — Generally large soft brushes with a pronounced “belly” that allows them to hold a lot of water. Good for laying down large washes and, with enough skill, can make very capable general use brushes.
• Detail — Several varieties of fine-tipped brushes exist. Some are long (riggers or liners), some are short (spotters). All are intended for painting small details.
• Inlaid Liner — The most interesting detail brush type in my opinion, sometimes called extended needle point brushes. These are basically a liner with a huge belly, giving you control for detailed painting coupled with a huge load of water and pigment.
• Wash/Mottler — Like flat brushes but very wide. Technically these are two different brush types, but they both do something similar in watercolor painting: smoothly laying down a lot of water or paint over a large area.

3. Size

Watercolor brushes are available in a wide range of sizes, from extremely small detail brushes to massive mop brushes. There is no consensus among manufacturers about how to label sizes. Size is often indicated as a number like 2 or 6. Some brushes will indicate a width dimension, like 1/4” or 6mm.

There’s no hard and fast rule for when one convention is used over another, and one brand’s 4 might be another brand’s 2, or 6. Even brushes with actual dimensions may not be the same size, due to different standards for how to measure. The easiest way to be sure of a brush’s size is to see it in person.

That said, we can set a few general guidelines (Sobuj, 2026):

• Sizes 0–4 are small brushes, suitable for detail work.
• Sizes 6–10 are mid-sized brushes, meant for general use.
• Size 12 and larger are large brushes, for covering large areas.

It’s best to use the largest brush you reasonably can for the task at hand, especially at the start of a painting. This helps to avoid obsessing over details.

TIP: If you’re painting out of half-pans, large brushes will be too large to easily get into them. Stick with small and medium sized brushes.

4. Form Factor

Most brushes can be divided into three broad categories:

• Regular Brushes — Most brushes fall into one large general category. Bristles of a particular type and shape attached to a handle using a ferrule.
• Travel Brushes — Similar to regular brushes except that the handle can be detached and reversed to cover the bristles for travel. All of the travel brushes I’ve seen have been round, detail, or narrow flat varieties, since the bristles have to fit within the handle when reversed.
• Water Brushes — Nylon bristled brushes with hollow plastic handles that contain a water reservoir. A light squeeze pushes water through the bristles. These are very handy for a travel kit since they contain their own water. On the other hand, the bristles are pretty bad, and it can be hard to avoid using too much water. The water brushes I’ve seen have all been round or flat. Mostly useful for quick and easy sketches.

Caring for Your Brushes

Paint brushes are an investment, but one that can last a long time if you follow a few simple rules to care for them (Rainey, 2021a):

1. Always clean your brushes immediately after use. Watercolor comes out easily when wet (though it may stain, especially with cheap nylon bristles like water brushes use), but if it’s allowed to dry, it may permanently damage the bristles or ferrule.
2. Do not leave your brushes in water. Rinse them, then remove them from the water. Letting them sit risks loosening the ferrule, and bending the bristles if it’s resting on the bottom of the water cup.
3. Avoid submerging the ferrule completely into the water. If water gets into the ferrule, it can damage the bristles, or loosen the ferrule by degrading the glue or corroding metal or wood components.
4. Reshape the bristles before they dry. After cleaning, when the bristles are still wet, reform them into their original shape if necessary. This is especially true with cheap or very soft bristled brushes.
5. Dry laying down. I used to dry brushes by putting them in a brush cup point up, but that’s a mistake. Point up allows water to run down and collect in the ferrule, where it can loosen the glue or degrade the bristle or handle materials.
6. Protect the bristles. Whether it’s a cup, a travel case, or anything else, brushes are best stored bristle end up (after drying). If they need to be stored laying down, take measures to ensure the bristles are not being bent.

A Few Brush Recommendations

If you’re just starting out, it’s best to keep it simple with a few well chosen brushes (Voloshin-Smith, 2024, pp. 5–6):

• Get at least one round mid-sized brush. This will be your general purpose workhorse. Honestly, just this one brush is a good place for most beginners to start. I have a few brushes and tend to use one size 8 round brush most of the time.
• If you want to branch out, a larger flat or filbert brush is a good second pick, making washes and gradients easier to create. Size 12 would be a good size for this.
• If you really want a third brush, either a wash or a detail brush, depending on the sorts of painting you’re doing. Maybe both, for flexibility.

Starting out, this three or four brush kit should get you a long way. That’s especially true if you’re able to spring for decent quality brushes and care for them properly. I don’t mean you should shell out a couple hundred for a top-tier brush, just avoid the bargain basement options.

These are from my experience and research. My limitation is I’ve followed my own advice, which means I haven’t tried that many different brushes as I’m learning.

Travel Brushes:

I really like the portability of travel brushes, and they’re what I’ve used the most.

• Fuumuui 3pcs Squirrel Hair Travel Watercolor Brushes — I’ve had a previous version of this 3-brush set for a few years. It has three round brushes, one each small (#4), medium (#8), and large (#12). They’ve stood up well to my inexpert use, looking essentially brand new (aside from some expected dings and scratches from being carried in my bag). The #8 and #12 sizes are my most commonly used brushes.
• Fuumuui 4pcs Sable Travel Watercolor Brushes — A variant of the above, I haven’t tried this 4-brush set specifically, but the brushes are the exact style of the set I have, and the price is very good for the variety on offer. It has a small and a medium round (which I can actually vouch for), a medium flat brush, and a medium dagger brush. That’s a pretty solid starter set and the one I’d buy for myself if I were starting over.

NOTE: I should note that the 4-brush set claims to be Kolinsky Sable. I don’t know what to make of that, as the price doesn’t seem in line with the claim. I have to imagine there’s some technicality involved. I only know they’re quite good and well priced for natural bristle brushes.

Regular Brushes:

I have a few regular brushes that I bought early on, but nothing I’d really recommend — I chose poorly and/or didn’t know what I was doing and ruined them. With regular brushes, the really cheap options simply aren’t worth it. Instead, here are some mid-priced options I’ve seen recommended by artists I trust.

• Princeton Series 4050 Heritage Synthetic Sable Brush Set — The word on these brushes is they’re a great synthetic alternative to natural sable. This set includes a small round, a medium round, and a large round, as well as a large (1/2”) angled wash (Rainey, 2022).
• da Vinci Series 5080 CosmoTop Spin Ultimate Wash Synthetic — I’ve seen these wash brushes recommended as a good option for quickly laying down large areas of water or paint washes (Alnock, 2026).
• Silver Brush Limited Black Velvet Round — These are a bit more expensive but are said to be pretty great. They use a mix of natural and synthetic bristles to strike a balance between cost and capability.
• Escoda Aquario Gold Series 1140, Short Handle, Round Mop & da Vinci Watercolor Series 418 Petit Gris Pur Pai, Wash/Mop — For some context and comparison, these are professional level brushes. They’re expensive, but offer the best control and are the sort of brushes that will last a career if properly cared for (Alnock, 2026).

If you want to store or travel with regular brushes, you’ll need to put them into a case that’s meant for brushes. This is the one I have, it works fine: MEEDEN Zippered Paints Brush Case.

Water Brushes:

As I said before, water brushes aren’t great, but they’re VERY convenient. And to be fair, in the hands of a skilled artist — John Muir Laws, for example (Laws, 2012, p. 98) — water brushes can produce beautiful work.

I carry a few around for quick sketches or just messing around. If you’re careful, it’s the most self-contained and least messy way to paint. I’ve even used them in the waiting room at a doctor’s office.

• Mr. Pen Watercolor Brush Pens, 6 pcs — A basic, cheap water brush set. Includes three round and three flat brushes in three sizes each. The handles are flexible and squeezable along their full length.
• JustArt Watercolor Brush Pens 6-Pack — A similar but higher quality brush set that will likely last a lot longer. The handles are rigid aside from a small rubber squeeze area. Depending on how you hold them, they may work just fine for you, but for this reason I prefer the cheaper option above.

Other Items

Empty Case and Pans

As I said in a previous article, buying tubes of paint and filling pans is far more economical and flexible than buying prefilled pans.

But that means you’ll need empty pans and cases to put them in.

Pans

Filling empty pans from tubes allows you to easily reorganize or rework your palette with relative ease.

TIP: I like to secure my pans with magnets. You can add magnets to regular pans, or buy them already included. Then you just need to get a metal palette box, or add magnets (like these: 200 Pack Small Magnets, 10x1mm) or a strip of ferrous metal in the bottom of the well (Steel Feeler Gauge, 0.3mm cut to length works well). I use everyday super glue and it works well (roughing smooth plastic or metal before gluing helps).

• 100PCS Watercolor Half Pans — Basic empty half-pans.
• 48Pcs Empty Watercolor Paint Pans — Basic empty full-pans.
• SEAMIART 24Pcs Empty Watercolor Half Pans Empty with Magnets — Standard half-pans with strong integrated magnets. In my experience the orientation of the magnets is random, so pay attention if using magnets in the wells.
• SEAMIART 24Pcs Empty Watercolor Full Pans with Magnets — Standard full-pans with strong integrated magnets. The orientation is equally random in the set I ordered.

Cases

• Bitray Small Size 15 Wells Airtight Palette Box — My favorite portable palette case so far, this palette holds fifteen paints. It has a rubber sheet inside the lid that makes it airtight, which I removed (this would be useful for acrylic paints). Each well is separate which makes this palette feel very solid despite being inexpensive. It also adds some bulk, and it doesn’t leave the option of using full-pans. The top folds back flat, but being clear it doesn’t make for a very good mixing surface. I taped a paint cheatsheet and mixing guide to it instead (preliminary, needs some edits). Comes with regular half-pans that won’t jostle around, but will readily fall out.

• Piutouyar Portable Paint Palette Box for Watercolor, 12 Wells — A rival for the top spot. It’s both more compact and cheaper. Since it doesn’t have individually divided wells, it’s very small but can accommodate twelve half-pans or six full-pans. Note that the lid does not fold fully back so it cannot be used as a surface for mixing. Comes with regular half-pans, which will jostle around and fall out if you don’t add magnets, double-sided tape, or similar.

• Piutouyar Portable Palette Box for Watercolor, 24 Wells — This palette is very lightweight and will accommodate twenty-four half-pans, or twelve full-pans. The top folds back flat and can be used for mixing. Comes with regular half-pans.

• SEAMIART Stackable Empty Watercolor Paint Palette Box — This is a different design I only recently discovered. You pull the end off and slide pans in that way. It holds them tightly, which means magnets aren’t needed. In fact, the pans with integrated magnets are slightly too tall to fit. The removable lid is designed for mixing and is held on with magnets. You can buy additional bottom trays and stack them to carry more paints. Each tray can hold thirty-six half-pans or eighteen full-pans. Does not come with any pans.

Palettes

You can also get palettes that have integrated wells not intended to be used with pans. These come in plastic, metal, and various ceramic varieties. Some fold or have covers. Ideally, the palette should have multiple, separated mixing areas so you can keep different color families apart for cleaner mixes (Laws, 2012, p. 98).

I haven’t really used any of these, but here are a few I’ve seen recommended and plan on checking out at some point:

• Junreox Large Watercolor Paint Palette with Lid — 24 Wells with 5 Mixing Areas, Plastic 11.8”×10.6” — A very inexpensive folding plastic palette with lots of mixing areas that folds for easy transport (once dry).
• Creative Mark Watercolor Palette with Cover — 42 Wells and 4 Mixing Areas, Plastic 12"×16" — Lots of room for lots of colors, and four separate mixing areas. Doesn’t fold, but has a cover.
• Watercolor Palette with Wooden Lid — 24 Wells Porcelain 6.9”×11.2” — A ceramic palette (it claims porcelain, given the price I have doubts) with a wooden cover that can double as a backing board for your paper. Note that the cover fits loosely, it’s meant to protect the paint from getting dusty, not to keep it from drying or to prevent spilling.

Water Cups/Jars

Nothing special here, you just need a few cups or jars for water. A mug, an empty jam jar, a small vase, whatever. I will say, make sure that whatever you use is stable. Bowls or tall skinny containers have a tendency to fall over mysteriously… But maybe that’s just me.

Ideally you’ll have at least two containers of water. One for cleaning your brushes, and another for re-wetting your clean brush. Eventually the clean water will become cloudy and need to be replaced, but using two containers will make it last significantly longer. Three water containers (one for cleaning, one for a final rinse, and one clean) will work even better if you have space.

Paper Towels, Rags, & Sponges

You should always have something on hand to wipe your brush. Not only to clean it, but also to remove excess water. Water control is a big topic all by itself.

TIP: Fully loaded brushes — especially inexpensive brushes — may drip as they’re moving over your work, potentially ruining it. They also have a tendency to dump far too much water (and pigment) onto the paper as soon as they touch it. Lightly touching the tip to something absorbent before using it will greatly diminish the likelihood of these problems (Voloshin-Smith, 2024, pp. 45–46).

• Paper Towels — Cheap and readily available, paper towels will do the job. You may find they are not very economical though, as you’ll go through them quickly.
• Rags — Any sort of absorbent cloth will do. Since cloth rags are reusable, and will progressively dry as you work, they’re quite economical. I find old cotton t-shirts make for good watercolor rags.
• Sponges — Sponges work the same as rags, with the advantage of having a stable shape, and being easier to wring out. You can use basic kitchen sponges for this, or denser art or clay sponges (like these: 4 Pcs Round Painting Sponge, 2.96”).
• High-Density Sponges — I’m not sure what these are actually called, but they’re my favorite sponges for this purpose, and deserve their own entry on the list. Painting Sponge 3-Pack Water Absorbing Art Sponge for Watercolor. When dry, these sponges become rock hard and mostly non-absorbent. Wet them and they soften and become ridiculously absorbent. The way they work in practice is hard to explain, I’ve spent more time than I care to admit just playing with them. When dry, they’re fairly easy to cut to whatever size you need.

TIP: I typically work with both a rag and a high-density sponge on hand. Be aware that whatever you use for this purpose will become hopelessly stained.

Quick Recap

This has been a long article, so I’ll summarize what you really need to get started:

• Paper: Small block, cold press finish, 100% Cotton, 140lb (300gsm) at minimum. Bulk cheap paper for testing.
• Brushes: One size 6 or 8 round, one size 12 or 14 flat or filbert, and an optional large wash or small detail brush.
• Case or Palette: Big enough to hold your chosen colors (6–24 colors), multiple separated mixing areas.
• Water & Cleanup: Two water jars and rags, sponge, or paper towels.

That’s a wrap on Part 3

And almost 15,000 words later, we come to the end. All three entries in this series took far longer than I expected — especially this one, just look at that sources list! — which tells me both that I had a lot to learn (and still have, if I’m honest), and that this topic is worthy of exploration and dissemination.

I’ve covered the paint properties, color theory, and tools needed for watercolor painting. My approach has been mostly analytical, trying to quantify a messy topic with a long and organic history. I sincerely hope that I’ve helped to bring some order to the chaos. But, hopefully not too much.

My aim was to provide a preliminary guide, to prevent the spinning wheels and crashing out common to new artists, not to remove all nuance and mystery — as if that would even be possible with any physical art medium.

Where to Buy

Not everyone has dedicated, local arts and crafts suppliers. If you do it’s always best to buy paper and brushes in person. That allows you to hold, touch, and feel them before buying. Here are some of the stores I’ve visited (note that this list is US-only).

• Dick Blick Art Supplies — Blick is a large chain with locations in 25 states plus DC at last count. My go-to since there is a location within an hour of my home. The selection, prices, and employees are as good as it gets for a brick and mortar art store in my experience.
• Artist & Craftsman Supply — Artist & Craftsman is a mid-sized chain with stores in 11 states. I frequented the Maine location as a kid and into my twenties, until I moved south. Aside from not having store brand supplies, it is very similar in feel and offerings to Blick.
• Sam Flax — The Flax stores are a bit odd in that while they are related in some way, they are owned and operated individually. In that sense, there are multiple locally owned Flax locations in Orlando, Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago. I’ve only visited the Atlanta location, which is a labyrinthine, bohemian sort of store with all kinds of interesting nooks and crannies.
• Michaels — With the closure of Joann Fabrics, and ongoing scrutiny regarding the owners of Hobby Lobby, Michaels is the last non-controversial national crafting chain that most people in the US are likely to have nearby. There are Michaels stores in 49 of 50 states and DC, and while they are mostly dedicated to crafting they generally have decent options for sketchbooks, paints, and related tools.

If none of these options are convenient for you, you can always check out Walmart and Hobby Lobby, if your personal ethics allow it. And, of course, online retailers like Amazon.com, Blick’s online store, and Jerry’s Artarama (which also has 21 physical locations across 12 states, none of which I have visited) are an option as well.

Sources

Articles

• Blick Art Materials (2025). Brush shape differences | blick art materials. [online] Dickblick.com. Available at: https://www.dickblick.com/learning-resources/buying-guides/brush-shape-differences/ [Accessed 7 Oct. 2026].
• Bullaro, K. (2017). Animal by-products and art supplies. [online] Cowan Office Supplies. Available at: https://cowans.org/blogs/cowans-art-knowledge-know-how/animal-by-products-and-art-supplies [Accessed 17 Oct. 2026].
• Rainey, J. (2022). The ultimate guide to the best watercolor brushes. [online] jennarainey.com. Available at: https://jennarainey.com/ultimate-guide-best-watercolor-brushes/ [Accessed 7 Oct. 2026].
• Roebuck, A. (2018). Watercolor brush size chart free PDF! — Watercolor affair. [online] Watercolor Affair — Learn the Art and Techniques of Watercolor Painting. Available at: https://www.watercoloraffair.com/watercolor-brush-size-chart/ [Accessed 17 Oct. 2026].
• Sobuj, M.J. (2026). Paint brush sizes explained: Ultimate guide. [online] Painting Pro Guide. Available at: https://paintingproguide.com/paint-brush-sizes-explained/ [Accessed 7 Oct. 2026].
• Wee Paint Brush (2023). The science of brush bristles natural. [online] Paint Brush Manufacturer & Supplier, Custom Wholesale Brush Factory | Wee Paint Brush. Available at: https://www.weepaintbrush.com/the-science-of-brush-bristles-natural/ [Accessed 7 Oct. 2026].
• Wikipedia Contributors (2019). Cellulose. [online] Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulose [Accessed 18 Oct. 2026].

Books

• Laws, J.M. (2012). The laws guide to drawing birds. Berkeley, California: Heyday. Available at: https://amzn.to/4xrKHTz (affiliate link), and https://bookshop.org/a/128387/9781597141956 (affiliate link).
• Rainey, J. (2017). Everyday watercolor. Watson-Guptill. Available at: https://amzn.to/3WxRpud (affiliate link), and https://bookshop.org/a/128387/9780399579721 (affiliate link).
• Voloshin-Smith, V. (2024). Watercolor 101: Pocket guide. Rocky Nook. Available at: https://amzn.to/4gRmOjf (affiliate link), and https://bookshop.org/a/128387/9798888142219 (affiliate link).

Videos

• Alnock, S. (2026). Watercolor brushes I wish I knew about years ago. part one. [online] Sandy Paints. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTaXqnEGF7M [Accessed 13 Oct. 2026].
• Rainey, J. (2021a). Do’s and don’ts for long lasting watercolor brushes. [online] Jenna Rainey. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPv-E4nKbXs [Accessed 13 Oct. 2026].
• Rainey, J. (2021b). The complete beginner’s guide to watercolor. [online] Jenna Rainey. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDdfPMTX15Y [Accessed 14 Oct. 2026].

An Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Watercolor, Part 3 — Paper, Brushes, & Beyond was originally published in Babel on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

IMPORTANT: This is part 2 of 3. Read Part 1 — Paint here.

In Part 1, I said that understanding pigments was the trickiest aspect of watercolor. Then I dove into choosing colors…

More than two weeks later I think I have it sorted. It was a journey, but I learned just so much in the process. I structured this article around that journey as best I could. I hope that in the end you will find this useful and enlightening as well.

And with that, let’s learn about choosing colors and paints for our watercolor palettes.

The Easy Option: Pre-Made Palettes

One option, of course, is to buy a pre-constructed palette. That is by far the quickest and easiest way to get started. Most even come with a compact carrying case. The problem is that someone else put those colors together, and they may not work for the kind of palette you want.

When I decided to try watercolor, I bought three different pre-made palettes — not all at once — to try a variety of colors and cases. It worked fine, but as I learned more I ended up replacing most of the paints. My current travel palette only retains three of the pans from those original sets, and I’m left with a Ziploc bag full of barely used pans.

If you’d prefer to start with a pre-made palette, here are a few options (affiliate links):

• Winsor & Newton Cotman Watercolor, Sketchers’ Pocket Set — The color selection is just ok, though I do really like the compact case.
• Van Gogh Watercolour, Basic Colors — I prefer the paint selection in this set over the Cotman set, but it still isn’t perfect. The case is nice but unnecessarily large for the number of paints it holds.
• DANIEL SMITH Watercolor, Ultimate Mixing Set — If you want to jump right to the expensive paints, this 15-color palette is an even better starting point. The case is very compact, one of my preferred styles. It even comes with a second case and 15 extra empty half pans.

If you’re reading this, you’re likely the sort of person who’d prefer assembling your palette for yourself. If that’s you, read on.

To get the most out of your first palette, I recommend that you construct it to include a broad but limited selection of general purpose colors that also allow for flexible mixing options.

The rest of this article will dig into how to go about doing that.

The DIY Option: A Little (Too Much?) Color Theory

To put together an effective mixing palette, it helps to understand how color mixing works. To do that, we need to cover some of the basics of how color itself works. If you want to skip the theory, feel free to scroll down until you find the Pigment Color Wheel image.

The Visible Light Spectrum

At its most basic, all color is made up of differing wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation — all from within the small portion of the spectrum that we can see.

When radiation within the visible light spectrum — between about 380 and 740 nanometers — enters our eyes, our brains interpret them as colors. The exact color you see depends on the specific wavelength, or mix of wavelengths, that is present (Clark, 2021).

TIP: Though most people use “violet” and “purple” interchangeably — including most artists — they are not technically the same thing.

Violet is a spectral color, meaning that it exists as a discrete band of wavelengths on the visible light spectrum — below 400nm wavelength, give or take — right before it moves into ultraviolet. By contrast, purple is a combination of blue and red wavelengths that are combined by your brain into a single perceived color (Eckstut and Eckstut, 2020, pp. 85–86).

In fact, all of the colors between violet and red on the color wheel are “nonspectral” colors. They exist only in the mind of the observer.

For the artist, there’s little practical difference, and I’ve settled on using “violet,” as most sources I’ve referenced do.

Additive vs. Subtractive Color

When dealing with mixing colors, it’s important to know whether we’re dealing with additive or subtractive color mixing. Put simply, additive colors are projected from light sources, while subtractive colors are light reflected from a surface.

When you see light directly from a source — whether it is the sun, a lightbulb, or a monitor or display — the color you see is a result of the wavelengths of light it is projecting. Different colors are a result of which wavelengths are present, and adding more colors to the mix adds those wavelengths to the projected light, altering the final color you see.

When light reflects off a physical surface — a material, or inks, dyes, or pigments — not all of it is reflected. Some wavelengths of light will be absorbed by the surface. The color you see is a result of which wavelengths are left in the reflected light. Adding more colors for the light to pass through or reflect off subtracts more wavelengths from that reflected light, changing the color you see.

One result of this difference worth highlighting is that with subtractive color mixing, the resulting color is necessarily less bright than the colors mixed to make it. This makes sense once you realize that by adding colors, you are subtracting the amount of light that is reflected.

The key takeaway is that when talking about paint, we’re talking exclusively about subtractive color mixing.

NOTE: Digging deeper, projected and reflected light have a very interesting relationship. Thinking too much about it can trap you in a chicken-and-egg loop.

You can only see a reflective material’s actual color after projected light has bounced off of it. But you can only see the final additive mix of projected light by looking at a material it has bounced off of.

In the end, the relationship between color, light, and reflective materials is extremely complicated. Both surfaces and light play important and interdependent roles in how we perceive color.

Primary Colors

Primaries are often defined as colors that can not be mixed from other colors (Voloshin-Smith, 2024, p. 25). That definition is too loose and open-ended to be workable, though.

A more useful definition is that primaries are colors that can be mixed to produce the widest range of other colors. It’s also important to know that there is no universal, absolute set of primaries — or even a set number of primaries. When we name primaries, we’re choosing the fewest colors that can most efficiently mix the most other colors. (Clark, 2021)

In our case, the minimal workable number is three. There are no two colors in any medium that can recreate the whole color spectrum. But with three, it’s possible — if only just.

IMPORTANT: It’s not actually possible to create perfect primaries in physical media like pigments. While it’s theoretically possible to mix every color from just three primaries, it’s not literally possible. Still, you can get close, and it is the best place to start building our mixing palette.

This still leaves us with an important question:

Which Primaries to Use?

Most of us learned in school that the subtractive primaries are RYB — red, yellow, and blue. Mix two primaries and you get the three secondary colors:

• Red and yellow make orange
• Yellow and blue make green
• Blue and red make violet

The RYB model is intuitive, works well for getting the ideas across to children, and it’s almost correct.

Better subtractive primaries — sometimes called the “modern primaries” — are CMY (cyan, magenta, and yellow). You might recognize that from color printing, which uses CMYK (K = black). These colors are standard because they provide the most efficient way to mix the most colors with the fewest required inks. More expensive and professional systems will use more colors (Clark, 2021), trading efficiency for greater fidelity.

This change from RYB to CMY shifts the secondary colors as well:

• Cyan and magenta make blue-violet
• Magenta and yellow make red
• Yellow and cyan make green

“Thanks to modern intense and lightfast pigments, we can choose much more effective paints than were available to artists of the past, and as a result the traditional primary triad — red, yellow, and blue — is obsolete and should not be taught.” (MacEvoy, 2015)

Simply put, RYB is intuitive but based on incomplete information. I don’t agree that it should not be taught, but CMY is the result of a deeper understanding of color science, better measuring tools, and better pigments. My feeling is that RYB should be taught as a matter of science and art history.

For the artist, the central advantage of CMY over RYB is the same as for printers: CMY allows for a wider range of mixed colors from just three primaries. Since mixing subtractive colors always results in a darker color, starting with cyan and magenta rather than blue and red allows for a greater overall tonal range. This is particularly noticeable when trying to mix bright greens (Laws, 2012, pp. 102–103).

CMY also covers the visible spectrum somewhat more evenly than RYB, which bunches up at the red end of the spectrum and leaves gaps toward the violet end.

TIP: The order of color names like “blue-violet” and “yellow-green” matters. The first color modifies the second. For example, “blue-violet” is a violet color that leans blue, and “yellow-green” is a green color that leans yellow.

I’ve had to correct both my own text and image labels multiple times, so I thought it was worth clearing up.

Digital vs. Pigment Colors

One last wrinkle to explore:

Actual pigment colors behave differently from theoretically perfect digital colors.

I confess that this part tripped me up.

I spent days researching nothing else — trying to reconcile the differences I was finding among sources — and then days more working out how to best explain what I found. In particular, the colors between yellow and magenta differ depending on source.

The key breakthrough for me was to recognize that a color wheel is not a literal expression of reality. For convenience and clarity, the key colors are typically adjusted so that the primaries are evenly spaced around the circle. In a sense, every color wheel you’ve ever seen is a well-meaning fiction.

“Some color wheels adjust the location of paints around the hue circle so that certain hues fall neatly on evenly spaced ‘spokes’. In each case, the color locations are manipulated to represent a color theory.” (MacEvoy, 2015)

That’s not to say there is no value in a constructed color wheel! It is a clear and efficient way to represent many aspects of color theory, in particular the relationship between complements.

TIP: Complements: Colors that sit opposite each other on the color wheel, when mixed, cancel each other out to create neutral tones. Theoretically nearly gray but, due to the vagaries of pigments, just as often a dull brown.

We just need to be sure we’re working with a constructed color wheel that reflects our medium accurately enough to be useful. Luckily, handprint.com has several useful resources for constructing that color wheel.

The Artist’s Color Wheel

Using a consistent methodology and tools, Bruce MacEvoy (handprint.com) took detailed measurements from masstone samples of 90 common watercolor pigments. He used those measurements — based on CIECAM02, a detailed and standardized color appearance model (Moroney et al., 2002) — to create the “Artist’s Color Wheel” below (MacEvoy, 2015a).

Though overwhelming at first glance, this color wheel can be used to identify useful relationships between colors when painting.

Below, I’ve overlaid wedges for the CMY primary and secondary colors on MacEvoy’s color wheel, adjusting their positions to match the actual measured positions of the pigment(s) that most closely represent those colors. We can use this to check how the colors line up with their theoretical complements when actual physical measurements are involved.

The positions of the colors reveal that two of the three complementary pairs don’t quite line up. We’re not going to touch cyan, magenta, or yellow — those being our primaries — so we’re going to shift two secondary colors: Red to Red-Orange, and Blue-Violet to Violet-Blue.

Not perfect, but much better.

IMPORTANT: I need to stress that no matter how carefully measurements were taken, the positions of pigments on the Artist’s Color Wheel are not exact. There is necessarily some judgment, bias, interpretation, and unavoidable inexactitude involved. By the same token, the placement and size of the wedges I overlaid reflect my best attempt, but are still down to personal judgment and bias.

This is a useful framework, not an absolute truth.

You can drive yourself crazy trying to nail this stuff down, which is a big part of what makes watercolor — and physical mediums in general — both frustrating and beguiling.

The Pigment Color Wheel

That leads us to our final color wheel, which I’m calling the Pigment Color Wheel. For simplicity, I’ve turned it into a traditional color wheel with the colors spaced evenly around the wheel.

This color wheel will be our guide for the next steps.

There is far more to color theory, of course, but this is what we need for our purposes.

Defining the Colors in Our Palette

With theory out of the way, let’s move on to picking our colors.

The Six Base Colors

If you want to go totally minimalist, it’s possible to create colorful paintings with only three primary colors… but within limits. That is why I focused on both primary and secondary colors in the previous section. The difference in what’s possible between three and six colors is immense.

Six is thus the fewest colors I would start with. Personally, I think that twelve colors is the right target number for a small palette — a balance between having options without being overwhelming — but even then the core six colors are the most important. They are the foundation we will build the rest of the palette around.

Starting with the CMY primaries, there are two basic approaches to picking the initial six colors:

1. Split Primary
2. Complementary

Given my approach to the color theory, you can probably guess that I prefer the complementary approach. From my reading though, split primary is the most commonly recommended, so I’ll address that first.

Split Primary

This will generally be described using the RYB primaries:

• One warm red (middle red) and one cool red (red-violet)
• One warm yellow (middle yellow) and one cool yellow (yellow-green)
• One warm blue (blue-violet) and one cool blue (middle blue)

This threw me when I was first learning. I had come to watercolor with the CMY primaries already in mind, given my background in digital design, photography, and printing. When I dug into it though, I found that this amounts to a terminology problem.

CMY maps roughly to the cool half of the split primary pairs:

• Cool Blue is close to cyan
• Cool red approaches magenta
• Cool and warm yellow split yellow evenly

So what you end up with is a weak CMY plus RYB. This makes for an easy-to-understand palette that allows for a wide range of mixing possibilities. On the other hand, it limits the base colors, and forces you to mix paints for all but variations of red, yellow, and blue.

Complementary

We’ve already seen the three pairs in this approach:

• Cyan and Red-Orange
• Magenta and Green
• Yellow and Blue-Violet

The advantages of the complementary palette are:

1. You have a greater number of ready-to-go colors available.
2. It’s simpler to mix more colors, especially violets, oranges, greens (clearly, since you already have a green to start with).

This palette also maps better to the full Pigment Color Wheel, getting a bit closer to even coverage without requiring mixing.

So our first six colors are:

1. Cyan
2. Red-Orange
3. Magenta
4. Green
5. Yellow
6. Violet-Blue

The Other Six Colors

That leaves us with six more slots to fill. One obvious approach would be to add the six tertiary colors from the Pigment Color Wheel. That certainly is a valid option. I don’t believe it’s the best option, though, for a few reasons:

1. Most of the tertiary colors are relatively easy to mix at this point.
2. You will lack any ready-to-use desaturated, muted, and earthy colors.
3. Isn’t that just a bit… boring?

Instead, I suggest some combination of the following, which I’ll cover in more detail in the next section:

1. Convenience colors/mixes
2. Earth tones
3. Black tones
4. Black, white, and gray
5. Fun colors

Translating Colors Into Pigments

Using all of the information presented so far, personal experimentation, and far too much time spent on ArtistPigments.org, I’ve identified two solid pigment choices for each of the first six colors, and at least one for the rest. The result is almost forty pigment recommendations across twenty-four colors.

Most are on the Artist’s Color Wheel:

In the lists below, the first pigment is the most commonly recommended. The second is an alternative, generally a less saturated, less intense, darker, or less “pure” version of the same (or similar) hue. Either will work, it largely comes down to personal preference.

Primary & Secondary

These six form the essential core of our palette.

NOTE: The letter or letters in parenthesis after the color name are keyed to the image above.

• Cyan (C)— Phthalo Blue GS (PB15:3), Cerulean Blue (PB35)
• Magenta (M) — Quinacridone Magenta (PR122), Quinacridone Violet (PV19)
• Yellow (Y) — Hansa Yellow Medium (PY97), Benzimidazolone Yellow (PY154 or PY151)
• Red-Orange (RO) — Pyrrole Orange (PO73), Cadmium Scarlet (PR108)
• Green (G) — Phthalo Green BS (PG7), Phthalo Green YS (PG36)
• Violet-Blue (VB) — Ultramarine Blue (PB29), Indanthrone Blue (PB60)

TIP: The “3” after the colon in “PB15:3” is important, as that identifies it as the green shade version of the pigment. It’s that shade that causes it to appear and mix as a cyan rather than just a dark blue.

Convenience Colors/Mixes

Some colors are particularly difficult to mix, even with the CMY primary and secondary colors. In particular violet, orange, and some greens.

• Red (CR) — Pyrrole Red (PR254), Cadmium Red Medium (PR108)
• Orange (CO) — Quinacridone Burnt Orange (PO48)
• Orange-Yellow (CY) — Hansa Yellow Deep (PY65), Nickel Azo Yellow (PY150)
• Green (CG) — Yellow Green (various mixes), Cobalt Titanate Green (PG50)
• Teal/Turquoise (CT) — Cobalt Turquoise (PB36), Cobalt Teal Blue (PG50)
• Blue (CB) — Cobalt Blue (PB28), Phthalo Blue RS (PB15:1)
• Violet (CV) — Dioxazine Violet (PV23), Manganese Violet (PV16)

TIP: Once again, the “1” in “PB15:1” matters. It indicates the red shade that causes it to appear and mix as a blue rather than a cyan-blue (which “PB15” is).

Earth Tones

These are especially useful if you want to paint landscapes, animals, or nature scenes.

• Yellow (E1) — Yellow Ochre (PY43)
• Orange (E2) — Raw Sienna (PBr7)
• Dark Orange (E3) — Burnt Sienna (PBr7)
• Brown (E4) — Raw Umber (PBr7)
• Dark Brown (E5) — Burnt Umber (PBr7)

Black Tones

My catch-all term for colored paints that are so dark they can appear almost black in masstone. Good for toning down mixes, and creating areas of almost black.

• Black-Green (BkG) — Perylene Green (PBk31)
• Black-Blue (BkB) — Indanthrone Blue (PB60)
• Black-Violet (BkV) — Quinacridone Purple (PV55)

TIP: PB60 shows up in these lists twice. When more diluted, it’s a beautiful deep blue; less diluted it’s a very dark black-blue.

Black, White, and Gray

There are a number of mixes that require a bit of either white or black to achieve. Grays are useful for toning down mixes or adding glazes.

• White (Wh) — Zinc Oxide White (PW4), Titanium White (PW6)
• Black (Bk) — Carbon Black (PBk6), Bone Black (PBk9)
• Gray — Payne’s Gray, Neutral Tint (mixes differ by brand).

TIP: I recommend PW4 over PW6 for the simple reason it is usually less opaque and mixes more smoothly in my testing. PBk6 is less granulating and smoother than PBk9, so the choice there really depends on what look you’re after.

Fun Colors

If you have room, go ahead and add a color or two that makes you happy, even if they have no practical purpose in your palette.

For example, Holbein’s Opera, a bright neon pink. It’s attention-grabbing to say the least. The downside is that the dyes that make it so luminous (BV10 in Holbein’s version) are fugitive, fading quickly with UV light exposure. Even so, it’s often in my palette just because I like it.

Another, Daniel Smith’s Black Tourmaline Genuine keeps going in and out of my palette. It uses genuine tourmaline in place of a traditional pigment, which adds an extremely gritty texture to any mix.

My Current 15-Color Palette

(I recently picked up a travel case that holds fifteen colors, so I expanded from my original twelve.)

I am not implying that this is the best palette or the one you should use. I just want to show how I applied the information in this article to my own selections.

Primary & Secondary Colors

• Cyan — Daniel Smith Phthalo Blue GS (PB15:3)
• Magenta — Holbein Quinacridone Magenta (PR122)
• Yellow — Winsor & Newton Winsor Yellow (PY154)
• Orange-Red — Van Gogh Pyrrole Orange (PO73)
• Green — Van Gogh Phthalo Green BS (PG7)
• Blue-Violet — Winsor & Newton French Ultramarine (PB29)

Convenience Colors

• Red —Van Gogh Permanent Red Light (PR255)
• Violet — Winsor & Newton Winsor Violet (Dioxazine) (PV23)

Both of these open up colors that I haven’t been able to reliably mix in any other way. I plan to replace Permanent Red Light with Daniel Smith’s Pyrrol Red (254), which is deeper and more saturated.

Black Tones

• Black-Green — Winsor & Newton Perylene Green (PBk31)
• Black-Blue — Holbein Royal Blue (PB60)

Holbein’s Royal Blue, while beautiful, is less black-toned than some alternatives. I may replace it with Daniel Smith’s Indanthrone Blue when it runs out.

Earth Tones

• Orange — Van Gogh Raw Sienna (PY42+PR101)
• Dark Orange — Van Gogh Burnt Sienna (PR101)
• Dark Brown — Van Gogh Burnt Umber (PBr7)

I plan to replace Raw Sienna and Burnt Sienna paints with Daniel Smith’s versions, both of which use natural iron oxide (PBr7) rather than the synthetic version (PR101). It makes a difference in my tests — more even coverage and more attractive granulation.

Black & White

• Black — Holbein Lamp Black (PBk6)
• White — Van Gogh Chinese White (PW4)

Lamp Black, Chinese White, and Burnt Umber are the three paints I added when moving from twelve to fifteen paints. They are mostly useful for mixes.

That’s Part 2

I sincerely hope that was comprehensive and instructive. You should now have a solid starting point for choosing the colors in your palette. In my next article I’ll cover the rest of what you need to get going with watercolor: Paper, brushes, and more.

A Note on Sources

If you’d like to take your own deep dive into watercolor color theory, ArtistPigments.org is unmatched. While I relied heavily on Handprint.com for this article — MacEvoy’s synthesis of light physics, color physiology, and interpretive analysis is both in-depth and opinionated in the best way — it is becoming increasingly outdated as it is no longer updated.

By contrast, ArtistPigments.org is actively growing. Though it leans on objective measurements, almost to a fault — demanding more interpretation and inference from the reader — it offers the most comprehensive framework that I’m aware of for comparing pigments across brands, and even mediums.

I put together a Collection on that site that includes all of the recommended pigments above from the brands I’m comfortable recommending, filtered for at least Very Good lightfastness. At this moment there are more than seventy-five items on the list covering my twenty-four recommended colors. I may update this Collection as I do more testing. Check it out here: Complementary Mixing Palette.

Read Part 3 — Paper, Brushes, & Beyond here.

Sources

Books & Documents

• Eckstut, A. and Eckstut, J. (2020). What is color? 50 Questions and answers on the science of color. New York, NY: Abrams. Available at: https://amzn.to/4dwn8l9 (affiliate link), and https://bookshop.org/a/128387/9781419734519 (affiliate link).
• Laws, J.M. (2012). The laws guide to drawing birds. Berkeley, California: Heyday. Available at: https://amzn.to/4xrKHTz (affiliate link), and https://bookshop.org/a/128387/9781597141956](https://amzn.to/4xrKHTz) (affiliate link).
• Moroney, N., Fairchild, M., Hunt, R. and Li, C. (2002). The CIECAM02 color appearance model. [online] RIT Digital Institutional Repository. Available at: https://repository.rit.edu/other/143 [Accessed 17 Sept. 2026].
• Voloshin-Smith, V. (2024). Watercolor 101: Pocket guide. Rocky Nook. Available at: https://amzn.to/4gRmOjf (affiliate link), and https://bookshop.org/a/128387/9798888142219 (affiliate link).

Articles

• Clark, S.R. (2021). Advanced color theory: Color wheels, impossible colors, and the primary color debate. [online] Sarah Renae Clark — Coloring Book Artist and Designer. Available at: https://sarahrenaeclark.com/advanced-color-theory-ryb-vs-cmy/ [Accessed 4 Aug. 2026].
• MacEvoy, B. (2015). Handprint: Color wheels. [online] Handprint.com. Available at: https://handprint.com/HP/WCL/color13.html [Accessed 7 Sept. 2026].
• MacEvoy, B. (2015a). Handprint: An artist’s color wheel. [online] Handprint.com. Available at: https://handprint.com/HP/WCL/color16.html [Accessed 15 Sept. 2026].
• MacEvoy, B. (2015b). Handprint: The complete palette. [online] Handprint.com. Available at: https://handprint.com/HP/WCL/palette1.html [Accessed 15 Sept. 2026].

Websites

• artistpigments.org (2026). Watercolors. [online] Artist Pigments.org. Available at: https://artistpigments.org/mediums/watercolor [Accessed 4 Sept. 2026].
• MacEvoy, B. (2015c). Handprint: Watercolor. [online] Handprint.com. Available at: https://handprint.com/HP/WCL/water.html [Accessed 3 Sept. 2026].

An Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Watercolor, Part 2 — (Water)Color Theory was originally published in Babel on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Watercolor is a delicate art form that rewards a light touch, commitment, and patience. By rights, I should hate it. Instead, I find it relaxing. Even just mixing colors and testing them on paper is very satisfying.

And all you need for cleanup is water. Nice.

Watercolor is also deceptively complicated, and easy to get lost in.

You can just dive in and learn through experimentation, but that could end up being very expensive and time-consuming, and some of it will still never make sense without a little groundwork. I’ve been neck-deep in this research for a while now, so I’m writing this three-part series both to teach, and to learn.

To be clear, I’m not going to tell you exactly what paper, brushes, and paints you should acquire (though I will have a few recommendations after each part, if you want a place to start). I’m giving you a solid base of factual knowledge so you can approach watercolor with greater confidence.

My goal is to give you the tools you need to choose for yourself — without getting overwhelmed like I did.

Part 1 — Paint

Watercolor paints can be understood through four basic properties: pigment, binder, form factor, and grade.

1. Pigment

The first thing to understand about paint is that when we talk about paint, we’re really talking about pigments.

Pigments give a paint its color and — possibly more so for watercolor than for other paint mediums — define most of its characteristics as a medium. Pigments can be natural or chemical, sourced from plants, minerals, or even animals. Some pigments are relatively unchanged from their ancient origins, and some are a result of modern chemistry.

For our purposes, the key insight is that pigments define what a paint looks like, and how it behaves.

Paint Names vs. Pigment Names

The name printed on the outside of a tube of paint is an unreliable way to determine exactly what color the paint inside it is.

For example, what Daniel Smith calls “Pyrrol Orange,” M. Graham & Co. calls “Scarlet Pyrrol,” and Gamma Old Master Watercolor calls “Coral.” One pigment, three marketing names.

Another example, M. Graham & Co.’s “Cerulean Blue” is the same as Winsor & Newton’s “Cobalt Turquoise” and Isaro’s “Azure Blue.”

It’s a free-for-all out there when it comes to naming paint colors.

This is why we need to look at the paint’s pigment content rather than its marketing name. All pigments have a name and a code that are consistent among all brands and mediums, and any reputable brand will list the constituent pigments on the packaging.

Common examples include Phthalocyanine Blue (PB15), Cadmium Orange (PO20), and Quinacridone Magenta (PR122).

The P at the start identifies it as a pigment (a dye will have a D, and basic dyes will have a B). The second (and sometimes third) letter identifies the color family:

• PR = Red Pigment
• PO = Orange Pigment
• PY = Yellow Pigment
• PG = Green Pigment
• PB = Blue Pigment
• PV = Violet Pigment
• PBr = Brown Pigment
• PBk = Black Pigment
• PW = White Pigment
• PM = Metallic Pigment (special case: material instead of color)

Returning to the examples above:

• Pyrrol Orange, Scarlet Pyrrol, and Coral are all Pyrrol Orange (PO73).
• Cerulean Blue, Cobalt Turquoise, and Azure Blue are all Cobalt Chromium Oxide (PB36).

There will still be slight differences between manufacturers, but going by the pigment name will get you pretty close.

Important: Some pigments, depending on how they are prepared, can end up with a “shade,” a leaning or cast that changes the perception of the base color. If you see a paint name like “Phthalo Blue RS,” the “RS” is “Red Shade.”

Make sure to pay attention to the shade, it really does make a difference.

Check the Label — Lightfastness, Opacity, and Series

Here we get into what makes one pigment desirable over another, aside from the color. Lightfastness and opacity are going to be listed on the packaging of most paints from any reputable brand. Be warned that labels are quite variable between brands, so be sure you know what you’re reading.

Lightfastness

International standards group ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) performs standardized tests on most paint formulations to determine how well they stand up to light exposure without fading. They give each tested paint a rating from “Excellent” to “Fugitive.” These ratings assume unrealistic controlled “museum” conditions, so it’s generally not recommended to use paints with less than a “Very Good” rating.

One of the following ASTM ratings should be indicated on the packaging of the paint you’re looking at:

• I = Excellent
• II = Very good
• III = Fair
• IV = Fugitive

Note: Submitting to testing is voluntary, so some brands will provide their own ratings based on internal testing. Some add an additional permanency indication as well.

Do not buy paints that lack any rating, whether ASTM or the brand’s own.

Opacity

Watercolor pigments are transparent to different degrees. I prefer fully transparent pigments when possible, as it’s part of what makes watercolor unique.

Opacity is indicated with a somewhat standard square or circle symbol to identify three or four steps from transparent to opaque.

Series

The series has nothing to do with the appearance or performance of a pigment, and everything to do with its cost. Series 1 (sometimes A) pigments are the least expensive, and they get more expensive as the number (or letter) goes up.

Check the Website — Granulation & Staining

Beyond lightfastness and opacity, other key pigment properties will be indicated on marketing materials and websites.

Granulation

Some pigments are less finely ground than others, and some have a tendency to clump together as they dry. The resulting texture is referred to as “granulation.” I generally prefer smoother colors and gradients, and usually try to avoid granulating pigments, though that’s not always possible. And when used properly, granulation can add a lot of interest and drama, particularly in landscapes. I like to have at least one granulating blue and green in my palette, as well as a granulating earth tone.

Granulation will usually be indicated in the brand’s marketing and on their website, often with a “G” in the listing. Note that this is often a simple yes or no, it won’t always indicate how granulating the paint will be.

Staining

Some pigments can be lifted off the paper (to some degree) using a clean wet brush — and some cannot. Once a “staining” pigment touches the paper, the color is there forever. For the sake of control and versatility, I try to avoid staining pigments when I can, but often that isn’t possible.

Staining pigments are identified in different ways. Some brands will put an “S” or an “St” in the listing. Sometimes a square or triangle symbol is used that works similarly to how the opacity symbol works.

Check the Reviews — Tinting Strength & Masstone

These last two properties don’t always appear on the label or in the literature, but you should be aware of them. Your best bet for finding these is through experimentation or reading reviews.

Tinting Strength

When mixing paints, some watercolor pigments will exert themselves more strongly than others. Generally, more finely ground pigments are higher tinting, as are more opaque pigments. If you are intending to use paints in a mix, knowing their relative tinting strengths will make it much easier.

Masstone

“Masstone” (sometimes “mass tone”) is the term for a pigment used at full strength. Some pigments take on a different character in masstone that is useful to know about. One example is Perylene Green (PBk31), which appears green when diluted and close to black in masstone.

Some Pigments Have Range

To make this whole pigment thing even more complicated, multiple colors can be derived from a single pigment. A common example is Iron Oxide (PBr7). This one pigment is used to create Raw Sienna (a mid-valued earth yellow), Burnt Sienna (a dark earth orange), Raw Umber (a dark earth brown), and Burnt Umber (a very dark earth brown).

All four colors are in the same family, but they are distinct and not freely interchangeable.

On the flip side, different pigments sometimes produce nearly the same color. Daniel Smith, for instance, uses both Nickel Dioxime Yellow (PY153) and Yellow Iron Oxide (PY42), which can both appear to be the same color.

So why have colors using both of these pigments? Sometimes it’s because one is less expensive, but more often it’s because they perform slightly differently.

To continue with PY42 and PY153 from Daniel Smith, the differences are illustrative:

• Yellow Iron Oxide (PY42) — Daniel Smith offers three single-pigment paints made with PY42. Two are granulating, and all are non-staining.
• Nickel Dioxime Yellow (PY153) — Just one Daniel Smith paint, New Gamboge, uses PY153. To my eye, the actual hue is all but identical to Raw Sienna Light, but New Gamboge is non-granulating and somewhat staining.

The fact that PY42 is used in more colors than PY153 suggests it’s a more flexible or readily sourced pigment as well.

Single Pigment vs Multi-Pigment Paints

Paints can be either single-pigment paints or mixes. Ideally, as many paints in your palette as possible should be single pigment. This is most important when mixing paints to create new colors.

When you mix paints, as always, you should think of it as mixing their constituent pigments. It comes back to how subtractive colors work, which I’ll cover more in Part 2.

The key is that when you mix two single-pigment paints, you only have to account for the interactions of two pigments. If you mix two paints that have two pigments each, now you have to account for the interactions of four pigments with each other. The more pigments you mix, the more likely you are to create a muddy color.

The takeaway of all of this is: Pigments are complicated. Checking the pigment is the first step in exploring new colors, not the last. Knowing what to look for now will make that much easier.

2. Binder

The binder is a water soluble material — traditionally gum arabic and now often a synthetic alternative — that holds the pigment in suspension. There’s more to it than that, of course. There are preservatives, flow agents, fillers, and more. Thinking of everything that isn’t the pigment as simply “the binder” will do for our needs. You don’t often need to know more than that.

Important: A few brands, like M. Graham & Co. and A. Gallo, use honey in place of some or all of the gum arabic (or its substitute) in their binder. That doesn’t make them edible though! Many pigments are toxic if ingested. Best to play it safe and just assume all your paints are inedible.

3. Form Factor

Watercolor paints are available in a variety of form factors, listed from most to least common:

Tubes

All watercolor paints, as far as I am aware, are available in tubes. Typical tube sizes are 5ml and 15ml, though some brands diverge from those.

Tubes are great because even a small tube will fill several pans for roughly the price of a single pan. Tube paints remain at a gel-like consistency until exposed to air. If allowed to dry, they will usually dry to a semi-solid or gummy consistency, depending on the exact make-up of the formula.

The trade-off is that the process can be messy, and pure paint straight from the tube has a tendency to get everywhere.

Absolutely everywhere. But maybe that’s just me.

Pans

Pans are small rectangular tubs that hold paint in portable palettes, allowing them to be rearranged and swapped at will. Half pans are the most common, and are of a roughly uniform size from one manufacturer to the next. Full pans are twice the width of half pans — thus “half” pans — but are less common.

Pans can be purchased pre-filled, or empty so you can fill them yourself. Ready-made palettes usually feature pre-filled half pans rather than non-removable wells, allowing you to freely experiment with the setup. Pans are the easiest way to get started, if not the most economical.

Be warned that in most cases there is nothing but gravity holding the pans into the palette. I’ve taken to gluing thin (1mm) magnets to the bottoms of pans, with a second magnet in the bottom of the well, to keep them in place but still movable. You can also buy empty pans with integrated magnets.

Sticks

Much less common but very interesting are Daniel Smith’s watercolor sticks. These look like thick crayons or oil pastels, but they are made from the same pigments as the tubes and pans, just shaped into a stick (I assume there’s something different in the binder to make this possible, though I’m not certain). I have not used these personally, but see a lot of potential for them.

4. Grade

Paints are broadly divided into three quality categories: Child, Student, and Professional.

Child

Most of us first encountered watercolor in this form. These usually come in flat plastic cases with small round pans of paint that are either chalky or greasy. These use less expensive pigments and dyes, and are marketed as non-toxic. Inexpensive and easy to use, they’re perfect for children exploring art, but lack the quality control, depth, and durability of better quality paints.

We won’t be considering these.

Student

Student grade paints come in the same forms as professional watercolor paints — tubes, pans, and sometimes sticks — but are more economically produced. This allows serious students to practice with paints that are pretty good, without the high cost of professional paints.

The trade-off is that student paints sometimes use cheaper, less desirable pigments that don’t perform as well as the preferred pigments. They also usually contain less pigment and more fillers. You can make beautiful art with student grade paints, but there’s one more step up if you want the finest handling and colors available.

Professional

Professional grade watercolor paints are made with expensive pigments and are more likely to use single pigments per color, leading to more reliable mixing. The pigment load is higher and the binder will have fewer fillers compared to student paints.

The trade-off, of course, is cost. Professional watercolor paints can be very expensive. You can easily spend a couple hundred dollars for a full 24-color palette.

Brand Recommendations

A quick count puts the number of brands producing watercolor paints at well over 200. To give you a representative sampling, below are the brands that I have experience with and recommend. Two student and four professional grade brands, in order of preference.

Source for numbers: artistpigments.org (2026)

Student — Van Gogh (Royal Talens)

• Made in: Holland
• Paints: 72 (29 single-pigment)

Very few colors are granulating (4), and the majority have excellent lightfastness (66).

This is my highest recommendation for a beginner. I still have a number of Van Gogh paints in my palette, and have no plans to swap in professional alternatives until they’ve run out, if even then.

Student — Cotman (Winsor & Newton)

• Made in: France
• Paints: 48 (25 single-pigment)

They have a few more granulating paints than Van Gogh (6). Be warned that only a quarter of their paints are rated as having the best lightfastness (12).

Cotman paints are high quality and comparable in price to Van Gogh (when you account for the per-ml price), but I’ve always found them to be a bit less vibrant and fun to use.

Professional — Daniel Smith

• Made in: USA
• Paints: 280 (168 single-pigment)

More than half of their paints are granulating (174), and a vast majority have excellent lightfastness (276).

Usually my first stop for professional paints. They offer more colors than anyone else, including unique colors made from raw minerals (their PrimaTek line).

Professional — Winsor & Newton

• Made in: France
• Paints: 116 (79 single-pigment)

Nearly a third of their colors are granulating (36). A little more than a third of their paints are rated as Excellent lightfastness (41), so be sure to check.

Winsor & Newton is known for consistently high quality across their range. Others may be trying new and exciting things, but W&N is nearly always a safe choice.

Professional — Holbein

• Made in: Japan
• Paints: 190 (55 single-pigment)

Nearly half of their paints are granulating (88). Only a third are rated the highest level of lightfastness (63). Known to be controllable and easy to work with as a result of not including ox-gall (a common flow improver additive) in their paints (HK Holbein, 2024).

Holbein paints are high quality and are often competitively priced. Just be sure to check the lightfastness rating before buying.

Professional — M. Graham & Co.

• Made in: USA
• Paints: 72 (56 single-pigment)

Half of their colors are granulating (36), and most are rated as the highest level of lightfastness (64). Made with a honey-heavy binder meant to improve smoothness and color vibrancy (M. Graham & Co., 2026).

The only reason I don’t have more M. Graham & Co. paints in my palette is because the binder that makes their paints extra smooth also means they never fully dry in the pan. For studio use, they’re vibrant and luscious and quite satisfying to use.

That’s Part 1

If you’ve read this far, congratulations! You now know more about the nitty gritty of watercolor paints than many artists.

Of all subjects connected to watercolor painting, the paint itself is by far the most nitpicky and treacherous. Hopefully I’ve covered the complexities and pitfalls in a way that saves you from some of the doom spirals I’ve found myself in.

In my next article, I’m going to get into methods for actually picking your colors and assembling your first palette. Then Part 3 will cover paper and brush options.

Read Part 2 — Color here.

Sources

• artistpigments.org (2022–2026). Watercolors. [online] Artist Pigments.org. Available at: https://artistpigments.org/mediums/watercolor [Accessed 4 Sept. 2026].
• Daniel Smith (2025). Color charts. [online] DANIEL SMITH Artists’ Materials. Available at: https://danielsmith.com/color-charts/ [Accessed 8 Sept. 2026].
• Dick Blick Art Materials (2024). Watercolor paint. [online] Dickblick.com. Available at: https://www.dickblick.com/categories/painting/watercolor-paint/ [Accessed 9 Sept. 2026].
• HK Holbein (2024). Watercolors. [online] Holbeinartistmaterials.com. Available at: https://holbeinartistmaterials.com/watercolors/ [Accessed 8 Sept. 2026].
• MacEvoy, B. (2015). Handprint: Watercolor. [online] Handprint.com. Available at: https://handprint.com/HP/WCL/water.html [Accessed 3 Sept. 2026].
• M. Graham & Co. (2026). Watercolors. [online] M. Graham & Co. Available at: https://mgraham.com/artists-colors/watercolors/ [Accessed 8 Sept. 2026].
• Scheinberger, F. (2014). Urban watercolor sketching: A guide to drawing, painting, and storytelling in color. Berkeley: Watson-Guptill Publications. Available at: https://amzn.to/4A3MgcP (affiliate link), and https://bookshop.org/a/128387/9780770435219 (affiliate link).
• Winsor & Newton NA (2024). Professional Watercolour. [online] Winsor & Newton NA. Available at: https://www.winsornewton.com/collections/professional-watercolour [Accessed 8 Sept. 2026].

An Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Watercolor, Part 1 was originally published in Babel on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Important: The links in this article may be affiliate links. If you use them to buy something, your price won’t be affected, but I’ll earn a small commission.

1. Art & Creativity

Books about art, writing, and creative pursuits in general.

Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art

by Scott McCloud

A comic book about comic books, and an essential work for anyone interested in how art, communication, and visual storytelling work. Topics illuminated include the interplay of text and images, how the masking effect makes cartoons more universal and relatable, and a comprehensive theory of artistic development.

It blew my mind in my teens, and I still can’t recommend it more highly.

The Design of Everyday Things: Revised & Expanded

by Don Norman

The essential usability classic by Don Norman, the designer who defined the practice of User Experience (UX) design at Apple in the early ’90s. I do think some of his ideas are a bit unworkable (his answer to light switches comes to mind), but the concepts and process he details in this book will quite literally change the way you see and interact with the world.

Long Story Short: The Only Storytelling Guide You’ll Ever Need

by Margot Leitman

Essential reading for anyone who wants to get better at telling stories effectively. Most important, in my view, are the methods for condensing and streamlining a story to make it more digestible without changing its essential qualities. Fiction writers, essayists, salespeople, researchers, businesspeople, and honestly anyone who ever tells a story for any reason will benefit from reading this book.

A Game Design Vocabulary: Exploring the Foundational Principles Behind Good Game Design

by Anna Anthropy & Naomi Clark

This book strips game design back to its most basic concept: defining the verbs the player uses to interact with the game. It’s a deceptively simple idea that has deep implications that will change not only how you create games — both digital and physical — but also how you play them.

Here Is Real Magic: A Magician’s Search

by Nate Staniforth

I love magic — illusion, sleight of hand, mentalism, all of it. It’s the ability to add a little extra delight and wonder to the everyday world. Seeing magic through Nate Staniforth’s eyes as he travels the world to reclaim his lost spark deepened and broadened my appreciation.

What Is Color?: 50 Q&A on Color Science

by Arielle Eckstut & Joann Eckstut

Color is a complicated and fascinating subject. Most works on color focus on color theory and the construction of palettes, but rarely get into the actual mechanics of color. If you’re interested in the science behind the theory, I can’t recommend this book strongly enough.

2. History & Science

Books covering subjects many of us did not adequately focus on in school.

A Short History of Nearly Everything 2.0

by Bill Bryson

A fantastic and engaging history of scientific discovery delivered with wit and warmth as only Bill Bryson can. It is compelling, informative, and provides a solid grounding in the development of critical thinking and the scientific method. I read the first edition over a decade ago, and the second edition has been updated to bring it up to the present (as of 2025).

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

by Timothy Snyder

History has lessons for us about how to recognize the rising of a tyrannical state. Now more than ever before it is important to know and name those signs. Almost the shortest book on this list, it could prove to be the most consequential if enough people read it.

American Nations: History of Eleven Rival Regions

by Colin Woodard

The theory presented is that the United States is best thought of as a collection of 11 separate nations — each with its own identity, self-mythology, and priorities. Though not without weaknesses, the arguments are compelling and will change how you think about many current political and cultural struggles.

Woodard’s recent follow-up, Nations Apart, is just as engaging and focuses more on the current political climate in the US and the light his theory sheds on how we got here.

3. Health & Safety

These books focus on self-improvement, quality of life, health, and security.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking

by Susan Cain

The book that taught me what being an introvert really meant, what makes us unique, and why it doesn’t mean we’re broken. I owe a lot of my ability to understand and accept myself as I am to the lessons in this book.

Buddhist Boot Camp: Ancient Wisdom for Peace

by Timber Hawkeye

An accessible and deceptively deep introduction to practicing mindfulness in the modern world. I have complicated feelings about some parts of this book, but I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to anyone seeking a new (old) way to view and live in the world.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

by Mark Manson

Crude but impactful and immediately applicable. It’s not about caring less; it’s about caring about the right things and letting the rest go. Easier said than done, but worth trying to achieve. Also worth a read along the same lines is the No F*cks Given Guides series by Sarah Knight.

PRIVACY IN AMERICA: What Every American Needs to Know

by Mitch Jackson Esq.

I’ve become intensely interested in privacy and surveillance in recent years — for obvious reasons. This book is the one I would recommend first to anyone wanting an overview of protecting themselves online and IRL (in real life), or not sure where to begin.

For a really deep dive, I would recommend Extreme Privacy: What It Takes to Disappear by Michael Bazzell. The “extreme” in the title is well-earned.

4. Business & Productivity

Books about working smarter, not harder.

Reinventing Organizations: Illustrated Invitation

by Frederic Laloux & Etienne Appert

For many of us, modern work is broken; Reinventing Organizations seeks to codify and diagnose not only what is wrong, but how we might go about making it better. Even if you are not in a position to drive change, just having a framework to think about your work environment is immensely helpful. I prefer the immediacy and accessibility of the lighter, illustrated version linked here.

Scrum: A Breathtakingly Brief and Agile Introduction

by Chris Sims & Hillary Louise Johnson

Everything you actually need to know about how Scrum methodology works. Whether you’re using a defined Scrum or Agile process, this small book is well worth reading. It’s also the shortest and likely cheapest book on this list, making good on the promise of the title.

And there it is, 15 (+3) non-fiction books that I recommend to everyone — at least right now. I’m constantly revising and reordering this list, I’m sure I’ll be posting an update at some point. Whether you agree with my picks as a whole, I do hope I’ve given you at least one new title to look up.

Books that changed how I move through the world was originally published in Babel on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you compose documents in Markdown, you know why it’s the best way to write on a computer:

• The syntax is simple, clean, and focused on structure
• The files are small, portable, universally editable text files
• Markdown files play well with version control

But there eventually comes a time when you need something more refined. Maybe it’s a report for your boss. A shareable file for a less-techy friend or relative. Or a portfolio piece for your website. What you need is a polished and consistent PDF.

That’s where Markdown’s tooling comes up short.

You spend hours copying your text into formatting software, recreating your formatting from scratch. Or you use the export tools built into your editor, which may not be able to create the look and style you’re after. Maybe you wrestle with LaTeX’s baroque syntax, seeking finer formatting control.

That’s exactly the friction that SimpleDoc solves.

If you’ve run into this problem and you’re comfortable with simple terminal commands, then SimpleDoc is for you.

SimpleDoc comes in two flavors:

SimpleDoc Lite

• Free and open source (released under an MIT license)
• Quickstart and overview README.md file
• Fully capable for basic formatting
• 61 KB zip file (Pandoc & XeLaTeX require a few GB of disk space)

SimpleDoc Pro

• Paid (one-time purchase per major release, yours to keep forever)
• Quickstart and overview README.md, plus in-depth USER-GUIDE.md
• A working example project
• All features in Lite, plus watermarks, page X of Y numbering, custom headers, auto-date, H2 page breaks, and a font fallback system
• 217 KB zip file (Pandoc & XeLaTeX require a few GB of disk space)

You never have to touch raw code.

Both Lite and Pro are built on proven open source tools — Pandoc 3.0 or later, and XeLaTeX — so there’s no risk of vendor lock-in or abandonment. Simple scripts and templates handle the formatting; you just deal with configuration files. You only edit one YAML file per project to set up title and author, layout, fonts, TOC, etc. You can save configuration files to reuse, ensuring consistency.

I’ve been creating technical documentation for nearly a decade. More recently I’ve started writing blog posts, explainers, and personal essays. I kept running into the same friction: I wanted a simple way to create polished and consistent PDFs without having to fiddle with settings or rely on a commercial software package — like InDesign or Affinity — that might disappear or become too expensive without warning.

So I built SimpleDoc using Claude, refining it over months of actual use. I wanted to use open source tools and make the whole setup easy to install on any system. I believe SimpleDoc achieves that.

IMPORTANT: If you are at all unsure if SimpleDoc will work for you, I encourage you to start with SimpleDoc Lite.
The README.md file includes directions to get you up and running quickly, a full list of configurable options, and details the differences between Lite and Pro.

Have you ever watched a full-grown man, someone your father’s age, in fact, throw a temper-tantrum? I mean a real, honest-to-goodness — arms and legs flailing wildly about, head thrashing back and forth with every spittle-flecked word, toddler being told he can’t have another lollipop and clearly someone is over-tired and really needs a nap — temper-tantrum?

I have. It would have been both sad and hilarious if that man hadn’t been my boss. He was, so it was mostly sad and a little scary.

> You can also read this on my site.

As I find myself job hunting again, I’m reflecting on past jobs, good and bad. I haven’t had the best of luck, I must admit, though that partially has to do with the number of startups and businesses-in-transition I’ve worked for.

I’m proud to say that I’ve never been fired from a professional position — I don’t count a retail job I had as a teenager, nor the call center that immediately hired me back after binning the manager who’d fired me — but I was once laid off four times in ten years. Five, if I count a long-running freelance gig that dried up.

One job in particular stands out as the worst of the worst.

As painful as it was, the worst boss I ever had taught me a valuable lesson: The most powerful tool you can have for protecting yourself at work is the same one you need to negotiate from a position of strength — Be ready and able to walk away.

Note: I’m changing names and identifying details, and compressing events for clarity. I have no interest in causing new drama, so that’s all I have to say about that.

My Worst Job

The key players in this tragicomedy:

• Surly: The Big Boss; a low-key rage-aholic man-child waddling his way toward retirement.
• Sleazy: VP of something or other; a middling sycophant far out of his depth.
• Edgy: My manager, a chain-smoking misanthrope utterly uninterested in managing anyone.
• Queasy: My department lead, ambitious and feeling stuck, suffering in silence.
• Tipsy: A coworker. Like me, he refused to suffer in silence.
• Dizzy: An amalgam of several other coworkers, to keep things streamlined.
• Remorseful: To be fair to the naming convention, I suppose that’s me.

When I started at this job, I was hopeful. That’s how it is — you go in full of innocence and hope. But I really did feel good about it. I got along well with my new coworkers (initially Queasy and Dizzy), Edgy was high-strung but seemed pretty chill about our day-to-day, and Surly seemed to really care about his people.

During my interview, Surly spent as much time selling me on the company as he did interrogating my credentials. The health insurance was among the best I’ve had, and 401(k) matching was generous. Good deal.

That glowing feeling didn’t last long, of course. I wasn’t worried yet. The new job shine always wears off sooner or later, and things were still pretty good.

Then, Queasy left.

That was when Dizzy and I learned how much crap Surly had been raining down on him, all of it silently absorbed — a torrent of unreasonable demands followed by verbal abuse when the demands weren’t met. Now, all of that fell on us.

Edgy’s approach to managing had always been “manage yourselves,” so he was no help here.

Dizzy wasn’t interested in making waves and kept his head down as much as possible. I wasn’t so smart. I tried repeatedly to demonstrate why what we were being asked for wouldn’t work. I naively clung to the hope that certainly this time, finally this time, they’d get it. You can guess how that went.

Sleazy decided to take charge and appoint himself unofficial creative director, despite having no related background or expertise. I was hopeful until, rather than backing us, he assured Surly that he could get us in line. Even after an outside consultant — clearly brought in to “set us straight” — told Sleazy our only real problem was a lack of capable leadership, he carried on in the role.

Tipsy was hired around this time. He later told me that during his interview, Sleazy said our team was floundering and they hoped he’d be able to fix us. It didn’t take long for Tipsy to realize what was really going on. That exact story repeated itself with every subsequent hire, and still they were convinced the problem was with us.

The Review Meetings

I’ve always enjoyed peer critiques, and at first our weekly review meetings were exactly that. It was just the team and we’d review each other’s work, offer suggestions, and trade tips. It was mostly positive, and regardless of what anyone else thought, we were working well as a team. Sometimes the project managers or salespeople would join us to check the progress on their projects, but they left the technical and creative critiques to us.

When Edgy bothered to attend, he rarely spoke. He was easy enough to ignore when he did. When Sleazy and Surly attended, however, the tone was different, tense and combative.

Before long they were attending every week, and I came to dread these meetings. One of these meetings sparked the aforementioned temper-tantrum. Each meeting was an exercise in growing a thick skin and not laughing out loud at the sheer absurdity of it all.

More than once Surly said he’d looked up a YouTube video demonstrating one technique or another, and it only took the video guy a few minutes, so why did it take us so long?

One time he — a lifelong salesman — told a room full of experienced creatives (all of us with degrees and a collective four decades or more of experience) that we clearly didn’t know what we were doing, and maybe he should just do it himself. He blamed us for costing him sales and making his job more difficult. He said he couldn’t use any of our recent work in his sales presentations because it was so bad.

I asked to see what he was presenting. He liked to go on and on about how we were a “high-tech” company and our output needed to look like it. I was curious what he thought high-tech looked like.

The examples were uniformly dated and amateurish. At least a decade behind current standards. I was embarrassed to be associated with work like that, but apparently Surly loved it. I didn’t know how he made any sales showing such garbage work, and in the moment, my face showed it. Dizzy said later it’s a good thing Surly wasn’t looking in my direction.

Whiplash

At some point in all of this, I was called alone into the conference room with Surly and Sleazy. I was braced for fire, but this was something else. They told me what a great job I was doing. They told me they saw that I was supporting and helping junior team members, and asked for any ideas I had to improve group cohesion. It was… welcome, but confusing.

I was handed an internal project and told I would have complete control. I was asked to write up plans and advise them on best practices, even if that meant undoing what had already been done. I was somewhat baffled, but pleased. I had plenty of ideas and really did believe in my team. I knew we could nail this and dove into planning.

Then the project proper got underway. My recommendations were first ignored, then derided as unrealistic or misinformed. I pointed out mistakes that had been made before I was involved, and Surly exploded. He screamed and ranted about how much money he’d already spent, the research he’d done, and how dare we not use what he handed us because what did I know anyway?

I’m only the expert he hired to know about these things, after all.

That project crashed and burned after we’d spent months — maybe even a year, all told — trying to make it match Surly’s original, unworkable vision.

The Office Incident

I was called into Surly’s office out of the blue. Edgy was already there, silently glaring at me as I took a seat.

Without preamble, Surly laid into me with both barrels. Screaming and hollering about my work. When I tried to defend myself, asking for specific examples, the focus suddenly shifted to “your attitude” (I can still see the spittle fly as he shrieked the word). Surly accused me of insubordination, of encouraging laziness and harming team morale by questioning our treatment and unrealistic demands.

He threatened and belittled me for a good 20 minutes, his face turning beet red with the effort, leaning over his desk and pounding his fist for emphasis. All of this with the door wide open. Surly had a weird thing about closed doors — for himself and for everyone else.

Everyone in that part of the building heard everything.

I don’t believe Edgy said more than two words through it all.

When I got back to my desk — in another part of the building, out of earshot — I was literally vibrating with both rage and shame. Dizzy, concerned by my appearance, asked if I was alright. All I could manage was “I’ve never, ever, been spoken to like that” in a shaky voice barely above a whisper.

I spent the rest of the day staring hard at my monitor — pretending to work, but only seeing red.

The Pink Slip

When the inevitable finally happened, I wasn’t the least bit upset or surprised. And it was a double, almost a triple, event.

Dizzy was called to Surly’s office first and came back shaken. He hadn’t been let go, but he’d been threatened. In an echo of my Office Incident, he’d suffered a stream of abuse and unreasonable demands. Surly had termination papers all drawn up. He showed them to Dizzy, then set them aside.

Every time Dizzy objected to something, Surly would place them back on the table until he went quiet. I believe that was more cruel than anything he’d done to me.

Tipsy went next. His meeting was short and simple, in and out in a few minutes. He’d been laid off without theatrics or fanfare.

Then it was my turn. I braced for the worst, but as with Tipsy, it was quick and simple. Surly was calm, all business. I suppose he’d written me off, so I wasn’t worth getting excited about.

When he told me he was letting me go, I laughed out loud. He dangled a meager severance to coerce me to sign some forms I didn’t fully agree with (an alarmingly common and underhanded practice, but I needed the money), and I was done.

Edgy didn’t bother to attend any of these.

I collected my things from my desk and grabbed lunch with Tipsy. More than anything, we were both relieved.

The kicker is, I wasn’t fired. I was laid off due to “lack of work,” which was nonsense — we were always busy. Despite Surly’s bellowing to the contrary, I was not actually insubordinate, and I did good work. No, Surly got rid of me because I dared to call out his abuse. I didn’t properly kowtow, and neither had Tipsy, so we had to go.

I later heard from Dizzy that they’d hired three new people to replace Tipsy and me. I don’t know if that’s literally true, but I like to think it is.

Moving Forward

The fallout of all this is that I’m never putting myself through that again.

Since this time, I’ve built up a solid backstop in the form of “walking money.” The next time someone treats me this way, I can simply walk out the door, knowing I’ll be fine for a year or more if I’m careful.

To be clear, I’m not griping about hard work or discomfort. I’ve worked plenty of weekends and evenings since then. But I made the call myself and did so willingly, believing the sacrifice to be worth it and trusting that it would all even out in the end.

I’ve had bosses and coworkers I didn’t like. I’ve had disagreements with bosses I did like, and situations where I felt overlooked or leaned on too hard — times when the work was stressful, and I went home with a throbbing head and no energy or passion for anything. But that happens. Work is sometimes stressful. Life gets complicated. People under stress make mistakes or act like jerks.

Shit happens. We deal with it.

When it crosses the line into abuse, neglect, or outright hostility, that changes everything. No one deserves to work like that. Not you. Not me. Not even Surly, Sleazy, or Edgy.

Ironically, knowing I can walk at any time has led me to stay in questionable situations longer than I might have otherwise. I’m not staying out of fear; I’m staying to see if I can salvage the situation, knowing that if I can’t, I can leave on my own terms.

In most cases, things do get better.

And if they don’t, thanks to Surly, no one gets to treat me like that ever again.

Note: I recognize my privilege, that it could have been so much worse. I could have been an Amazon warehouse worker stepping around the corpse of a colleague (Haas, 2026) or a driver peeing in a bottle between deliveries (Picchi, 2021) because the Prime must flow.

TL;DR

• No one deserves to be abused at work — verbal and emotional abuse count.
• Not being mistreated yourself doesn’t mean no one else is.
• Stress, long hours, and clashing personalities are not abuse by themselves.
• Stripping vulnerable workers of their agency goes beyond abuse. It should be criminal.
• Your best defense is the ability to walk away — if you can afford to.
• So, Surly, um… thanks? I guess?

Source

• Haas, R. (2026). ‘Everyone is Replaceable’: Death Rattles Oregon Amazon Facility. [online] The Western Edge. Available at: https://www.thewesternedge.media/p/everyone-is-replaceable-death-rattles [Accessed 17 July 2026].
• Picchi, A. (2021). Amazon apologizes for denying that its drivers pee in bottles. [online] CBS News. Available at: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-drivers-peeing-in-bottles-union-vote-worker-complaints/ [Accessed 18 July 2026].

> You can also read on my site.

Important: The links in this article may be affiliate links. If you use them to buy something, your price won’t be affected, but I’ll earn a small commission.

Gravity Timer

My most recent EDC purchase is a simple timer cube. I picked it up for around $15 on Amazon, and it has easily one of the best ROIs on my desk. For real.

How It Works

Operating the cube is about as simple as it gets. Each side has a number of minutes: 5, 10, 30, or 60. There is a screen on the front and a few switches on the back. Turn the cube on and the side facing up sets the number of minutes. The screen shows the minutes and seconds counting down to 0, at which point a buzzer sounds — or a vibration, if you need to be discreet.

Switching to a different side resets the timer to that number of minutes. Face up pauses the timer, face down resets it. And that’s it. You can also set a custom timer — and there’s a basic stopwatch function — but I got it for the simplicity of the preset countdowns.

How I Use It

I typically work for 30 or 60 minutes, then flip it to 5 minutes and walk around a bit. Specifically, looking at anything other than the screen until the timer goes off again. You see, my relationship with time is largely fictional. When I’m really focused, all sense of time passing goes out the window. I’ve gone literally half a day without moving, and suffered for it. With a timer like this, that doesn’t happen anymore.

Now, obviously, you don’t need a special device to track time like this. I just did a quick count, and I have five multi-purpose devices within arm’s reach that include timer functions. Maybe more. But with this device, I have a bright orange cube, physically sitting on my desk. It’s the work of a moment to flip it when I sit down to work.

Where to Buy

My specific timer cube is the GuDoQi, though it’s clearly a commodity product and is available from many brands. There are also otherwise identical cube timers, like this one, with 25- and 50-minute sides in place of 30- and 60-minute ones, allowing for traditional pomodoros if that’s what you’re after.

There’s a similar cube style that has a round, recessed screen. I tried one of those, but I liked the other one better, so I returned it. There are also hexagonal, octagonal, and even dodecahedral timers with more options if you think 4 is too few. Personally, I prefer the simplicity of the humble cube.

Highly recommended.

Speed Cube

Wait — that’s a Rubik’s Cube! For real?

Yes. Though I don’t care for the actual “Rubik’s” brand cubes. Since the patent expired in 2000, a number of companies make varied and generally superior versions, often called “speed cubes” or “magic cubes.” Most of those companies are Chinese.

These Chinese speedcubes are often made with faster core mechanisms, embedded magnets, adjustable tension, non-binding internal textures, and so on. The end result is that these non-Rubik’s cubes are fast and offer far superior handling. It’s fun just to manipulate them.

Why a Speed Cube?

Some time ago I decided — for no particular reason I can recall — that I wanted to learn to solve one. So I bought a cheap cube and started practicing. Now I have a small collection of mid-range cubes, which allows me to leave one at work, have one on my desk at home, and carry one in my computer bag.

Note: I’m specifically referring to the classic 3×3×3 cube. Other arrangements exist, from 2×2×2 up to 17×17×17 or more. Also, spheres, pyramids, and more abstract shapes exist if you’re feeling masochistic.

How I Use It

1. Fidgeting: I’m a fidgeter, always have been. Having something in my hands — when I’m not using them for something specific — helps me stay calm and focused. A well-made speed cube is great for fidgeting with one or both hands. As a bonus, this ensures that the cube becomes fully randomized between solves.
2. Quick Mental Breaks: Solving a cube is a matter of memorizing a series of “algorithms” depending on the current state of the cube. Once you have a utility belt full of moves and routines, solving a cube becomes an almost zen experience. My fastest timed solve was around six minutes — but I’m not usually going for speed.

Learning to Solve a Speed Cube

First of all, of course, you’ll need a cube. This Monster Go cube on Amazon is a good beginner cube at a fantastic price — about $10 as I write this. If you want to step it up a bit, this GAN 365 M cube is even better (smoother action, easier adjustment) for a bit over twice the price. If you remember the classic Rubik’s cube, either one is a revelation by comparison, in my opinion.

There are a number of methods for solving a cube. Hit up DuckDuckGo or YouTube, and you’ll find a mountain of advice and instructions. I found these step-by-step instructions on Speedcube.us to be the most useful. I even bought the printable PDF instructions (which is only $2) because I like the single-page layout. I feel it was well worth it.

It can be overwhelming at first, but anyone can do it with a little patience. Just take it one layer at a time. Who knows, you may start making room in your day bag or luggage for a colorful plastic cube just like I do.

And there we are, my essential Every Day Cubes.

Real talk: Not everything you carry needs to be a serious tool or carefully chosen for maximum productivity. That said, these do make me more productive — or at least happier and healthier, and that’s just as important.

> You can also read this on my site.

AI is becoming an essential tool for creative and technical workers — specifically in the form of Large Language Models (LLMs). Whether you don’t trust cloud model providers, you want to add another tool to your arsenal, your network connection is unreliable, or you just want to feel more in control, there are many reasons to run LLMs locally on your device. But it’s a huge and complicated subject with few obvious easy entry points, especially if you’re not a developer or technologist.

If that sounds familiar, this article is for you. The world of LLMs is deeply complicated and deeply weird — moving fast with essentially no transparency or oversight. If the model is running on your device, that sidesteps most of those concerns.

My goal with this article is to get non-developer Mac users who are local-LLM-curious, but overwhelmed, up and running quickly — and to explain just enough that you will feel comfortable exploring further on your own.

TL;DR

Steps to get started quickly:

1. Install Ollama with Homebrew (in Terminal): brew install ollama
2. Activate Ollama: ollama serve
3. Download a model (see list below): ollama pull [model]
4. Open the Ollama app, select your downloaded model in the lower right of the chat window, and start chatting.
5. You can also chat in the Terminal: ollama → Select “Chat with a model” → your installed models are listed at the bottom of the next screen under “More.”

Starter LLMs Based on System Hardware

Sorted from least to most capable (replace [model] in step 3, above):

• M1, M2, M3 — llama3.2:1b-instruct-q4_K_M
• M4 — llama3.2:3b-instruct-q4_K_M
• M5, M1 Pro, M2 Pro, M3 Pro — gemma3:4b-it-q4_K_M
• M4 Pro, M5 Pro, M1 Max, M2 Max — llama3.1:8b-instruct-q4_K_M
• M3 Max, M4 Max, M5 Max, M1 Ultra — gemma3:12b-it-q4_K_M
• M2 Ultra, M3 Ultra — gemma4:26b-a4b-it-q4_K_M

If you want to know what all of those numbers and letters mean so you can explore beyond these options, read on!

Setting Up Ollama

The easiest way to get AI up and running quickly is Ollama, a CLI-first (command-line interface) application for installing, managing, and running local models. The free version is all you need for this.

LM Studio is another popular option with a self-contained GUI, but I find it even more overwhelming than using the CLI. Ollama is cleaner once you get it set up.

Install

First, you need to install Ollama. The Terminal-centric option is to use Homebrew:

brew install ollama

You can also download the DMG file from their website and install it like any other app.

Start Ollama’s Background Process

In the Terminal:

ollama serve

That’s it. The Ollama daemon (helper process) is now running in the background. You can also open the desktop app, which will launch the process. Even if you quit the desktop app, the daemon will remain active.

You can check that it is running by opening this address in a web browser on your device:

http://localhost:11434/

If Ollama is running, you’ll see a plain page that says “Ollama is running.” If you see an error, the daemon didn’t start — run ollama serve again.

Now we need an LLM. This is where most people stall. There are just so many models, so many variants, and no obvious way to narrow them down to what you actually need. With the variety of possible use cases and hardware configurations, there’s no easy universal answer, but I can give you a place to start, and enough context to help make future decisions less daunting.

What Models Can I Run?

The first question to answer is what models your hardware can handle. Trying to use too large a model will drag your system to a halt, possibly locking it up. Even a model that technically runs can be too slow to be useful.

Due to the way Apple Silicon is architected, the specs that really matter are the processor model (M2, M2 Pro, M2 Max, etc.) and the amount of RAM. Of the two, the processor matters most. Interestingly — due to the differing memory bandwidth — it’s the level of the processor (Pro, Max, etc.), not the release (M1, M2, etc.), that makes the biggest difference.

Even with equal RAM, an M1 Ultra (800 GB/s) is more capable than an M5 Max (614 GB/s).

As you’ll see in my screenshots, my system is an M4 Pro with 24GB of RAM. That’s not enough to run a large model, but any M-processor device is capable of running models that are powerful enough to be useful.

The simplest starting point is CanIRun.ai — it automatically identifies your hardware and shows how well each model is expected to run on it.

Let’s break down the information in CanIRun.ai’s LLM table, from left to right:

Model Name

There is no real standard for naming LLMs, but the names generally contain the following:

• Family: Llama, Phi, and Qwen are all product family names for related models built on the same base models. Each new iteration is usually numbered sequentially (Qwen 3.5 is newer than Qwen 2.5), but not always. The Gemma models from Google and the Llama models from Meta are reliably good places to start.
• Parameters: The number at the end indicates the model’s size and complexity. This is expressed in terms of the number of parameters (also called weights) the model contains. For example, “7B” means the model has seven billion parameters. Modern “Pro” chip Macs will handle models up to around 7B reliably well — and up to 34B with “Ultra” chips. More parameters generally indicate a more powerful model, but LLMs are complicated, so that can be deceiving.

There are a few terms that are used widely, but inconsistently, in many model names:

• Instruct/IT: These models are designed explicitly to follow directions with greater precision. The trade-off is limited ability to alter the model further, which isn’t a concern for most users.
• Code/Coder: Models tuned explicitly for coding tasks are often designated as such.
• Small/Nano: These models are specifically designed to run on less powerful hardware or take up less space.
• Distill: It’s possible for the reasoning patterns of a larger, more powerful model to be “distilled” into a smaller, more performant model. The result is a compromise between the two.
• [parameters]–[parameters]: Some models list two parameter numbers. In most cases, this indicates the model is a Mix of Experts (MoE) — the second number is the number of parameters used by each “expert” (more on MoE below).

Capabilities (icons)

The icons following the model names indicate certain capabilities.

• Lightbulb (light blue) = Reasoning: Reasoning or thinking models are tuned for multi-step problem solving and complex logic.
• Eye (pink) = Vision: The model can input and interpret images.
• Wrench (purple) = Tool Use: The model can access and use external tools — such as web searches and databases — using APIs.
• Nodes (dark blue) = Mix of Experts (MoE): MoE models are kind of like multiple smaller models bundled together. They only need to activate subsets of their parameters depending on the task at hand, which improves performance and flexibility.
• Star (yellow) = Popular: The most downloaded models.

License

Identifies the license the model is released under. Unless you’re planning on using a model to make a commercial product, do serious research, or produce your own model, this probably doesn’t matter to you.

Size in Active Memory

Larger models will take up more space in RAM. Apple Silicon devices have one shared pool of low-latency memory that the system and all apps and processes share, as opposed to devices with dedicated VRAM that the model can fully utilize.

Following the GB number is a percentage, showing how much of your RAM the model will occupy when loaded. In my testing, keeping this below 20% prevents it from slowing the whole system down, even when pushed.

Context Window Size (CTX)

LLMs operate in tokens — which can be thought of as words, or chunks of words, that the model combines and recombines to produce output — and can only keep a certain number of tokens in working memory at one time.

Once the number of tokens exceeds the window size, older tokens will be dropped from memory. A larger context window enables longer conversations and more complex processes. For general use, I consider a 32k context window the absolute minimum. Even on more modest hardware, there are models available with 128k windows (which equate to somewhere around 100,000 words), and I prefer those.

Tokens Per Second (tok/s)

The more tokens a model outputs per second, the faster its responses will feel. Around 30 tok/s is said to be the minimum for workable real-time conversation. Barely. A speed of 40 tok/s is noticeably more comfortable, so that’s what I consider a minimum for most purposes.

At around 70 tok/s, responses start feeling snappy. At 80+, they feel essentially instant.

Note: Latency — the wait for the first output tokens — impacts the apparent speed of the model as well, but that is dictated more by hardware than by choice of model.

Status & Score

“Status” takes all of the previous stats together and gives an assessment of how well it will run on your hardware. These range from “RUNS GREAT” down to “TOO HEAVY”. I would not bother with anything below the “RUNS WELL” level. There is also a specific numerical score out of 100, allowing for even more granular comparisons.

By default, the list sorts by Score, so the most performant models for your hardware will be the ones at the top.

Choosing a Specific Model

That’s a lot of information, and good to know. When you’re just starting out, though, it’s fine to stick with the most popular options; it’s safe to assume those are widely used for a reason.

By default, CanIRun.ai puts the most popular models in their own section at the top of the table, ordered lightest to heaviest. Currently, the top item on this list is Meta’s Llama 3.1 8B, a relatively light general-purpose LLM. If that model (or whatever model is in that position when you check it) at least “Runs Well” on your hardware, that’s a good first one to try.

If that model won’t run well, or you have a particularly beefy machine, I have specific recommendations.

Starter Models

Here are my recommendations, organized by hardware. I’m using CanIRun.ai and these criteria to inform my picks:

• Model Lines = Gemma, Llama, or Qwen
• Tokens per Second = 38 or more
• Active Memory = Less than 20%
• Context Window = 128k or more

Note: I’m assuming the base RAM allocation for each configuration.

I’ve chosen these as general-purpose tools primarily for conversation and text processing. This list is organized from least to most powerful. Once you locate your hardware, anything higher up on the list will run even better.

• M1, M2, M3 — Llama 3.2 1B llama3.2:1b-instruct-q4_K_M
• M4 — Llama 3.2 3B llama3.2:3b-instruct-q4_K_M
• M5, M1 Pro, M2 Pro, M3 Pro — Gemma 3 4B gemma3:4b-it-q4_K_M
• M4 Pro, M5 Pro, M1 Max, M2 Max — Llama 3.1 8B llama3.1:8b-instruct-q4_K_M
• M3 Max, M4 Max, M5 Max, M1 Ultra — Gemma 3 12B gemma3:12b-it-q4_K_M
• M2 Ultra, M3 Ultra — Gemma 4 26B-A4B gemma4:26b-a4b-it-q4_K_M

No doubt you’ve noticed that every command includes “-q4_K_M”. That’s the Quantization tag — as if it wasn’t complicated enough.

Quantization

Quantization is a form of optimization that makes models smaller and faster, but reduces their quality. It runs from “F16” (16-bit), the original model, to “Q2_K” (2-bit), which is significantly reduced. The K specifies “grouped quantization,” and the M specifies “medium precision.” Beyond that, the rabbit hole goes deep — and for most use cases, Q4_K_M is the right answer anyway.

Note: Higher-end models go up to F32 (32-bit), but models that run locally on current consumer hardware top out at F16.

The individual model pages on CanIRun.ai include a table that details the impact of each level of quantization on the model, as well as how each should run on your system.

The essential takeaway is that for most models, the Q4_K_M version is a good balance between performance gains and quality reduction.

Installing the Model

Once you’ve chosen a model, you’ll return to the Terminal to install it.

ollama pull [model]

In most cases, the format for the model name is as follows:

[family][release #]:[parameters]-[quantization]

So, for example, the full command for installing Qwen 3.5 4B is:

ollama pull qwen3.5:4b-q4_K_M

Note the lack of spaces and capitalization in the model name.

Most of the time, this will work fine. If you get an error that the file does not exist, you may need to track down Ollama’s exact model name.

Finding a Specific Model’s Ollama Command

You can find the proper command to download any available model on Ollama‘s website.

First, search for your model using only [family][release#] (with no spaces).

Then, scroll down to the list of variations (usually differing parameters) and click on “View All” at the upper right of the table.

Finally, scroll down until you find the model with the characteristics you’re looking for.

Useful Ollama Commands

Maintaining your local LLMs from the CLI is straightforward:

• ollama list—Lists all installed models
• ollama ps—List all currently running models
• ollama pull [model]—Downloads the specified model (updates if already installed)
• ollama rm [model]—Deletes the specified model
• ollama run [model]—Launch into chat with a specific model (will pull the model first if not installed)

This article turned out to be more involved than I expected — and I’ve been running local LLMs for a while now. Writing it clarified a lot for me, and I sincerely hope reading it did the same for you.

Note: This is barely scratching the surface. This topic is deep and ever-changing. What I presented here is what I’ve found to be the most straightforward way to get your feet wet and see if you really want to dive in. Importantly, everything here is easy to reverse if you don’t — as I did several times before taking the plunge. There’s little harm in experimenting now that you have this base knowledge.

Local LLMs on macOS for Non-Developers was originally published in Mac O’Clock on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

> You can also read this on my site.

I’ve been a Mac user for over 25 years — and a Windows user for a decade longer, for the record. One of the things I love about being a Mac user is the proliferation of small apps and utilities that are both genuinely useful and fun to use. Sure, Windows has always had more software — but not better, in the cases that matter to me.

That’s down to the fact that dedicated Mac developers are a different breed. The good ones have great attention to detail, polish, and utility. For this list, I’m focusing on lesser-known apps that are small, fun, and genuinely useful.

Note: I’m including commands for any apps available through Homebrew. If you need a quick introduction to Homebrew, I’ve got you covered.

TL;DR

• TinyStart (€5, one-time): Lightweight app launcher
• Loop (free, open source): Slick window management
• Maccy (free, open source): Lightweight clipboard manager
• Itsycal (free): A tiny calendar in your menu bar
• PopClip ($12, one-time, free trial): Shows a menu of tools and utilities when you select text
• Hyperkey (free): Turn your CapsLock key into a shortcut key
• RunCat (free, in-app purchases): Animated CPU load monitor
• Monocle ($14, one-time, free trial): Blurs the background for better focus on the active window

TinyStart — €5 (one-time)

TinyStart is a Spotlight-style app launcher focused on being lightweight and fast. It’s not a full Spotlight replacement; it covers a focused subset of features:

• Launch apps and shortcuts
• Perform calculations and unit conversions
• Perform web searches
• Quickly access favorite files and URLs

And that’s about all. It pointedly does not support third-party plugins and has no clipboard manager. It may sound limiting, but since installing TinyStart, I haven’t missed Spotlight or even Raycast for this purpose at all.

If you need a powerful and flexible tool — especially if you require plugin support — Raycast is hard to beat. I’ve used it plenty, but I’ve never integrated all its features into my workflow — I used it as a glorified app launcher. Same with Alfred before it.

There’s no free trial, but TinyStart is only €5 (under $6 at current exchange rates). That’s a bargain. If it’s not for you, the website lists a 14-day money-back guarantee.

Loop — Free (open source)

brew install --cask loop

Like most long-time Mac users, I’ve tried a number of window managers over the years — including Raycast, of course. Most recently, I’ve been using Rectangle, which is both good and free. I still recommend it. The thing is, while Loop probably has fewer features than Rectangle, it uses a slick radial interface that I just love.

By default, Loop is activated by holding down the fn key. A ring pops up at the mouse pointer’s current position, and moving the pointer over different parts of the ring—specifically the eight ordinal directions and the center—will invoke a specific window management command and show a window snapping preview. Releasing the fn key will snap the active window to that position.

Behind the minimal interface, Loop can be customized in some interesting ways. The UI ring can be made larger, smaller, thinner, thicker, and more or less round. The appearance of the window snap previews and related animations can be customized, and the nine commands can be changed however you prefer.

If you’re interested, here’s my current setup:

• N = Maximize window
• NE = Snap to the right third of the screen
• E = Snap to the right half of the screen
• SE = Snap to the right two-thirds of the screen
• NW = Snap to the left third of the screen
• W = Snap to the left half of the screen
• SW = Snap to the left two-thirds of the screen
• S = Expand the window vertically
• Center = Center window and scale to 60%

Maccy — Free (open source)

brew install --cask maccy

I recommended Maccy in my SetApp article, but it absolutely belongs on this list as well.

Several tools include clipboard managers — Raycast among them, because of course. Starting with Tahoe, even Spotlight has a built-in clipboard manager. I’ve always found those tools to be a bit fiddly, though, and as I’ve mentioned previously, I have a terrible memory for shortcuts and commands.

By contrast, Maccy is straightforward. It puts a button in your menu bar that opens a searchable list of everything you’ve copied to the clipboard. You can customize it to ignore items from certain apps and change whether it automatically pastes when an item is selected, or simply copies it back to the clipboard. It can also be driven entirely by the keyboard if you prefer. It’s also fast and entirely local to your device.

Itsycal — Free

brew install --cask itsycal

Itsycal is a little calendar that lives in your menu bar and connects to your iCloud or Google calendars. Clicking on it shows the current month and a list of upcoming events. New events can be added directly from the popup, and double-clicking on an event opens it in your default calendar.

It’s lightweight, quick, and easy to reference. The menu bar icon can also be customized to show the month and day of the week if you want. I rarely open anything else to view or manage my calendars.

PopClip — $12 (free trial)

brew install --cask popclip

I also included PopClip in my SetApp article as one of the few worth buying outright. When you select text, PopClip will show a small menu with a selection of extensions for modifying or otherwise working with that text. There are a number of extensions included, and others can be downloaded from their website.

Some of the extensions I have active:

• Spelling — If the selected word is misspelled, it will offer correction.
• Select All
• DuckDuckGo — Opens the default browser and searches for the selected text on DuckDuckGo.
• Copy and Cut
• Title Case — Renders selected text into title-case.
• Uppercase — Renders selected text into all uppercase.
• Hyphenate — Replaces spaces in the selected text with hyphens, or vice-versa.
• Terminal — Opens the default terminal and runs the selected text.
• And so on

As a bonus, the scripting for the extensions is fairly straightforward. I had Claude whip up a basic extension to append selected text to a note in Obsidian, for example.

The menu can be configured to appear above or below the selected text; apps and websites can be selectively excluded. PopClip is one of those tools I didn’t know I needed until I tried it — I use it many times every day, and miss it on any machine that doesn’t have it installed.

Hyperkey — Free (open source)

brew install --cask hyperkey

Hyperkey does only one thing: It allows you to remap a single key to press Control + Option + Command + Shift or Control + Option + Command all at once. Why would you want to do that? It gives you options for custom shortcut keys without having to play Twister with your keyboard. More to the point, you can create a new shortcut with confidence that it won’t conflict with an existing shortcut.

The default key to remap is CapsLock—since it’s in a prime location for a key that most users don’t use very often—but that can be changed. I prefer not to include the Shift key—hitting CapsLock + Shift is easy enough, and makes related custom shortcuts easy to set up.

For example, I activate Monocle with Hyperkey + F, and switch Monocle modes with Hyperkey + Shift + F. In Shottr, I have Capture Area set to Hyperkey + A and Repeat Area Capture set to Hyperkey + Shift + A.

RunCat — Free, in-app purchases

RunCat is both useful and whimsical. And couldn’t we all use a bit more whimsy these days?

RunCat puts a tiny animated “runner” on your menu bar — a bounding cat by default — that animates faster the more your CPU is used. That means you can tell, at a glance, how hard you’re pushing your Mac. Clicking the runner opens a configurable menu that shows the actual CPU, memory, and storage capacity being used, as well as the current battery and network status.

This is the app I’ve been using the longest. A coworker recommended it to me back in the early COVID days, when we were all desperate for a little distraction. I fell in love with it, especially once I discovered you could buy more runners.

The free version includes a few different styles of cat runners. Individual runners of other types can be purchased, or the whole lot can be unlocked for $8 (including the ability to make your own). I’m a big fan of the dinosaur and Welsh corgi runners, in particular.

Note: There is a Windows version of RunCat. It doesn’t seem to have any in-app purchases, but it includes the ability to make custom runners for free.

Monocle — $14 (one-time, free trial)

brew install --cask monocle-app

Monocle is described as “noise-canceling for your screen.” When invoked, it blurs everything behind the active window, allowing you to more easily focus on the task at hand. The amount of blurring is customizable, and it can also apply a tint, visual grain, and other effects, depending on your taste.

This is the most expensive item on this list, and probably the one that will resonate with the fewest readers (unless I’m wrong, please let me know in the comments). There are other apps that do something like this, but that are cheaper or free. I’ve tried them and honestly never cared for the effect. The difference with Monocle is that it allows for more customization and, frankly, looks better. I don’t use it very often, but when I do need it, it can be a godsend.

All eight of these apps are small, pleasant to use, and offer genuine utility. I use all of them nearly every day. They make my work just a little bit smoother and, in some cases, a little bit more delightful.

8 Tiny, Fun macOS Utilities was originally published in Mac O’Clock on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.