Watercolour paintings are loved for their transparency and vibrancy. We’ve got the best student and artist quality watercolour paints for beginners and professional artists, from a pan set with brushes, paper and pencils to individual tubes.
Whether you're a beginner or a professional artist, watercolour paints are a fantastically fun and versatile medium to experiment with and create unique works of art. Watercolours combine ground pigments with a water-soluble binder, such as gum arabic, to make a translucent paint with vibrant colour that's easy to apply and blend.
Unlike the thick consistency of acrylic paint, watercolour paints are more fluid and can be watered down further for thin washes and abstract patterns. They can also be reworked after they've dried by simply applying more water.
Riot Art & Craft make it easy for you to get started with watercolour painting online. We've got everything you need to begin your next masterpiece, from watercolour pan sets and individual tubes to watercolour paper pads, paint brushes, sponges, easels and much more.
You can find a huge range of stunning colours at Riot Art & Craft, both in handy paint sets for beginners and professionals or as individual tubes. We've got all of the basic colours you'll need to get started with colour mixing, along with all of your favourite shades, including:
1. Burnt Sienna
2. Yellow Ochre
3. Lemon Yellow
4. Crimson
5. Ultramarine
6. Cobalt Blue
7. Purple Red
8. Burnt Sienna
9. Sap Green and much more
Unlike student quality watercolour paint, artist quality paint has a higher amount of pigments in it, making them brighter, more vibrant and smoother to apply. We've got one of the best selections of artists watercolour paint in Australia by brands you know and love, such as Eraldo Di Paolo, Art Spectrum, Winsor & Newton and more.
Shop our Eraldo Di Paolo Artist Quality Professional Watercolour range with incredible lightfastness and rich colour, and Art Spectrum for stone milled pigments with brilliant vibrancy.
A watercolour pan consists of watercolour 'cakes', which are dry, concentrated blocks of watercolour paint that can be activated by adding water to them. Watercolour tubes are wet paint that's ready to be squeezed out into a palette and used.
We sell both pan and tube sets to make getting started quick and easy. Shop our watercolour half pans by Mungyo for 12 essential shades for beginners or get serious with the Eraldo Di Paolo 36-piece set with brush pen included. Experiment further with our metallic and jewel pan sets to add some sparkle to your work!
If you're looking for tube paint, try the Eraldo Di Paolo mixing paint sets or our Art Studio Starter Set with 12 vibrant paints, plus paintbrushes, paper, pencil and sharpener. We've also got individual tubes by Art Spectrum if you want to build up your collection one by one.
We've got pan and tube sets with paintbrushes, palettes, pencils and more to help get you painting sooner. Our pan sets are also great for taking with you while travelling as the dry cakes won't leak while being transported.
Shop our full pan sets by The Paper Mill and Eraldo Di Paolo for a generous selection of colours with all of the essentials, including a brush pen set for blending and details, palettes, paper, paintbrushes, sponges and more. If you just need the basics, our half pan set by Mungyo has 12 cakes ready for painting and mixing.
For beginner paint tube sets, the Art Studio Starter Series set includes 12 paints, paper, eraser, sharpener, brushes, pencils and a handy carry case all in one!
While watercolour paint can be thinned with water for easy gliding over paper, you can also add a number of mediums to the paint to make them flow better and dry more slowly for working.
Watercolour paints are incredibly versatile and can be used with many different tools and techniques. The best way to apply them to watercolour paper is with a paintbrush and some water, but you can also use aqua pens, sponges and more for washes and more detailed work.
Experiment with different techniques and application tools to create unexpected masterpieces. You may not reach Van Gogh-level good at first, but keep trying! Half the fun is in the learning.
When you've conquered watercolour paints, try a mixed media project. Combine watercolours with any number of mediums, including our Liquitex alcohol inks, crayons, gouache, oil paints and Sennelier oil pastels, calligraphy pens, graphite pencils and much more.
You can even use watercolour paints in your printmaking works or in combination with art projectors to enlarge and transfer images for complex projects with impeccable detail.
While canvas panels are great for oils and acrylics, they generally aren't porous enough to hold fluid watercolours. Instead, watercolour paper has been specially formulated to be used with watercolour paints. It's thicker than regular paper and highly absorbent, meaning it can hold large amounts of water and watercolour paint without buckling or warping.
Simply load up a paint brush with colour to the consistency you need and glide it across the surface. You can buy watercolour paper in a roll to be stretched over a foam board using your own specific measurements or you can get started right away using a watercolour paper pad.
Shop our extensive range of watercolour paper pads by brands such as Eraldo Di Paolo and The Paper Mill that are perfect for all of your watercolour paints, as well as watercolour pencils and watercolour markers for stunning illustrations.
If you want to make your watercolour painting experience the best that it can be, there's a few art supplies you'll need to ensure the process goes smoothly. Some of these you'll already have at home - you can pick the rest up at Riot Art & Craft online and have them delivered to your door. Consider:
1. An easel
2. Different paintbrushes
3. Palette
4. Water and soap
5. Paper towels
6. Graphite pencils
7. Eraser
8. Mediums, such as extender
9. Varnish
The best type of watercolour paints depend on the type of project you're working on and what you want the end result to look like. Typically, watercolour paints are graded using four characteristics:
1. Pigment number - How many pigments were used to make the paint
2. Transparency - How well they hide the watercolour paper
3. Lightfastness - How much it will fade when exposed to light
4. Granularity - How grainy the texture is
The best way to get started is with a watercolour paint set. They're cost-effective, conveniently compact and come with all of the essential shades you'll need for mixing and blending. We've got pan sets and tube sets by the most trusted brands, including:
1. Jane Davenport
2. Eraldo Di Paolo
3. The Paper Mill
4. The Art Studio
Watercolour paints come in both pans and individual tubes. While pans are dry blocks of paint that require water, tubes are ready to be squeezed and used. Shop our full pan, half pan and tube colour sets by the best brands before picking up these art supplies to get started:
1. Paint brushes
2. Watercolour pad
3. Easel
4. Art Smock
Like acrylics, there are a stunning range of watercolour shades available and you can get by with a few basic ones before building up your collection. Start with these essentials, then mix them to create new and unique shades:
1. Cadmium Yellow
2. Ultramarine
3. Burnt Umber
4. Pthalo Green
5. Permanent Rose
6. Raw Sienna
