Winsor & Newton Artists Oil Colour
A reliable, widely available professional oil line that makes a few specific colours better than anyone, worth keeping on the palette for those.
Winsor & Newton Artists Oil Colour is a long-standing professional line, easy to find and consistent batch to batch. The smart way to use it is not as a whole palette but for the specific pigments where it makes the best version. Colour quality varies brand to brand, so a working palette is usually built across several makers, choosing each tube on the merit of that particular colour rather than staying loyal to one line.
I use Winsor & Newton for burnt sienna and certain other colours. I do not buy a whole palette from one brand. I build it tube by tube, and W&N is where I go for a few specific pigments that it simply does best.
The Winsor & Newton range is broad and excellent, and plenty of painters build a whole palette from it. These are the specific colours I use.
- Burnt Sienna
- Ultramarine Blue
- Permanent Rose
- Raw UmberGriffin Alkyd Fast Drying, for toning the ground
What it is. A professional artist-grade oil colour line, broadly stocked, consistent, with a deep colour range.
Why it matters. Because the best version of a pigment is not all in one brand, having a dependable, widely available line for your anchor colours keeps a palette stable and easy to restock without compromising the colours that matter.
The Artists Oil Colour line is a solid professional paint, and it makes a few specific pigments better than most. The practical move is to use it for those colours rather than buying a whole palette from one brand, since colour quality varies maker to maker.
It is a clean, honest earth that can do a red's job in a limited palette, which is why it anchors many working palettes and is a common first choice for a warm dark.