Winsor & Newton Cotman Watercolours

Cotman Water Colours are a range of water colours that are made to Winsor & Newton's normal high quality standards but costs are kept to an economical level by replacing some of the more costly pigments with less expensive alternatives. The range consists of 50 colours in tubes, which possess good transparency, excellent tinting strength and good working properties, including genuine cadmiums and cobalt.

Pigments are derived from a number of sources: Some are natural products, notably the earths, eg. umbers, ochres; others come from metal compounds and are sometimes termed 'traditional' or 'genuine', eg. ultramarine. The distillation of petroleum yields an ever widening range of organic pigments which are often termed as 'modern'. Many of the pigments used in Cotman are organic.

The Cotman Water Colour range has a more uniform consistency than the Artists' Water Colour range and this benefits beginners as there is less to learn about each individual pigment. The Cotman Water Colour range also relates to the Winsor & Newton Artists' Water Colour range, e.g. Burnt Sienna in both ranges has the same hue.  This enables artists to use colours from both ranges with minimal adjustment to their technique.

See our tutorial, "Learning what to leave out of a painting", for a great source of information on the process of making great art.