I have long used the colour charts and reports in your Guide when I am selecting which watercolour paints to buy. Recently I heard that you offer a line of paints so I found your web site. I notice that your basic palette does not include two colours that I find it hard to mix without, namely (a) Cobalt Blue for a neutral blue, for getting unbiased grays and (b) Raw Umber from Winsor & Newton, for a range of odd and very dark greens.
J. Walker
I decided to limit our range to twelve to encourage further mixing and the retention of brightness. These twelve can give virtually every colour possible in paint form. I decided against offering Cobalt Blue as it is now very often a simple mix of either Ultramarine Blue and White or Phthalocyanine Blue and White.
When genuine, the colour tends to vary depending on the manufacturer, sometimes leaning slightly towards violet, at others towards green. There are therefore various ways to duplicate the colour depending on the sample, and many ways to produce unbiased grays. A glance through any of our books on colour mixing will show the way.
Reference Winsor & Newton's Raw Umber. This is not genuine Raw Umber but a mix of an unspecified brown (which could be Raw Umber) and Mars Yellow, a synthetic version of Yellow Ochre. Such adulterated colours can always be duplicated on the palette.
