Winsor & Newton Artists' Acrylic [Back to homepage]

Artists' Acrylic consists of 80 colours spread across the widest palette, using single artists' pigments wherever possible. Other acrylic ranges exist with a larger number of colours but these include many mixtures of pigments which could be mixed by the artist.

Our colours are chosen according to mass tone (colour from tube), undertone (bias of colour when in a thin film), strength and relative opacity. The resultant colour spectrum ensures that artists can obtain the palette which best suits their work.

Your initial colour palette for Artists' Acrylic should provide a wide colour spectrum as well as a good balance between transparent and opaque colours and a mixture of strong tinting and weak tinting colours.

Here is our recommended basic palette for Artists' Acrylic: Lemon Yellow, Azo Yellow Medium, Cadmium Red Light, Permanent Rose, Permanent Alizarin Crimson, Ultramarine Blue, Phthalo Blue Green Shade, Phthalo Green Blue Shade, Raw Umber, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna and Titanium White.

If you want to use just three primary colours we suggest Azo Yellow Medium, Phthalo Blue Red Shade and Permanent Rose.

For a six colour mixing system we recommend the following colours;

Lemon Yellow, Azo Yellow Deep, Phthalo Blue Green Shade, Ultramarine Blue, Pyrrole Red and Quinacridone Magenta.

Restricted colour palettes are used by both beginners and serious painters to develop their understanding and use of colour. The additional colours recommended in the basic palette introduce a wider range of tones and greater variation in opacity and tinting strength.

Cadmiums are the most opaque reds and yellows available and are some of the most popular colours. In normal use they do not present a health hazard to the user and for the environment we use only insoluble cadmiums.

However some artists may prefer to avoid cadmiums and Artists' Acrylic contains alternatives which are closer than other acrylic colours – as seen in this table: