Colour Translation: Kingfisher

Continuing sharing alternatives to the Turner watercolours for Lyndsay The Frugal Crafter's watercolour tutorials, this week she used the following colours from the Turner range, which is really hard to get hold of in the UK and the EU, so I've recommended some Winsor and Newton professional grade colours and Cotman student grade colours that should work in the same way. I've embedded her video below, for reference when looking through what I recommend. 

If you have set up a palette based on my recommended colours, even my standard Essential Palette (12 colours that make for easy mixing) pretty much covers this, but as I don't recommend Winsor Yellow or Permanent Sap Green in that collection, you would need to buy those as "add ons" - my Complete Palette still doesn't have Winsor Yellow in it - this is "Hansa Yellow" in many other sets, and it's a semi-transparent, staining warm yellow, so you could substitute it for New Gamboge and get similar effects, but I would recommend getting Winsor Yellow itself as it's a single-pigment colour whereas W&N New Gamboge has 2 pigments in, which means it won't mix in the same way and it's much easier to end up with muddy mixes that way.

If you're using the Cotman range, you'll find most of the same colour names translate over, except where noted. My Student Palette does cover most of them (and has links for buying them on Amazon UK, where they are dominantly sold below the RRP of £2.60 per tube) but per the above, you'd need to make some additions, which I've annotated below.

Yellow Ochre, PY43 Natural Yellow Iron Oxide
This is a pretty standard Yellow Ochre so anything with the same name in another brand is going to work.
Permanent Yellow, PY154 Benzamidazolone Yellow 154
This is 730 Winsor Yellow (Winsor and Newton). A lot of manufacturers use names like this - "[manufacturer name] Yellow" for this pigment, or "Hansa Yellow", of course. There is no Cotman alternative to this colour, so you would need to make do with Gamboge (Hue) as the only semi-transparent, staining warm yellow in that series, but just be mindful that it isn't a close match to what Lyndsay is painting with so your work will look different - it could be a good exercise in colour-theory and mixing though, to try and match her mixes in slightly different ways?
Burnt Sienna, PBr7 Brown Iron Oxide
Virtually all Burnt Sienna watercolours on the market use this pigment, so an easy alternative should be possible.
Ultramarine Blue, PB29 Ultramarine Blue
This, again, is pretty easy to match in virtually any series.
Phthalo Blue (RS), PB15 Phthalocyanine Blue RS
Ditto - this will be universal - but will have different names, for example, Winsor Blue (Red Shade) (Winsor and Newton) or Intense Blue (Cotman from Winsor and Newton).
Sap Green, PG36 Phthalocyanine Green YS and PY110 Isoindolinone Yellow.
This is totally just a convenience mix so you don't even need it! You can either just mix together a Phthalo Green YS (such as Winsor Green (Yellow Shade)) and a Permanent Gamboge (such as New Gamboge ) or an Irgazin Yellow to get a viable Sap Green yourself. If you use it a lot, pre-mix them wet and set into a palette and avoid buying it. Alternatively, you can buy a Permanent Sap Green . It's worth noting that Hooker's Green is the same two pigments in different ratios, so you can add a little yellow to it and make your own Sap Green that way too. Be wary of the Cotman version of Sap Green  as it contains a lot of opaque red in the form of PR101 - an iron oxide pigment - which is obviously going to give you unusual results and muddy mixes quite easily- if you use Cotman, I would recommend you use Hooker's Green Light here and add a bit of yellow or yellow ochre to it to match true Sap Green.

Enjoy painting this project - it's a really beautiful kingfisher (a bird I've only ever seen once in my life, sadly)!

Colour Translation: Beta Fish

Something I've loved for about 6 months now are the various watercolour tutorials by Lindsay The Frugal Crafter, which are often in the same impressionist and loose style I enjoy when painting watercolour. When I've tried to work from them though, I've found getting a good colour match for e.g. a "Rose" in a paint line she's using in the USA is pretty hard here in Europe where a lot of the popular US brands are pretty obscure and so do I use "Permanent Rose" or "Opera Rose" or "Quinacridone Rose"? Different brands have different pigment formulations of course. So, I set about researching the Turner Watercolours line of paints that Lindsay works from - not to be confused with the other Turner paints out there are which inferior brands - this line is artist-quality and appear very good indeed though I've yet to try them.

So, what I've begun doing is posting on here and on Lindsay's Youtube feed every now and again to translate what those paints would be in other brands, to help other painters out there. I've provided links to buy the Turner ones from Amazon UK if anyone wants to try them out - I promise I'll road-test them in the net few months, but I have a long list of things to get through already!

First video I'm doing it with is this Beta Fish video from Friday 22nd April 2016:

Colours used here are as follows and how they translate into different brands that use alternative names - I didn't get the green used in the seaweed as that was when the feed dropped out.

Turner: Quinacridone Magenta (PR211 Quinacridone Red) - equivalents will be either the same name or "Magenta", "Permanent Rose" or "Permanent Magenta" in Winsor & Newton or Daler & Rowney paints - "opera rose" has the same pigment plus a fugitive dye, so will fade, but is a much brighter shade so may not give the same results but should give a similar result. "Rose Red" and "Rose Madder (Hue)" may also have PR211. Daler & Rowney paints

Turner: Turquoise Blue (PB28 Cobalt Blue) - this is used in "Cobalt Blue" in most brands but be sure to find a "Cobalt Turquoise" or "Cobalt Blue Light" than has a lower pigment concentration to give a lighter colour.

Turner: Yellow Ochre (PY43 Natural Yellow Iron Oxide) - this is the same name in most brands. Some will use PY42 (Yellow Iron Oxide) instead/as well - which is just a different synthetic version - very similar, however.

I'm going to try and do this for all of Lyndsay's watercolour tutorials as I found it a pain trying to figure out what some of the colours were called in the brands we have here in the UK.