If you would like to try watercolors, you’ll find there’s a variety of paints to choose from. Watercolors come in tubes or pans, complete sets or as individual colors.

Pans are cheaper and easy to find (school sets for children are pans), but they tend to dry out. They are great for traveling, however, since they are easy to transport. They are also handy for sketching with watercolors or painting outdoors.

I like to use paint in tubes. The paint is moist and has to be squeezed onto a palette. If your palette is covered and you paint often enough, the colors won’t dry out. If they do become dry, you can usually wet them again with water and use them.

There are many brands of watercolor paints available of both professional and student quality. Student quality paints contain a smaller concentration of pigment than professional paints, and they may not be as lightfast as the artist quality colors. If you’re just beginning, I would recommend Grumbacher Academy paints or Winsor & Newton Cotman paints; these are not quite as expensive as professional paints, but they can produce beautiful paintings.

You can buy these paints in sets or as individual colors. Buying them individually allows you to choose the exact colors you want. If you are buying individual tubes, a good list to start with includes both “warm” and “cold” blues, reds, and yellows. You can mix a wide range of colors from these six:

Ultramarine (Warm Blue)

Cerulean Blue Hue or Phthalo Blue (Cold Blue)

Cadmium Red Hue (Warm Red)

Alizarin Crimson (Cold Red)

Cadmium Yellow Pale Hue (Warm Yellow)

Lemon Yellow (Cold Yellow)

Other colors you could add include Rose Madder, Raw Sienna, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber, Winsor Green, Phthalo Green, Payne’s Gray, Cobalt blue, Winsor blue, Chinese White, and Ivory Black.

If you are purchasing paints for your child, I would still recommend buying tube paints. However, you can start with an inexpensive set such as Niji Watercolor Tubes. A set of twelve costs less than five dollars, and children find them to be a neat alternative to the pan paints.