Why I Use M. Graham Watercolors By Mike Bailey

AWS and NWS member Mike Bailey @me_bailey_art shares why M. Graham paints permanently reside in his palette in the latest M. Graham blog.

By Mike Bailey

When asked by M. Graham how I use their paints, I realized that I have never really given much thought to how I use them. I just put them to work upon many hundreds of my watercolor paintings. My mind hardly pays attention to how I use them as much as I pay attention to what they are doing in the act of painting. The best answer is the honest one: I keep M. Graham paints in my watercolor palette and use them every time I paint, which is almost daily.

I have a few things to say about why M. Graham watercolor paints take up permanent residency in my painting palette.

First of all, M. Graham paints live in my palette because of their ease of going into a solution and their obvious extreme pigment load. It doesn’t take much paint from the tube to gain a full brush load of color. Because of their pigment load, and being suspended in honey and gum-arabic, the lightest touch with my brush into the well of my palette picks up small amounts of paint that stretch a long way. M. Graham pigments are very concentrated! 

The other aspect is how true the colors are. I depend largely on the color wheel for understanding color harmony. The colors I use conform perfectly to the hues on the color wheel by Stephen Quiller that I use. Knowing this, and being a steadfast fan of mixing tones and grays, I gain maximum liveliness of my color mixes with M. Graham’s paint. Mixing the tones on the paper, instead of my palette, offers up some of the most enticing and lively color variations that any artist could ask for.

Whether I glaze or just make spontaneous spots of color, these paints perform better than ALL other manufacturer’s paints, and I have used them all! Wet into wet, dry brush, glazing, mixing on the paper, or any other method I use to deliver the paint to a painting, the results always serve to excite my painting clients (and me!).

I have yet to find a tube of M. Graham paint whose pigment did not squeeze out superbly blended. Frankly, I don’t know why any watercolor painter would not use these pigments. If you haven’t experienced M. Graham watercolors yet, I would strongly encourage you to do so!

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