Which Wallace Seymour oil paints should you buy first? A starter guide
If you have read about Wallace Seymour oils and want to try them but are not sure where to start, this guide is for you. The range is smaller and more focused than mainstream oil paint brands, and some of the colour names are unfamiliar — which can make it hard to know which tubes to pick up first.
This post gives you a practical, direct starting point: the colours that form the most useful foundation palette, how the series pricing works, which colours offer the most immediate impact, and how to introduce Wallace Seymour into an existing oil painting practice without having to rebuild your palette from scratch.
How the series pricing works
Wallace Seymour oil paints are divided into series based on the cost of the pigment used. At Craft and Canvas we stock two price bands:
Series 1 and 2 — from £9.95 per 40ml tube. These cover the core working palette: earth colours, standard yellows, blacks, whites, and the more widely available mineral pigments. Series 1 and 2 is where most painters should begin, and several of the most characterful and distinctive colours in the whole range sit here.
Series 3 and above — from £16.20 per 40ml tube. These include the genuine cadmiums, cobalts, and the rarest or most expensive historical pigments. They are exceptional paints, but the cost reflects the genuine rarity and expense of the raw materials. Introduce them selectively as your practice develops and you have a clearer sense of where they fit in your palette.
The colours to start with
A working oil palette needs to cover the essentials: a warm and cool yellow, a warm and cool red, a warm and cool blue, one or two earth colours, and a white. Wallace Seymour's colour names are sometimes unfamiliar — the following guide maps their range to those essentials and picks out the colours most worth trying first.
Whites. Titanium White is available in Series 1 and is the standard opaque white for most mixing and coverage work. Flake White — the traditional lead white alternative favoured by Old Master painters for its buttery handling and semi-transparency — is also available and is particularly loved by painters interested in traditional techniques. Many painters keep both.
Yellows. Nickel Titanium Yellow is a warm, slightly earthy yellow with beautiful transparency — one of the most distinctive and versatile colours in the range and worth trying early. For a cooler, purer yellow, the cadmium yellows sit in Series 3 and above and are magnificent in quality.
Reds. Plumpton Iron Red is a warm, earthy red-brown derived from local Yorkshire iron earth — one of the most characteristic Wallace Seymour colours and not available elsewhere. It is a Series 1 colour and an essential early purchase. For a warmer, brighter red, the cadmium reds in Series 3 are exceptional.
Blues. French Ultramarine is available in the lower series and is a warm, rich blue that is indispensable for most oil painters. Prussian Blue offers a cooler, greener blue for mixing. The cobalt blues in the higher series are outstanding but can wait until you are further into the range.
Earth colours. This is where Wallace Seymour truly distinguishes itself. Raw Umber, Burnt Sienna, and Yellow Ochre are all available in Series 1 and 2 and are of exceptional quality — the earth pigments in particular show the benefit of small-batch hand milling, with a granularity and depth of tone that commercial earth colours rarely match. If you are going to try one category of Wallace Seymour colour before any other, make it the earths.
Blacks. Ivory Black is the standard warm black for most oil painters. Mars Black is a cooler, denser black with faster drying time.
A recommended first palette
If you are starting with Wallace Seymour oils for the first time, this selection of six to eight Series 1 and 2 colours gives you a complete working palette that demonstrates the range at its best without overcommitting:
Titanium White, Nickel Titanium Yellow, Plumpton Iron Red, French Ultramarine, Raw Umber, Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre, Ivory Black.
From those eight colours you can mix a very wide range of tones and temperatures, and you will immediately experience what makes Wallace Seymour different — particularly in the earth colours, where the quality of the pigment is most evident.
Once you are comfortable with that foundation, the cadmiums and cobalts in Series 3 and above are the natural next step for expanding the palette with the range's most spectacular colours.
Introducing Wallace Seymour into an existing palette
Many painters come to Wallace Seymour not as a complete palette replacement but as a way of introducing specific colours or qualities into a practice that already uses other brands. This is an entirely sensible approach.
Wallace Seymour oils are fully compatible with oils from any other manufacturer and mix cleanly alongside them. The most natural entry points are the earth colours and the specialist historical pigments — colours where Wallace Seymour offers something genuinely not available elsewhere, and where the quality difference over commercial alternatives is most immediately apparent.
If you currently use Winsor & Newton, Old Holland, or Gamblin, adding two or three Wallace Seymour earth colours or one of the unique mineral pigments to your existing palette is a low-commitment way to experience the range before deciding how far to go with it.
What to use alongside the paints
Wallace Seymour produce their own oil painting mediums which are formulated to work with the paints and are available at Craft and Canvas alongside the colour range.
The most useful for most painters is the Fast Drying Oil Glaze Medium, which can be added at 10 to 20% to bring slower-drying colours into balance with faster-drying ones and to create rich, transparent glazes. Because Wallace Seymour oils contain no added driers, this medium is particularly useful for painters working across the whole palette and wanting more predictable drying times.
Standard oil painting mediums from other manufacturers — linseed oil, stand oil, alkyd mediums, turpentine and mineral spirit — are all compatible and work exactly as they would with any other artist oil.
Frequently asked questions
Where do I start if I only want to buy two or three tubes? The earth colours are the best introduction — Raw Umber, Burnt Sienna, and Yellow Ochre from Series 1 and 2 demonstrate the quality of the hand-milling process most clearly and are colours almost every oil painter uses regularly. Plumpton Iron Red is the most distinctively Wallace Seymour colour in the range and is a Series 1 price — a very good first buy.
Are the Series 3 cadmiums worth the extra cost? If cadmiums are part of your regular palette, yes — unambiguously. The genuine cadmium pigments in the Wallace Seymour range are among the finest available in any artist oil brand, and the difference between a genuine cadmium and a cadmium hue is immediately apparent in mixing, opacity, and colour strength.
Can I use Wallace Seymour oils on canvas boards? Yes. The Seawhite canvas boards we stock at Craft and Canvas are pre-primed and perfectly suitable for oil painting. For longer-term work, a stretched canvas or rigid panel is preferable for archival stability, but canvas boards are an excellent and affordable surface for developing your practice.
How long do unused tubes keep? Oil paint has an extremely long shelf life if stored properly — kept in a cool, dry place away from direct sunlight, tubes can remain usable for many years. If a small amount of oil separates in the tube, simply knead it gently before opening to reintegrate.
Is there a particular paper or surface that works well for oil sketching with Wallace Seymour? Oil paper or oil-primed canvas paper is ideal for sketches and studies. Alternatively, applying a couple of coats of Wallace Seymour Acrylic Gesso to cartridge paper creates a workable oil painting surface at low cost — useful for colour studies and practice work where you want to conserve more expensive surfaces.
Shop Wallace Seymour oils at Craft and Canvas
We stock the full range of Wallace Seymour oil paints in 40ml tubes — Series 1 and 2 from £9.95, Series 3 and above from £16.20 — at our Hebden Bridge shop and online at craftandcanvas.co.uk. Come in and speak to us about which colours to start with.
Craft and Canvas | 3 Carlton Street, Hebden Bridge, HX7 8ER | craftandcanvas.co.uk