Basically, there are two levels of paints—student grade and artist or professional grade. Student grade is less expensive because it is lower quality. Student grade paints may clump, may not spread as easily on paper, or may not stay as vibrant over time. They are intended for beginning artists who want to try out the medium without heavily investing in supplies. Student grade paints also may not include pigment information, lightfast or opacity ratings, or staining or sedimentary codes on the tubes.
Artist or professional grade is more expensive because it uses higher-quality pigments, is easier and more fluid to use, and has more archival, or long-lasting, quality. The pricing of each tube of paint can vary widely depending on the pigments used to make the color. For example, paints with cadmium are nearly twice as expensive as other paint colors. Windsor & Newton explains that the price is related to how expensive and lengthy the production process is to create these specific colors from the purest materials.
EXPERT TIP: Buy a smaller set of introductory artist or professional grade paints, rather than student grade paints. You can’t get a feel for a medium if you start by using inferior supplies. Quality matters, and you’ll see it in the outcome of your work. You may struggle with the paint consistency, be disappointed in the final piece, or ruin an otherwise great attempt at portraying a subject, not because of your skill level but because of your paint quality.
Even if you discover that you don’t like gouache as a medium, you’re likely to find use for Titanium White in other media because it has strong opacity and can be used for highlights on top of watercolors and colored pencils. Therefore, getting something like M. Graham artists’ gouache set can be useful, even if you end up preferring watercolors or another medium instead. If you do progress with your use of gouache, you haven’t wasted your money on lower-quality paints that you’ll never again want to use.