Mako aka Makoccino is a watercolor artist and popular Youtube teacher. Her book, No Fail Watercolor, is an beginner-level overview and tutorial collection with an emphasis on getting out of a results-oriented mindset, instead encouraging exploration. There is no such thing as failure, she argues, only opportunities to learn. I love this attitude!
A cool thing about this book
Something I find extremely cool about her book, which I wish more books did, is that she provides alternate versions of many tutorials. Alternate versions use the same basic building blocks as the main tutorial, but in a different way. She will show an example in a different color palette, or with elements moved. Perhaps one shows waves with a boat, and another shows waves with birds. This is great!
No matter how strenuously a book implores you to do your own thing, the nature of a tutorial is usually pretty structured toward a specific result. This can unintentionally reinforce the idea that any difference between your result and the teacher’s is a failure. Mako puts her money where her mouth is when it comes to the “no fail” concept by actually showing off what happens when you make different choices.
More than words, the examples really effectively demonstrate her point about exploration and putting your own spin on things. Showing options is a great way to kick off the inspiration process and give the reader ideas about other ways they could customize. It really is truly easier to think of more options given some starter examples, than it is to figure out how to customize from whole cloth. Customization is a muscle that beginners need to learn to develop, and this book offers a great starting point.
Enough about that, what’s the palette?
Mako doesn’t explicitly list her palette/a recommended palette in this book. I understand that this may be an intentional omission given her emphasis on doing your own thing – she doesn’t want you to feel you need to copy her palette but that you can go out and figure out your own favorite colors, and she does provide guidance about how to choose paint brands and colors, along with other good supplies advice.
The problem is, the tutorials do use specific colors, and so in many ways the absence of a supply list just feels disorganized, and creates and unnecessary obstacle for beginners who may not already have a bunch of colors and/or the experience and skill to substitute colors confidently. Instead, readers have to do what I did, and look at each tutorial to make a master list of all the colors used in the book. Surely this is work that she or her editor could have done before publication to make it easier on users.
Well, I’ve done it so now you don’t have to!
Below, there’s a list as a table so you don’t need to be able to read my handwriting. As always, click on the slot name to see my list of other colors in the same hue family that could possibly be substituted. Click on the color name to see my Color Spotlight for that color.
| Slot | Mako Uses (Brand & Pigment Guessed) | Tutorials used (not alts) |
|---|---|---|
| Cyan | Cerulean Blue Hue (PB15, PW6) | 13 |
| Black or Gray | Payne’s Gray | 13 |
| Lemon Yellow | WN Lemon Yellow Hue (PY175) | 12 |
| Dark Blue or Violet Blue | Ultramarine Blue (PB29) | 10 |
| Magenta, Pink, or Rose | Quinacridone Rose (PV19) | 5 |
| Crimson | VG Carmine Red (PR176) | 4 |
| Earth Yellow | Yellow Ochre (PY42) | 3 |
| White Gouache | Titanium/Permanent White (PW6) gouache | 3 |
| Orange Yellow | WN Cadmium Yellow Hue (PY65, PY97) | 2 |
| Brown | Burnt Umber (PBr7) | 2 |
| Earth Orange | Burnt Sienna (PBr7) | 1 |
| Scarlet or Middle Red | WN Cadmium Red Hue (PR149, PR255) | 1 |
Notes:
- Mako does not list what brand she used. She does say at one point that she uses all student grade paint, which I respect as a good example to set by a beginner-oriented teacher. She mentions WN Cotman, Van Gogh, and Schmincke Akademie as her preferred student grade brands. I’ve specified where I feel confident which brand was used and/or I guessed, but it matters a lot to the formulation. If I didn’t specify, all three brands should be pretty similar.
- In paint names, Mako consistently omits the very crucial word “hue”. Everywhere I have inserted the word “hue”, it was not listed in the book. For example, “Cadmium Yellow” was listed, not “Cadmium Yellow Hue.” But no student brand offers genuine cadmium colors (they are too expensive for one thing), so these must be hues.
- Similarly, Mako’s primary cyan is listed merely as ‘Cerulean Blue’, but from the pictures, it definitely appears to be a hue based on Phthalo Blue Green Shade, NOT a genuine PB35/PB36 Cerulean (which is also not offered by any student grade brand).
- I didn’t list the number of times each color is used in an alternate option, but mostly the same colors are used. Two additional colors are used only in alternates: Azo Yellow (PY151) and Prussian Blue (PB27).
- In my paintout, I just used colors I had on hand; I didn’t try to match the brands.
- I used a pretty poor representative of Carmine; I used a purpley PR202, but really it’s redder and more similar to Alizarin Crimson.
I hope if you decide to go through this book, this supplemental material helps you shop for appropriate colors! It seems like a reasonable palette, notable for a lack of greens (though you can mix them from yellows and blues). If you’d like to know my suggestions for a starter palette, see my Watercolor Supplies Guide or my post How to Build a Watercolor Palette from the Ground Up!
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