Winsor & Newton Burnt Sienna Watercolor Review: A Palette Essential
Watercolor Essentials: Burnt Sienna
Winsor & Newton Burnt Sienna is one of the foundational colors on my watercolor palette. This granulating, low-staining earth color lifts easily and mixes beautiful grays, darks and near-blacks with blues.
Burnt Sienna is one of the few colors I have on EVERY single watercolor palette I own.
Every single one.
I own more watercolor paints than any reasonable person needs, and I am constantly swapping colors in and out of my palettes. Some colors last a few months. Some survive a year. Some seemed like a great idea when I bought them and quietly disappear after I realize I never actually use them.
Burnt Sienna stays.
Why?
Because it does almost everything.
Burnt Sienna Is One of the Best Mixing Colors
If I had to choose Burnt Sienna for one reason, this would probably be it.
Need a dark neutral that’s almost black? Mix Burnt Sienna with Ultramarine Blue. Depending on the ratio, you can push the mixture warmer or cooler, from a deep brown to a beautiful charcoal gray and eventually something approaching black.
Mix it with Cobalt Blue and you’ll get a similar neutral, although usually not quite as dark.
Another favorite combination of mine is Burnt Sienna with Holbein Sap Green. That mixture creates a beautiful dark that works especially well in landscapes, trees, architecture and anywhere else I want a dark color without reaching for black.
And that’s why Burnt Sienna earns its space on my palette. It isn’t just a brown.
It’s a mixing machine.
Does Burnt Sienna Watercolor Granulate?
I love granulating watercolor paints.
Those little reticulated patterns and areas of pigment that settle into the texture of the paper are one of the things that make watercolor actually look like watercolor. They create texture without requiring me to sit there and paint every rock, brick, tree or piece of dirt.
Burnt Sienna gives you that beautiful granulating texture, particularly on cold-pressed and rough watercolor paper. Let the paint move around in a wet wash and the pigment settles into the paper instead of drying as one perfectly flat, boring color.
That makes it especially useful for landscapes, architecture, rocks, old buildings, trees and—unsurprisingly—dirt.
It’s Also Relatively Easy to Lift
Looking for a lower-staining color?
Check.
Burnt Sienna is generally much easier to lift than heavily staining colors such as the Phthalos. Once the paint has dried, I can usually go back with a damp brush, gently scrub the area and remove a surprising amount of color.
That’s useful when I need to soften an edge, recover a highlight or fix something I probably shouldn’t have painted there in the first place.
Which happens- it’s watercolor after all.
What Color Is Burnt Sienna?
Burnt Sienna is a warm reddish-brown and some version of it is sold by virtually every major watercolor manufacturer.
But here’s the important part:
Don’t assume every tube labeled Burnt Sienna is the same color.
It isn’t.
Winsor & Newton Burnt Sienna uses PR101—Pigment Red 101. I’ve found Burnt Siennas from other manufacturers that also list PR101 on the tube but look noticeably different on paper.
Same pigment designation. Different color.
Pigment processing, formulation, particle size and the other ingredients used by the manufacturer can all affect how a paint looks and behaves. That’s why I always test the actual paint instead of assuming two tubes with the same pigment number will be identical.
They’re often not.
Burnt Sienna Has Been Around Forever
There’s also nothing particularly trendy about Burnt Sienna.
Sienna is one of the classic earth colors used by artists for centuries. Traditionally associated with the earth pigments of Siena, Italy, the raw material could be heated—or “burnt”—to produce a warmer, deeper reddish-brown.
That made colors like Burnt Sienna incredibly useful to painters long before anyone was ordering tubes of Quinacridone Something-or-Other from Amazon.
Earth colors were readily available, useful and relatively inexpensive. No surprise they became staples on artists’ palettes.
Hundreds of years later, Burnt Sienna is still there.
There’s a reason for that.
Do You Really Need Burnt Sienna on Your Watercolor Palette?
For me?
Absolutely.
If you’re trying to build a small watercolor palette, Burnt Sienna is one of the first colors I’d put on it.
You can use it by itself for warm earth tones, architecture and landscapes. Mix it with blues for beautiful grays and near-blacks. Mix it with greens for rich natural darks. Let it granulate for texture. Lift it when you screw something up.
It earns its space.
I have plenty of watercolor paints that I love but don’t really need.
Burnt Sienna isn’t one of them.
This is a watercolor essential.
And heck, because Burnt Sienna basically started life as dirt, it might even be useful during the zombie apocalypse. While everyone else is fighting over canned beans, I’ll be sitting in the studio painting with earth pigments and patiently waiting for the skies to clear.
Could you eat it?
Maybe. But you’re going to have to brush your teeth afterwards…
Please check the warning label on the tube before taking nutritional advice from a watercolor artist.
Compare More Watercolor Essential Paints
No single watercolor pigment does everything. Some colors earn their place because they mix beautifully, some granulate, some lift easily, and others create effects that are difficult to reproduce with anything else. Explore more of the watercolor paints I use and compare how they behave:
- Winsor & Newton Cobalt Blue — A clean, foundational blue that is low staining, easy to lift, and extremely versatile for skies, water, shadows, and color mixing.
- Winsor & Newton Ultramarine Blue — A strongly granulating blue that creates beautiful texture, lifts easily, and mixes exceptionally rich darks and near-blacks with Burnt Sienna.
- Winsor & Newton Cerulean Blue — A cool, green-leaning blue with beautiful granulation and noticeable opacity that I use for atmospheric effects, fog, charging wet washes, and cool accents over darker passages.
- Holbein Sap Green — My favorite natural-looking tube green, with strong granulation, wonderful blossoms, and the ability to create rich, colorful landscape darks.
- Turner Natural Rose Madder — A transparent, low-staining NR9 red that lifts easily and creates beautiful watercolor blossoms. I love how it behaves on paper, but its poor lightfastness means I use it more selectively than my foundational colors.
Every watercolor pigment behaves differently on paper. My Watercolor Essentials reviews look beyond the color in the tube and focus on what actually matters when I’m painting: color bias, transparency, staining, lifting, granulation, blossoms, mixing behavior, and whether the paint really deserves space on my palette.
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Ryan Fox AWS, NWS, TWSA
Ryan Fox Painting
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