Watercolor

Watercolor is a technique based on a water-soluble glue binder. The glue included in watercolor is a vegetable glue.
In the glue technique and tempera, it can be animal. (Tempera is based on an emulsion binder.).
Watercolor was used in ancient times (Egypt - papyri; China, Byzantium - miniatures).
In medieval and Renaissance times it was used as a sub-paint for tempera.
Watercolor was also used for sketches (cartoons by Dürer, Raphael, Rubens, etc.).
In the 17th century, watercolor became an independent technique, most widely used in England, and in the 19th century throughout Western Europe.

Types of watercolors

1. hard - in the form of tiles or buttons.
2. Soft - in bowls.
3. Honey - in tubes.

The binder in all these varieties is a vegetable glue: gum arabic,
dykstrin, tragantium, cherry glue, acacia glue.

Plasticizers

Honey, glycerin, "ice" sugar, wax and some resins (balsams).
Balsams are added to make the paint more resistant to washing.
Cheaper grades of watercolor use carpenter's glue, fish glue or potato flour as binders.
Watercolor is an eminently laser-like technique and has a special set of pigments that must be eminently finely ground.
The dye powder must be perfectly suspended in the binder so that it does not fall out of it. Only then can the dye be spread thinly and evenly, without any dots, streaks or spots, on the paper.

The ideal watercolor kit

It must consist of a mixture of a colloidal solution of an inorganic substance (thinly ground mineral dye) with a colloidal solution of an organic substance (vegetable binder).

Consistency of watercolor

Depends on the proportion of binder and plasticizer.
Hard - have less honey or sugar, more glue.
Soft - have the same proportion of plasticizer and binder.
Honey - have more honey, less gum arabic.
The crystallizing ingredients are extracted from the honey, and it is used as one of the components of honey - levulose (fructose)
Watercolor containing more plasticizer (honey) is more easily washable. Therefore, Kapay balsam or mastic is added to it.
Resins and wax with gum arabic solution give an emulsion. Therefore, soft watercolors are similar to rubber tempera.