Winsor & Newton Cotman Water Colors are a range of water colors that are made to our normal high quality standards but costs are kept to an economical level by replacing some of the more costly pigments with less expensive alternatives. Each color has good transparency, excellent tinting strength and good working properties. Payne's Gray is a dark blue grey made from a mixture of Ultramarine, Mars Black and sometimes Crimson. It was named after the 18th c. watercolorist William Payne who created the mixture and often recommended it to his students as an alternative to plain black.