01 of 07 Watercolor Paint Extruded as Long Strips Photo Gallery: Winsor & Newton Factory Tour. Photo courtesy of Winsor & Newton Photo tour of the Winsor & Newton Factory where artists' paint was manufactured. A tour of the Winsor & Newton factory in west London provided a fascinating look into how the paints we use were made. A colorful mixture of high-tech and low-tech, all ending in the familiar tubes or pans of paint we use in our studios. (The W&N London factory closed in 2012 and production moved to France.) The watercolor paint we ultimately buy as individual pans gets extruded in long strips before being segmented and plopped into the more familiar, little white plastic pans by machine.

02 of 07 Watercolor Paint Pans Photo Gallery: Winsor & Newton Factory Tour. Photo courtesy of Winsor & Newton Individual paint colors are manufactured in small runs, but even part of a batch of watercolor pans on the production line still looks like a lifetime's supply for an individual!

03 of 07 Watercolor Paint Pans Wrapped Photo Gallery: Winsor & Newton Factory Tour. Photo courtesy of Winsor & Newton Individual pans of Winsor & Newton's artist's quality watercolor are wrapped in foil and a label added, a process apparently evolved from bubble-gum wrapping machinery. Each plastic pan has the name of the color stamped on it too, useful for checking a color when it comes to replacing it as who ever keeps the wrapper?

04 of 07 Paint Tube Filling Machine Photo Gallery: Winsor & Newton Factory Tour. Photo courtesy of Winsor & Newton Empty paint tubes are filled with a measured quantity of paint, then the open end (the "bottom" end, not the cap end) folded over and sealed.

05 of 07 Empty Paint Tubes Photo Gallery: Winsor & Newton Factory Tour. Empty paint tubes on their way to being filled with paint. The smaller, lighter circle you can see in the tube is the inside of the screw-on cap. The inside of the tubes are coated, except for the very end bit which gets folded over and sealed.

06 of 07 Pigment Scoops Photo Gallery: Winsor & Newton Factory Tour Pigment Scoops at Winsor & Newton's Paint Factory. Photo Courtesy of Winsor & Newton. Used with Permission. In order to prevent cross-contamination, different scoops are used for measuring out quantities of paint pigment. When a specific paint color is due to be made, an "ingredients list" is sent to the supplies store, specifying how much of what pigment is required for that paint batch.