Well within the past few weeks I have basically been at home and living off of commissions. Because of this I have began to experiment with a new material that I didn’t really care for before. What is it?! Watercolors!!! Prior to this I had always been too afraid to use watercolor because I new it was difficult to master. I have mostly worked with oil and at some point with acrylic and gouache. But watercolor in particular always seemed too hard and I never really took the time to try to use it.
So within these last few weeks I have become obsessed and I am really starting to love working with watercolor. I have tried a couple of different brands now in order to figure out which watercolors are best for me. I decided to do short reviews on each type of watercolor palette or pan set I have used so that anyone who is considering exploring watercolors can figure out if any of these could work for them.
Winsor & Newton Watercolor Pocket Plus Set of 12:
I actually have had this travel pan set for a couple of years now but I hadn’t really tried to use it. I remember that the only reason I bought it in the first place was because it was on sale since someone had stolen the travel sized brush included with the set hahaha. SOOOO! I bought it, if it’s discounted and you’re a broke college student it’s for you! Anyways, I actually began to use it when I got the idea to begin to do watercolor pet portraits. I really like this set because the colors are really pigmented and high quality plus I had gotten it for a bargain so that was amazing. On top of that the set is super portable since it’s so tiny and it comes with detachable water wells??? Mixing wells??? I honestly don’t even know what they’re called but yeah it’s sick! This makes it easier to have various spaces to mix colors but in a compact form. The only thing that I wasn’t fond of was the limited palette. I think this was hard for me because I was trying to mix a wide range of colors with a medium I wasn’t used to. Of course that isn’t the actual palette’s fault since it’s only 12 colors. So I would highly recommend this watercolor pan set (especially if you can find it at a low price). I think once I get better I would definitely get a larger pan set from this brand.
SoHo Urban Artist E-Z Lift Set of 36
This watercolor set was purchased a week or two after I started experimenting with watercolor. I had been eyeing it for a bit before that because it’s crazy cheap at $21.69 on the Jerry’s Artarama website. So once I realized hey watercolor might actually be a cool material for me to experiment with I decided to buy a set with more color choices. I really liked this set because it has a huge variety of choices even including neons and iridescents or pearlescents pans. Which to me was a huge plus since in my personal work I work with a lot of bright and bold colors. So I knew if I did end up liking this palette it would be a cool material to use for possible sketches or works on paper outside of these pet portraits. The palette itself comes in a nice tin box that includes three mixing wells in the design of the top lid, which I really liked. I would say that it clearly isn’t as highly pigmented as the Winsor and Newton set. When applying the colors they’re a bit more transparent so I have had to add more layers in order to heighten the opacity. Another con is that the paint is a little more on the plastic side so it does take a larger amount of water to activate the paint from the pans. But besides that the palette is pretty great for beginners in my opinion because of the variety of colors. I’m thinking of maybe using some kind of watercolor medium alongside this palette to aid the paint viscosity. If it helps I’ll be sure to update this review!
Marie’s Extra Fine Watercolor Set of 18
This is the most recent set of watercolors I have added to my arsenal. Again this is another watercolor set I was eyeing and I had to get it because it’s $6.49 on the Jerry’s Artarama website!!! I wasn’t sure what to expect with this set just because I think we all know that the cheaper a material is the less likely it is to be a good purchase for creating art. But I was blown out of the water by this set. I bought an airtight palette to use alongside it that came with 18 wells. So as soon as I got it I set up my palette. Basically I filled each well with some of the paint and I let it dry so that I could use the paint similar to what I had already been using in the other sets. I’ve really been loving this watercolor set because it is so pigmented and the reactivation success that I’ve had with it is really amazing. Even though I have the other two sets I have found myself mostly using this one just because I love it so much. I think this is probably the best variety of colors for me personally; because I found that with the SoHo set I have so many colors to choose from that sometimes it is nerve racking. But with this 18 color set each color really speaks for itself and is super easy to mix so I can easily get out just as many colors out of it as with the SoHo pan but with more pigmentation. I haven’t actually used it straight out of the tube so I would like to see how easy it is to work with then. But I really have nothing negative to say about this set. I would highly recommend is because it’s cheap and a great buy.
Those are the three sets I have tried so far. I’ll possibly update this or make a new blog post about any other materials I try. I’m honestly so amazed at how much I have started to like watercolor and I hope to bring is more into my personal work because I have been wanting to make more works on paper so we’ll see where this journey takes me.