What’s in the Box!? My Early Watercolor Collection!
Hi ~ I’m MK
Hello Fellow Arters and welcome back to Draw Daily!
If you are new and don’t know me, first, hi, how are you? And second, I am MK of Draw Daily.
Watercolor can be a daunting medium to work with because of all the endless possibilities it offers. There are far too many variables to keep in mind, so much so that we can lose ourselves in all the mystique and end up never actually getting around to the painting part!
My goal is to dispel some of that mystery so that you have less questions, and more answers!
Welcome back to Draw Daily’s Blog Series called What’s in the Box!? I intend to walk you through some of the best art supplies available to artists, and deepen your understanding of the watercolor medium through instruction and soon enough, pure exploration!
In this issue I’ll be breaking down all the paints I’ve used… pre 2020.
The Watercolor Family Tree
I’ve been working with watercolor for a long time, almost for as long as I can remember. Over the years I’ve tried a lot of brands, and a lot of types of paints. There are tubes, pans, pencils, crayons, even liquid, and what are known as peerless watercolors. I’ll be honest, I’ve never used watercolor crayons, but I have used all the others.
What You’re Used To
Tube paints are as they sound, it’s paint in a tube much like toothpaste. They have a thicker consistency but are easily maneuvered and thinned in order to paint with. However, squeezing wet paint out onto a mixing palette can be the more wasteful approach. I highly recommend emptying tubes into a custom palette and allowing them to dry before you use them in order to reduce waste and, more importantly, save money!
Pans are little rectangular pots of plastic in which paints have been filled into and then left to dry. These paints can be reactivated very easily with just a touch of water. Some poor quality paints will have you struggling to reactivate them, but any good paint will have the quality to very easily reactivate by simply putting a damp brush directly on the paint.
Watercolor pencils are such so that you can work with them when dry or wet. You can use the pencil to draw in minor details, and then use a damp paint brush to disperse and blend the pigment. You can use them in wet areas for a soft edge, or wet the pencil itself to create rich and bold textures. It’s best to experiment and play around to see what types of effects you can achieve.
Weird Watercolor MEDIUMS
Liquid watercolors are as they sound, very liquidy, ink-like transparent paints. They are concentrated and can be watered down to be used in a more subtle way, as you would other watercolor paints. However, you can also use them as-is, which results in extremely bold colors. You can easily tell if liquid watercolors are made from pigment, rather than an alternative dye, because pigment takes up space and will settle inside of the bottle when stored. One thing to keep in mind is that many liquid watercolor options are not lightfast, so they are basically guaranteed to fade rather quickly.
The last type of watercolors, which you are probably confused about, are peerless watercolor paints. These have been growing in popularity in the past few years, but they are not pigment based paints. Instead they are concentrated, water soluble inks which have been dried onto sheets of paper. The color can be reactivated by either introducing a wet paint brush directly to the paper, or you can cut a small square of paper and drop it into a well of water to get the paint off of the paper and activate it. These paints were first introduced as a way to add color to black and white films before the capability to record in color was invented.
My Collection As a kid
As a kid I had played around with hobby paints and - at the time - I felt pretty bad-ass using my German TOPPOINT pan paints. With my family being from Germany, and some harmless but uninformed support from them, I was sure that they were some of the best paints out there. I still have them and they are chalky dry pucks!
I was particularly excited when I moved onto some Chinese tube paints, known as Marie’s, feeling quite grown-up every time I squeezed some paint onto a palette. I wasn’t as brazen to assume the quality to be, well, top - but all the questions I had got me even more curious about paints.
What was out there? What made a certain type of paint ‘quality’? Well, I surely didn’t know as there wasn’t much to glean from the packaging, and the internet wasn’t the treasure trove it is today. We mostly used the computer for video games and typing up book reports. This is - of course - being back when you couldn’t google your way into a well-rounded education.
Student Vs Artist
When I got older and information was a little bit easier to come by, I learned about student and artist paints. Got round to trying out some Cotman (Winsor and Newton) student paints, and then got excited when I found out about Van Gogh (they were a bit cheaper) so I got myself a nice range of colors. I’m not about to let the whole cat out of the bag, but, as student paints go, I much prefer Van Gogh.
As I learned I decided it was time to invest! So, I ended up getting myself some of the Winsor and Newton artist paints. This was my main set for a long time. I had gone with Winsor and Newton because it was a well-known brand, and an industry standard. It felt like a safe bet, but to be honest I never truly vibed with Winsor and Newton, I’ve always felt like they are a bit… cloudy. I guess this is the only way I can describe it.
Climbing out of the box
I found out that there were other forms of watercolor besides tubes and pans. The first being watercolor pencils, which I never grew to like; so I set my Derwent pencils aside to sit practically unused to this day.
I am unsure how I stumbled upon liquid watercolors, but when I did, I learned of Dr. Ph Martins paints and inks. When I discovered that not only did Dr. Ph Martins have gorgeous paints, but that they also had a line of lightfast liquid paints (many liquid watercolors are not) I decided I desperately needed a set. I’m really glad I got them too. They differ from tube and pan paints, and thus need to be approached in a unique way. So it’s important that you play around with these before starting in on a painting.
Lastly, we have peerless watercolor paints and these were a gift from a family friend. She was moving and had to go through everything she had in her studio and was kind enough to invite me over to help manage her collection and give me some of the supplies she wasn’t going to use. Within the collection she decided to donate were two packets of Nicholson's Peerless Transparent Watercolors. These were really old paints as well. The brand still exists to this day, as I had discovered, but the packaging has long since changed. Everything else, according to the manufacturer, has remained the same.
The Outliers
I have two other sets of paints; neither are good and I would sooner not comment on them. The first being a Aquafine travel set which includes a short handled brush. A company I was working for at the time was given these in response to a conversation they had with another company, but I did not like them at all. One minor reason being that one of the blues provided wouldn’t even activate basically making them impossible to use.
Next is my Prima palette - meant to be a skin-tone palette - called Complexion. This was a purchase made while I was away from home for a few months. This had me feeling cranky so to try and help lift my mood I wanted to give myself a little something, but I was a bit rash and made the purchase on a whim. I wish I had done a little research on the product because they aren’t great to use as-is, and I found myself mixing the already multi-pigmented paints to get them to a more natural skin tone. They sit unused as well, but you live and you learn.
When I Finally Gave In
It’s true, I have known about Daniel Smith watercolors for a very long time and have been wanting to get my hands on them for, well… almost just as long. Whenever other artists talked about paints they made Daniel Smith sound like the freaking holy grail of watercolor paints; commenting on their quality, and their overall awesomeness that could not be denied. I mean, it seemed as though they really had to nit-pick to find reasons to complain about them!
A few years back, I had taken a bit of a break from painting - basically out of pure frustration - but when I got back into the fray and started enjoying the life of a watercolor artist again, I finally gave in and bought my first Daniel Smith set.
I realized a few things; one, they weren’t as expensive as every one seemed to imply (compared to what I have or was going to pay for Winsor and Newton), two, they are just as awesome as everyone has always said, and three, I was finally able to not only see, but proved the suppositions I had all these years about the quality (rather the lack thereof) of Winsor and Newton paints.
Fin
It’s been a really crazy journey, starting out as a kid in the 90’s, working my way up to a ripe, malleable adult, and now have entered into a new and enlightened decade. I’ve found that I am still in the midst of learning and exploring, which is a mindset that I will continue to have for the rest of my years. This is not the end of my journey; I will continue on searching for answers, and I am determined to continue to share my discoveries with you, the world.
Thank you for seeing this anecdotal story to its end. Anyone reading this, please share your experiences and what you’ve learned about watercolor through the years. Tell me one thing you know now, that you wish you knew when you started; I’d love to hear it.
My journey as a blogging teacher has just started and there will be yet more to come, including new installments on “What’s in the Box!?” so, get yourself subscribed for future updates.
That’s it for today, thanks for reading!
I’m MK and this is Draw Daily!