watercolour

I only got to know of Milind Mulick in 2012 when I first shared some of his paintings on this blog. He's a watercolour artist from India and has been painting for 30 years.

This book first came out in 2000. The edition that I have is the 13th reprint from 2014.

Looking at his work now and comparing it to the ones from the book, I can only say that he gets better and better. The watercolour paintings are beautiful then, and even more beautiful now.

His book Watercolour is a collection of paintings, techniques and demonstrations. He talks about sketching, composition, colours and most importantly the joy of painting. Also included are some of his pencil sketches which by the way are terrific as well — he could release a book on pencil sketching too.

The demonstrations included are paragraphs describing the series of work-in-progress paintings. It's enlightening to read and find out about his approach to starting the painting.

Overall, this book is meant to be a complement to the more structured watercolour instructional books. The tips and techniques offered are timeless and insightful.

This is a wonderful book of beautiful art and a nice source of inspiration.

Watercolour is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

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Gina Rossi Armfield is back with a new book that follows the same style as her earlier and popular book No Excuses Art Journaling: Making Time for Creativity.

No Excuses Watercolor is a beginners workbook on using watercolours for sketching and journaling. In a sense, it's almost like her earlier book, except here it focuses on watercolours, and there are more exercises.

First part of the book introduces you to the tools. It assumes no prior knowledge with watercolour. It suggests the tools that you can get and colours to use.

The traditional techniques like creating a wash, wet-on-wet, using masking fluid are only briefly mentioned. The highlight would be the hands-on exercises where you get to draw something, in this case, fruits, owls and trees, and then filling them with watercolour. The step-by-step demonstrations are simple and easy to follow. The examples look loose and there's no stress on getting it right because there's no right or wrong. There's also a section that talks about using text in your sketches.

The tutorial section is indeed short. That's because the third and final section offers several pages of ideas to help you brainstorm for things to draw. There are ideas for subjects, suggestions for colour palette and even quotes that you can write on your sketches, if you want to of course.

No Excuses Watercolor is an accessible book for anyone who wants to play around with watercolours or get started with sketching and journaling. It's not a very technical book so you might still need another book if you want to improve your drawing skills — I suggest you get Keys to Drawing as well.

No Excuses Watercolor: Painting Techniques for Sketching and Journaling is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

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Focus of the book is actually on mastering shapes to use them effectively in watercolour paintings. So it's rather conceptual in a way that it forces you to think about your painting before you start. And it's great because that will make for a better painting.

Every concept explained is accompanied by a demonstration that shows you, usually in three steps, the start, middle and final stage of the painting. I found the demonstrations to be particularly insightful. In the first stage, you can pretty much tell the direction of where the painting is going towards. The second stage usually blocks in the main subjects and the final stage with touch up on the details. The first two stages show how crucial those initial strokes can be.

There are also lots of other watercolour tips, such as colour mixing, values, composition, tools, conveying textures and mode. The chapter on colour mixing would be quite useful because it talks about how sometimes you don't get the colour you desire even though you have mixed the correct primaries.

Author and artist Leslie Frontz has a way to explain concepts very simply.

This is an insightful book for beginners and intermediate artists.

The Watercolor Course You've Always Wanted: Guided Lessons for Beginners and Experienced Artists is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

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In this demonstration, I talk about how you can mix bright and dull secondary colours (e.g. orange, green, purple) from warm and cool primary watercolours.

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Dale Laitinen shares his colour recipes for mixing greens, grays and violets in this video.

Mixing greens
Phthalo Blue + Quinacridone Gold
Cobalt Blue + New Gamboge
New Gamboge + Phthalo Green

Mixing grays
French Ultramarine + Burnt Orange/Burnt Sienna
Phthalo Green + Permanent Alizarin Crimson
Cobalt Blue + Quinacridone Red + Quinacridone Gold

Mixing violets
Cobalt Blue + Quinacridone Red
French Ultramarine + Permanent Alizarin Crimson
French Ultramarine + Cadmium Red

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This article is to accompany my Youtube video.

When I first started using watercolours, I had difficulty mixing grays and blacks. In the early days, I used Payne's Gray, the black that came with standard watercolour box sets and occasionally mixed graphite with watercolour.

What I learned over the years is, you can get better grays and blacks if you mix them yourself. By better, I mean grays and blacks that look more interesting when compared to single pigment grays and blacks, such as graphite or Ivory Black for example.

Just like you should avoid using colours straight from the tube or pan without first mixing it somehow, the same applies to grays and blacks. No colour or pigment in nature appear in their natural pure state. There's always some sort of impurities, no matter how minute. When you use single pigment grays and blacks with colours, the grays and blacks will attract attention in a wrong way. You can try it yourself by painting two versions of the same subject, and using single pigment grays and blacks (e.g. watersoluble graphite, Ivory Black, Lamp Black) for one version, and mixed grays and blacks for another. The visual different will be easy to spot.

How to get grays and blacks with watercolour

You may already know that to get grays and blacks, you can mix the three primaries yellow, red and blue together. But which primaries specifically? That really requires a lot of experimentation. For me, I prefer to mix the grays and black with convenient colours, usually two instead of three colours. It's faster and easier.

When you mix three colours, you have to be precise on the amount of each colour mixed. When you have too much of one colour, such as red and yellow, you'll get more of a brownish mixture.

When you have too much red and blue, your mixture will tend towards the violet side.

Not all colours can mix to a nice gray or black. Use the wrong starting colours and you can mix rather quickly into mud.

My common mixtures are:

Phthalo Green + Permanent Alizarin Crimson
French Ultramarine + Burnt Sienna
Transparent Pyrrole Red + Phthalo Blue

You don't have to use the same colours I've mentioned. As long as the formula is something like the ones below, you'll be able to get a variation of gray and black.

Cool Green + Cool Red
Warm Blue + Orange
Warm Red + Cool Blue

For the first two mixtures of Cool Green + Cool Red and Warm Blue + Orange, you're actually mixing complement colour pairs. Each colour will neutralize and result in a gray. Mix more paint and you'll get a dark intense colour close to black.

For the last mixture of Warm Red + Cool Blue, you can get an intense almost black colour as well. Mixing red and blue usually give you a purple or violet but in this case, the Warm Red has a bit of yellow, so you get red, yellow and blue which will give you a muted colour. Throw in a strong Phthalo Blue and you can get something really dark. Mix in a bit of yellow and you'll get something close to black (such as what you see at the bottom left above).

Add more water to the blacks and you'll get the grays.

What's a nice black or gray?

To me, a nice black or gray is one that allows you the see the underlying colours that were used in the mixture. If you mix the colours thoroughly on the palette before applying to paper, the grays and black will not be as interesting as when compared to those where you did not mix cleaning.

In the two sketches above, I prefer the grays and blacks mixed with two colours rather than the ones from single pigments, e.g. Ivory Black and graphite.

Payne's Gray is still quite alright. It's consist of three pigments. I used it sometimes, but mostly for monotone sketches.

Graphite when used with watercolour will look lifeless and dull, as if colours have been sucked out from it.

Ivory Black in the sketch looks alright, but you definitely get more visual interested when you use a black that's mixed from two colours.

What about grays and blacks from three primaries?

While I prefer the convenient mixtures, I do mixed grays and blacks from three primaries.

Also when you mix grays and blacks yourself, you can control whether they go towards the cool or warm side. E.g. If I mixed Phthalo Blue and Transparent Pyrrole Orange, I can add more blue to make the gray cool, or more of the latter to make the gray warmer.

The colours I used will be those that are already used in my sketch. If I have Perm Alizarin Crimson, I might get my grays and blacks by mixing with Phthalo Green. If there's French Ultramarine used, I would use Burnt Sienna. I try not to introduce or use too many colours because it can be quite difficult to achieve colour harmony.

Two books you should check out to learn more about colour mixing would be Confident Color: An Artist's Guide To Harmony, Contrast And Unity and http://www.parkablogs.com/content/book-review-making-color-sing-practical-lessons-color-and-design-25th-anniversary-edition

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Holly Exley's watercolour artworks are SO NICE!!!

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This book's authored by two artists Peng and Hu, and on the cover it has them listed as Peng+Hu. Hirameki: Draw What You See! is a fun book that doesn't take itself too seriously. For the activities within, it recommends that you use a pen no longer than your arm, and no shorter than your little finger.

I'm not sure what Hirameki means. The book says it's the pleasure from the smallest things. Update: A reader told me it Hirameki means inspiration

The authors see every blob or splash of watercolour as inspiration, and invites you to imagine and draw with what's already on the page. Strange shapes made by watercolour can be added with wings and beaks and they suddenly turn into birds. Sometimes you can draw hands and legs and you'll have someone dancing. So it's really up to you to interpret what you have.

There aren't a lot of instructions. The idea is self explanatory. The 192-page paperback is filled with examples for sparking your imagination.

I find it quite fun to just splatter watercolour at times without any purpose and see what I can come up with.

This review copy is provided by book seller and distributor APD Singapore (website | facebook). You can get the book from them and major bookstores in Southeast Asia.

Hirameki: Draw What You See! is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

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If you buy the links, I get a little commission that helps me get more books to feature.

This review copy is provided by book seller and distributor APD Singapore (website | facebook). You can get the book from them and major bookstores in Southeast Asia.

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Graham Byfield's latest book collects the watercolour sketches he made at the university town Cambridge.

I really enjoyed looking at the campus, all the wonderful architecture, and reading all about the history behind. The pencil and watercolour sketches are lovely. Graham Byfield's style of watercolour is more subtle compared to other artists and evokes a softer feeling.

There are a lot of places featured, basically all around Cambridge. There's also a few pages of writeup by Marcus Binney on the town, gown and the academic world. In addition to the buildings, there are also sketches of people, such as City Rangers sticking posters on railings, cyclists and even the Hop-on-and-off tourist bus.

This book makes me want to go there for sketching as well.

I noticed that the book is published by Laurence King Publishers instead of Editions Didier Millet that have been publishing all these travelogue-style sketchbooks all along.

This review copy is provided by book seller and distributor APD Singapore (website | facebook). You can get the book from them and major bookstores in Southeast Asia.

Cambridge: The Watercolour Sketchbook is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

Visit Amazon to check out more reviews.

If you buy the links, I get a little commission that helps me get more books to feature.

This review copy is provided by book seller and distributor APD Singapore (website | facebook). You can get the book from them and major bookstores in Southeast Asia.

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I only got to know about Prima Marketing watercolour sets when I read about them on the Wetcanvas forums, and also while I was searching for empty watercolour boxes on Amazon.

From what I read on their website, Prima Marketing do make other art and DIY supplies, mostly for crafters from what I can see.

Prima Marketing has three watercolour sets, namely The Classics, Decadent Pies and Tropicals. I choose to buy Tropicals because the colours look more intense. If you paint a lot of confectionary, then getting the Decadent Pies set would be more appropriate. LOL.

Decadent Pies set

The Classics set. There's a white!

One thing that's missing is information regarding the pigments and binder that's used to create the paints. There's also no info on their website.

By the way, the paints are made in Korea.

When you first open the box, the pans are wrapped up.

Each pan is only identified by their number code. And you can't match that code to any names because there aren't any on their website.

The metal box is nice. When you look for empty watercolour boxes only, they usually cost around US $20. Well, this box set also cost the same price, but you also get watercolours so it's really value for money.

There are many things I like about this box. One is the space between the rows of pans is larger. Large enough for you to fit two pocket watercolour brushes, because sometimes you might want to bring a small and big brush. Large enough to fit in another row of watercolour pans.

The metal plate that holds the pans can also be removed when you want to wash your palette.

Another thing I like about the box is the lower flap remains horizontal when you open it up. Unlike other boxes where the flap will droop, this remains horizontal.

Corners of the lower flap are also higher which prevent water from rolling off the corner.

These are the colour swatches I painted with the colours. They are more intense than I expected. Most of the colours are transparent or quite transparent, which is another good point, so they are quite easy to mix without losing transparency.

If I compare the colours to other brands, the equivalent colours in this box sets would be

Yellow Ochre
Hansa Yellow
Orange
Quin Rose
Quin Magenta
Burnt Umber
Yellow Green
Phthalo Green Dark
Phthalo Green
Probably Cobalt Blue
Probably French Ultramarine
Purple

The colour selection is quite good except for the inclusion of three greens. Difference between the two blues are not obvious.

I like the Yellow Ochre is included. It's a useful colour that you can use without mixing because it's already dulled down so that it's not that glaring. It's also a good colour for mixing skin tones.

You can get gray tones with the green and red mixtures, and also with the blues and brown.

I don't usually use purple but the one included here is intense and can mix with yellow to get a colour close to black.

Here's a simple sketch painted with the colours. I like the transparency of the colours. Since I create mostly pen and ink sketches, transparent watercolours allow the lines to show through.

Conclusion

Overall, for US $20, it's a good deal for the money. The paints' intensity is better than I expected. They dissolve and mix well. The only downside is the lack of information regarding the pigments used and lightfast ratings. But at this kind of pricing, I really can't complain much.

You may buy this for the metal box, you may end up liking the colours.

Availability

It seems that these box sets are currently sold only by the US branch of Amazon. Here are the links to the different sets: Tropicals | The Classics | Decadent Pies

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St Petersburg's White Nights watercolours are affordable entry level paints suitable for beginners and students. These watercolours are made in Russia.

There are many box sets available, ranging from 6 to 48 pans. There are only 59 colours in the series.

Shown above is the 12-pan set and 24-pan set. The 12-pan set is relatively compact but the 24-pan set is huge with lots of mixing area. Additionally, the 24-pan set has more space to fit in 12 more pans.

Here's how the 12-pan set compare to the common 12-pan metal box.

There's a bit of space inside the box to hold a Da Vinci Maestro Pocket Brush but not a Rosemary pocket brush.

I bought my 12-pan set on eBay at US $24 which includes shipping. You can find these watercolours quite easily, even on Amazon.

Colours included in the 12-pan set are

Cadmium Lemon - PY35 - LF3
Cadmium Yellow Medium - PY35 - LF3
Yellow Ochre - PY41 + PY1 - LF2
Cadmium Red - PR108 - LF3
Carmine - PR170:1 - LF3
Ultramarine - PB29 - LF3
Blue - PB15 - LF3
Emerald Green - PG7 - LF3
Green - PG8 - LF2
Umber - PY43 + Br7 + Bk7 - LF3
Burnt Umber - PBr7 - LF3
Neutral Black - PR187 + PB15 + Pbk7 - LF3

9 out of 12 colours are single pigment colours so that's great because it means colour mixtures don't turn to mud easily. The multi-pigment colours are Yellow Ochre, Umber and Neutral Black.

Colour selection is quite good. There's a warm and cool version of each primary colour, two greens, Yellow Ochre, two earth tones and a black.

As for the lightfastness, I don't have the means to test for that. So you just have to take it from St Petersburg's word that they are lightfast.

Here's the colour swatch. The colours are quite intense.

Several colours are not transparent, namely Cadmium Lemon, Cadmium Yellow Medium and Cadmium Red. So if you mix with those colours, your mixtures will not be transparent too. The rest of the colours are relatively transparent.

Here's a colour wheel painted with cool colours. You get yellow green, intense purple and muted orange. Notice how opaque Cadmium Lemon can get. If you mix green from that, your greens will be opaque.

This colour wheel is painted with warm colours. You can get bright orange, muted warm green and mute mauve.

To get skin tones, you can mix Yellow Ochre with Carmine.

To mix grays, you can use either Ultramarine with Burnt Umber. Because Ultramarine is granulating, this gray mixture is good for dark clouds or textured ground.

For a cleaner gray, you can use Carmine with Emerald Green. There's no granulation. I usually use this mixture to make foliage darker.

Overall, I like the colour selection in the 12 pan set. Note that the pans are full size pans. The pans are also sold separately if you run out of paint. You can also buy standard size empty full pans and they will fit in the pan holder.

One thing to note when cleaning the box is make sure you clean the bottom part of the cover that's close to the hinge. There could be water trap there and when you close the cover, the water will drip out and make a mess — happened to me several times when I forgot to clean the box properly.

Below are three sketches coloured with White Nights. Click to view them larger.

For these two sketch, I avoided using the Cadmium colours so that the line art can show through.

For this sketch, I had to use orange and I mixed it with Cadmium Yellow Medium and Cadmium Red. You can see that the resulting mixture is opaque enough to cover the line art.

Conclusion

Overall, this is a set that's really value for money even if the box set is not as cheap compared to Winsor & Newton's Cotman.

It may not be the most appropriate set for pen, ink and watercolour sketches, or those painters who like glazing and transparent watercolours. So you have to know the limitations of opaque colours and work with them. Anyway, you can always replace the opaque colours with transparent ones as the box set is so affordable.

The single pigment colours helps when you want to mix vibrant secondary colours. You can get bright oranges and purple. For greens, it's best to use the two greens that are provided as Cadmium Lemon and Cadmium Yellow Medium are both not transparent. The only problematic colour is a mixed orange because that's going to be opaque.

So to conclude, it's worth a try because it's affordable. I like the large pan sizes.

Check out other watercolour sets I've reviewed at http://www.parkablogs.com/tags/watercolour-set

Availability

The links above are affiliate links and I get some commission for each sale at no additional cost to you.

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I've been wondering about the two Ultramarine for the longest time and decided to finally compare the two. By the way, I'm currently using French Ultramarine.

It's really difficult to see any difference between Ultramarine Blue and French Ultramarine, straight from the tube and also from the resulting colour mixtures.

Here's what Daniel Smith say about Ultramarine Blue on their website:

Ultramarine Blue plots cooler and bluer than the more saturated French Ultramarine. Temperature aside, both blues have equal permanence, lightfastness and transparency.
Ultramarine Blue is slightly less granular in concentrated washes. For less saturation, sedimentation and cost, use Ultramarine Blue straight, for vibrant crayon-like color or mixed with a cool red for dark, effective neutrals.

And this is what they say about French Ultramarine:

This medium-to-dark warm reddish-blue is highly lightfast and of medium tinting strength. Its sedimentary quality increases its versatility.
Mixed with various portions of other blues, French Ultramarine is a wonderful sky pigment. Modify it with Quinacridone Gold for delightful greens that remain color-coordinated. Mix French Ultramarine with Quinacridone Burnt Orange and be rewarded with an amazing range of blue to brown grays. Mixed with either Quinacridone Rose or Pink, a range of purples result. For another important mix, see Hooker's and Sap Green.

I'm not so sure about their "less granular" for Ultramarine Blue. I actually though that they are more granular, more textural. Anyway, the difference is small.

From the colour mixtures that I've created, I wasn't able to spot any difference as well.

Can you spot the difference?

Which one do I prefer? Well, both, since I don't really see much difference. You might want to check out Jane Blundell's comparison of the two Ultramarines and other brands as well at http://janeblundellart.blogspot.com/2013/06/watercolour-comparisons-1-ul...

Here's the video of how I created those swatches above:

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watercolour

Phthalocyanine is actually a chemical compound commonly used for dyes and pigments. One of the main characteristics is the high intensity of the colours.

Phthalocyanine Blue or Phthalo Blue is a bright, crystalline, synthetic blue pigment from the group of phthalocyanine dyes.

Daniel Smith offers two versions of Phthalo Blue, one's a green shade and the other a red shade. The pigment used are PB 15:3 and PB 15:6 respectively. The one in my palette of Daniel Smith watercolours is Phthalo Blue (GS).

Daniel Smith claims for PB Green Shade:

For cool, clean staining shadows and reflected light on windows. Super staining, super transparent Phthalo Blue is a popular pure chroma organic pigment. Mix with Hansa Yellow for luminous greens.

And for Red Shade:

A powerful blue with a slightly red undertone, this popular pigment is valued for its strength and economy—just a daub of paint can color a whole sky. A dash of blue gives a full range of value. Mix dark colors for shading and shadows by combining Phthalo Blue with Quinacridone Rose. Use Phthalo Blue’s transparent quality to create containers and water around stems.

Main attributes of Phthalo Blue are transparency, amazing tinting strength and staining power. You just need a tiny bit of pigment and it is often enough to get an intense wash, or shift the colour of mixtures. It's also very staining so it's very difficult to lift it off watercolour paper, or even off any surface. Have a drop on your clothes, wooden table or floor and you'll find that it's almost impossible to clean it off. Be careful!
I've always wondered about the differences between the green and red shade so recently I bought a tube of red shade to compare. Below's the chart I painted out with other colours.

PB Green Shade is cooler compared to PB Red Shade. You can use both for skies so it really depends on your preference. PB Green Shade is what I would associate with a cheery sky blue that has a stylised look because blues in nature are not so bright and clean. PB Red Shade feels closer to actual colour of the sky.

I find PB Red Shade closer to French Ultramarine because the latter is also a warm blue, but much warmer.

I tried to mix a cool Lemon Yellow with Phthalo Blue hoping that I can get something close to Phthalo Green and you can sort of get close to it if you add more blue. However, I still prefer to have Phthalo Green instead of mixing to get it because yellow is a colour that's quite easy to get dirty, and I use Phthalo Green a lot so it saves me a lot of time from having to mix it.

From the colour chart above, I can see that the cooler secondary colour such as green is brighter when you get that mixture using PB Green Shade. As for purple, you can get a brighter version from using PB Red Shade.

I love to use PB Green Shade with Transparent Pyrrole Orange because it gives me a nice cool gray. I can add lots of pigment and it will give me an intense dark that's close to black. It seems that when mixed with PB Red Shade, the mixture is more brownish.

There doesn't seem to be any difference when the two PB are mixed with Burnt Sienna.

You can get a neutral black if you mixed PB Green Shade, Lemon Yellow and Transparent Pyrrole Orange, but you have to get the proportion right. These three colours also give you lots of beautiful variations of grays.

If you like more subdued greens, get PB Red Shade for the red will neutralise the greens. Personally for me, I like the Green Shade version better, especially when diluting it to colour the sky.

You can find both Phthalo Blues on Amazon at
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001PTCTYK?tag=artprdus-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001PT8XA4?tag=artprdus-20

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I've finally gotten around to reviewing the Van Gogh 12 half-pan watercolour set that I bought a long time ago.

Van Gogh watercolours are made by Royal Talens from Netherlands. They are also the same company that makes the Rembrandt watercolours. Although it's not mentioned on their website, I read somewhere that the Van Gogh watercolours are student grade paints.

They are sold in various box sets. They are commonly sold in white plastic boxes with 12, 18 and 24 half pans.

The total range consists of 40 colours. That's enough but not as many compared to other brands. You can also get the colours as tubes.

The set that I bought from Amazon Japan came with a metal box. It came with a small size 4 collapsible brush which is just too small to be used in any satisfactory manner. Also, the brush does not close well because the opening is quite loose.

The metal box is those ubiquitous metal watercolour boxes. There's space between the rows of colours to put a collapsible brush such as a Da Vinci Maestro travel brush or Rosemary travel brush.

The price is quite comparable to Winsor & Newton Cotman, the student grade watercolour. Depending on where you're buying it from, it may be more or less expensive than Cotman. A reader told me it's cheaper if you buy it in Netherlands.

Each pan has a product code stamped onto the side. You can use that to compare with the colour chart on Royal Talens website to get information like the pigments used.

These are the colours included in this set

Chinese White PW4
Perm Lemon Yellow PY184
Azo Yellow Medium PY154 + PO62
Perm Red Light PR264
Cobalt Blue (Ultramarine) PB29 + PW6
Ultramarine Deep PB29
Hooker Green Light PG7 + PY154
Phthalo Green PG7
Yellow Ochre PY42
Burnt Sienna PR101 + PBK11
Payne's Grey Pbk6 + PV19

Colour selection in this set is quite good with the exception of Chinese White. You might want to replace that with a cool blue such as Phthalo Blue or Cerulean.

The two blues included are Cobalt Blue (Ultramarine) and Ultramarine Deep. Interestingly, this version of Cobalt Blue is listed as using PB29, the pigment used to make Ultramarine and also has PW4 which is a white added. Overall, it looks too similar to Ultramarine Deep that is included. Both are warm blues, hence my recommendation of adding a cool blue earlier.

In this sketch, the sky was coloured with Ultramarine Deep and the bike with Cobalt Blue (Ultramarine). The difference is not obvious enough if you use them in heavy concentration.

Most of the colours are relatively transparent except for Yellow Ochre which looks semi-opaque.

There are 7 single pigment colours out of the 12, and one of them is Chinese White.

The colours look vibrant when painted off from their pans.

This is the colour chart created from the set. I skipped Chinese White because I don't really use that.

Overall, the resulting mixtures are quite vibrant and I like what I see. They compare well against artist grade watercolours such as Daniel Smith or Schmincke. I would say Van Gogh colour mixtures appear to be less granular even though there are granulating paints such as Cobalt Blue, Ultramarine Deep, Burnt Sienna and Hooker's Green.

For warm bright orange, you can mix Azo Yellow Medium with Perm Red Light. For bright purples, you can mix either Cobalt Blue or Ultramarine Deep with Madder Lake Deep. For greys, you get nice shades with either Cobalt Blue or Ultramarine Deep with Burnt Sienna, or Phthalo Green with Madder Lake. The two greens are quite convenient too.

To me, the colours feel slightly more vibrant compared to Winsor & Newton Cotman.

While I've said that they are comparable to Daniel Smith and Schmincke, in actual use I find that the colours are definitely not as vibrant. They are slightly more muted. You can say that it's pastel like but it's not too pastel like.

In this sketch I used a lot of Hooker's Green, Phthalo Green and Madder Lake. For the clouds, I used Chinese White. Be careful when using Chinese White because it's more prone to producing bubbles. When you paint over your work, those bubbles will be left on the paper and when it's dry and the bubbles burst, they will leave unwanted marks behind. You may be able to see some big bubble marks on the left page.

Pastel-like or muted, I still like how the colours mix. It's a personal preference, some people prefer really bright colours while others prefer a more subtle colour palette. I use whatever I have with me. For the sketch above, I thought the colours work well together. Most importantly, many of the colours are transparent so it's a great set to be used for pen and ink watercolour artworks or for watercolour sketching.

Conclusion

For the price, I would say it's quite worth the money. I do feel that this is slightly better than Winsor & Newton Cotman. They are of the same price range so if you have a bit more budget, maybe you can consider Van Gogh Watercolor.

Whether you get the white plastic box or the metal box I don't think there's too much difference. Do take a look at the colour selection because sometimes they might differ from what I've listed above.

Availability

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Kuretake Gansai Tambi Watercolors are handcrafted watercolours made in Japan. Unlike European and American watercolours, they are more opaque.

The watercolours are sold in pan sets from 12, 18, 24 to 36 colours. Some can be half pans, some are full pans. The pans are also sold individually but they can be difficult to find because they aren't sold at many places.

Speaking of pans, their half pans are two times the size of the more common half pans.

However, the paints are not filled to the brim, more like half so the amount of paint in a Gansai Tambi pan should be close to that of a common full half pan. I've use the set for a few sketches and already I can see the bottom of the pans for some colours.

One advantage of the large pan is you can put a large brush in and pick up a lot of paint. This helps you save time when you want to mix a large amount of mixture.

This is the 18 half pan Gansai Tambi set that I bought on Amazon Japan. It's quite rare to find a plastic palette set as most other sets are cardboard holder sets. You can try searching on eBay for Japanese sellers that stock them. Make sure to compare prices elsewhere.

The plastic palette is convenient because you can bring it around. It's compact and yet there's still plenty of space for mixing. 5 mixing wells are on the cover. While the set holds 18 half pans, you can add an additional 6. Or you can replace some of them with full pans.

Inside the box there are some leaflets. One tells you the colours that are in the box. The other has labels that you can tear off to stick onto the side of the pans. I suggest you stick those on immediately so that you can identify the pans in the future. That's because it can be difficult to tell some of the colours apart just by looking at them as their shades are too similar.

Anyway, all the words are in Japanese. If you really need the colour names, you have to use the product number code and go online to match them to their English names.

Here are swatches. Some look like their are transparent but in fact are actually semi transparent or semi opaque. When mixed, the mixtures can become too pastel-like or muted quickly. Of course it depends on what colours you use. But that's generally the case when I use them.

I find the colours are more prone compared to other brands to creating hard edges when you don't control the amount of water used well. When you use too much water, the pigment seems to want to move inwards and dry with a hard edge.

Here are swatches where I used more paints and also tried to properly control the amount of water used. You can get flat washes too, but for certain colours there's still a tendency for the pigments to concentrate. I'm not sure how lightfast they are though and have no means to test for that.

Here are some secondary colours mixed from the paints. I think it's especially important to know your paints well for Gansai Tambi compared to other brands because of how their colours behave and mix, also you have to take into account the additional opacity.

Here's a sketch I painted with Gansai Tambi and touched up with coloured pencils.

Here's a sketch from Bali. Notice the muted and pastel like colours?

On their own, you can create intense colour swatches from the pans. However when it comes to actually using them, I find the resulting mixtures to be less intense. This has probably go to do with the opacity of some colours. For if you mix colours that are opaque or semi opaque, they tend to dull much faster. So it's important to know the characteristics of your colours as mentioned earlier.

Also with their increased opacity, it might not be suitable for artists who use watercolours over their pen and ink artworks. I did not find that to be too big a problem though.

Conclusion

Overall, I enjoy using Gansai Tambi. It's not always that you must use really intense colours and have vibrant mixes. A more muted palette can give a different look and feel. However, if there's a mix you want that you can't create with the palette, then it becomes an issue. I think such is the case with Gansai Tambi. It can be challenging to get a vibrant mix from semi opaque colours.

I particularly like the plastic palette box. When I use up the colours, I will refill the pans with other brands.

Price is quite affordable. More like student-grade paint prices.

Availability

For the set with plastic palette box, check out eBay. I bought mine on Amazon Japan and had to send it to a third party forwarder before they can send it to Singapore.

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Design and Colour in Watercolour is a book that looks at the thought and painting process of Michelle Scragg with her paintings as examples. This is not an instructional book so if you expect one, you might be disappointed by the lack of demos and instructions. Scragg is a reowned watercolour artist with experience in fabric design and she shares her tips in this book from the years of experience she has, first working as a fabric colourist before turning to painting full-time.

The content is insightful but not unique as there are many other artists who have talk about the same things, like how to preserve whites, vibrancy of the colours, and other tips. As such, readers who are more familiar with Michelle Scragg's work should enjoy this book more because this book is about her and her process.

Content is split into six chapters, namely:

Exploring Watercolour's Strength
Bold Colour
Expression and Design
Fabric Design and Illustration
Interpretation
Studio Practice

There's nothing really technical and much of the explanations are on the approach.

Highlight of the book to me are the beautiful paintings and you can see more on her website.

Overall, the book is interesting to read through but those who follow Scragg's paintings will appreciate it more.

If you like this book, check out the following too:

Design and Colour in Watercolour: For Painting, Illustration and Fabric Design is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

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Here's the review of the popular Kuretake Gansai Tambi Watercolour. Gansai refers to Japanese watercolour and Tambi means "aesthetic".

I bought this set after making a mistake. In an earlier video review on my Youtube channel, I had referred to my Kissho Gansai set as a Kuretake set. That's wrong of course. These are two different brands but their Gansai products are quite similar. Anyway, Kuretake is the more well known brand.

So now I have both the Kuretake and Kissho set and can compare them.

The Kuretake Gansai Tambi comes in different box sets. These are actually cardboard boxes and they are usually sold with full pans inside. The boxes come with 12, 24, 36 and 72 colours. Individual pans are sold separately but can be difficult to find.

On the left is the full pan. It's gigantic. The middle's the Gansai half pan and the right is the more common half pan. Note that the Gansai pans are not filled to the brim. So a half Gansai pan actually contains, probably, the same amount of paint as those common half pans. When you used up the Gansai pan, you can obviously fill it up to the brim with your tube paints. That's exactly what I'm going to do to save me the trouble of finding Gansai replacement pans.

The nice thing about these pans is large size. You can use huge brushes and be able pick up lots of paint at one go. This is convenient for mixing large amount of paint.

Behind the cardboard cover is a table with some empty boxes for you to create your colour swatches. For a 12 pan set like this, you can actually still identify the colours by looking at the pans. However when there are too many colours, it will be difficult to identify because the colours will look too similar and that's when you will find a colour swatch table really useful.

The pans are laid out nicely in the box. Beneath each pan you can see the colour code and the name of the colour in Japanese. The same colour number code refer to different colours for Kuretake and Kissho.

Both Kuretake and Kissho offer the cardboard box sets but the Kissho seems to be the only one that sells the plastic palette box set.

Both brands use the same size standards so you can fit Kuretake full pans into the Kissho box shown above.

The inclusion of white is probably no surprising as these are supposed to be opaque paints. So you can use white to create a more pastel look.

I'm not sure what kind of binder they use. When the pans are dry, they dry to a semi gloss and you can put your finger on it and you won't pick up any paints. There's this protective layer. Anyway, when you add water, they reactivate and can dissolve, although I find that you have to add more water to get the intensity because the pans look thirsty. On the box's packaging, it says that when dry, the pans may crack.

The swatches by themselves look vibrant. But when you mix the paints, they become more pastel-like and muted quickly.

Colour selection is good. There's two yellows, one earth, three reds, two blues, two greens and a black. The earth tone looks like Burnt Sienna. One of the blue is Ultramarine and the other looks like a Prussian Blue. When the yellow and reds, you can mix a good variety of orange and skin tone colours.

These swatches above are from the Kissho Gansai set. The distinguishing difference is for Kissho, there's a tendency for the colours to dry with a hard edge. Hence you have to be more careful when using Kissho especially if you desire a flat wash. You can create flat washes much easier with Kuretake.

Here are random colour swatches. Can you identify the colours from Kissho based on what I said about the hard edges? There are six from Kissho.

As you can see, you can easily achieve flat washes with Kuretake Gansai Tambi. The colours would have that pastel-like feel but overall colours are still quite vibrant. For this particular set, it works well for pen and ink sketches as you can still see the lines show through beneath.

Conclusion

In terms of quality, Kuretake is probably better because there's no tendency to produce those hard edges you see with the Kissho. If you want to be able to create flat washes easier, more predictability, then Kuretake might be a better choice. The main reason to go for Kissho probably would be for the plastic palette box which I really like. You can check out my Kissho Gansai review at http://www.parkablogs.com/picture/review-kissho-gansai-watercolor-review...

Overall, I would say Kuretake Gansai Tambi Watercolour is quite enjoyable to use. They are more opaque so you have to be more careful. Understanding your colours and mixtures well is more important with Kuretake, especially if you come from using American and European watercolours.

Another good thing about these Gansai watercolour is they are quite affordable.

Availability

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This is one of few Charles Reid books that have been reprinted in 2015 and 2016. I love Charles Reid's instructional books and I really welcome all the reprints and hope that more will come.

Painting What (You Want) to See is a book that teaches you specifically on how to see and think about your subject before painting. It has lots of helpful tips such as helping you understand values and easily apply them, how to think about colours, focus, composition and the different subtleties of paintings. In short, it covers the why of seeing and painting. Instead of only giving you instructions, it explains clearly and concisely so that you can understand what you're doing too.

There are many lovely examples in the book. Some are sketches where Reid use to explain basic concepts before you would develop a more complete painting based on that sketch, and then explain his process. There are also colour swatches like how he would mix shadows, grays, skin tones and other colours, or colour schemes. In addition to the instructions, there are also simple assignments that you can practice on your own.

Reid uses oil and watercolour but the knowledge taught in this book can be applied to both because it's about painting in general.

Overall, it's an insightful book that I can recommend to beginners and advanced painters. This is a book I see myself going back to read often. Highly recommended.

Painting What (You Want) to See: "Forty-Six Lessons, Assignments, and Painting Critiques on Watercolor and Oil" is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

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Masters and legends are labels that are not easy to live up to. This book is bold to have a title like that.

Highlight of the book is the immerse variety of style from the 34 artists featured. They are all experienced watercolour artists. Interestingly, I don't know of any one prior to getting the book, although I would see that as something positive because it means I get to discover new artists.

The standard of work featured is generally quite high although there are selections that I feel are in the abstract or, for a more polite way of phrasing, contemporary genre. The techniques and styles can be considered experimental looking. There are more traditional looking pieces too.

Some of the paintings are quite stunning. For example the hyper realistic pieces from Lynn McLain really makes me wonder how she actually paints them. William Cather Hook paints like he's using oil paints. Judi Betts uses an uncommon high-key colour scheme. Stephen Quiller has a pleasant stylised look. Author Betsy Dillard Stroud also has her work featured.

What I find strange is the artists are separated into either masters or legend in this book, but I personally can't differentiate the quality of work between them, at least from those that are in the book. The legends are probably included because they are some form of inspiration to the author. Both masters and legends have profiles but only those from the masters section come with a two-page demonstration.

Overall, the book feels like a mixed bag to me, but thankfully mostly positive. It does let you explore other art directions possible with watercolour. If you want to explore other watercolour styles and artists, this could be an interesting book for you. If you have a pre-conceived idea of how watercolour paintings should look, you may find this book slightly radical.

The artists included are
Masters

Legends

Mary Todd Beam
Ed Betts
Gerald Brommer
Naomi Brotherton
Virginia Cobb
Polly Hammett
George James
Tom Lynch
Paul Melia
Barbara Nechis
Marilyn Hughey Phillis
Millard Sheets
Morton P. Traylor
Edgar A. Whitney
Robert E. Wood
Milford Zornes

Watercolor Masters and Legends: Secrets, Stories and Techniques from 34 Visionary Artists is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

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Simple & Stunning Watercolor Techniques is a video tutorial course on creating watercolour textures. The instructor is Mary Murphy from New York.

These are the lessons in the 149-min course:

Underpainting - 18 min
Size & Composition - 21 min
Creating Texture - 23 min
Exploring Water Media - 13 min
Brushes & Paper - 27 min
Pigments - 18 min
Rescuing Techniques - 29 min

To create the unusual textures, you'll need additional materials in addition to watercolour. That would be things like masking fluid, watercolour ground, gouache, acrylic, salt and masking film. This course reminds me of a book I featured before called Watercolor Tricks & Techniques: 75 New and Classic Painting Secrets. The topics covered are quite similar except Murphy's course is in video format. However, the book has more content.

Actually only half the course talks about creating textures, if you look at the last three lessons, two talks about watercolour supplies and the last is a demonstration on fixing watercolour mistakes. If you're new the watercolour, you can learn about the differences between different types of watercolour brushes and the effects they can make.

The last lesson was not particularly effective because as the amount of work done to the painting didn't really improve it. There was a hint of that happening when she said anything could happen. The original artwork feels like it's beyond rescue anyway as it was overworked.

If you're into experimental techniques or want to try new ways to play with watercolour, then you may find this course interesting. There are tips like how you can create textures with splatter, a cut up credit card, how to use masking film to create wrinkle effects and more.

The more interesting that caught my attention was when she used those watercolour ground and painted on top of it. The watercolour ground was able to create a very rough surface and in her painting of some waves it really felt like the waves are coming out of the painting.

Overall, the course is suitable for beginners with no knowledge. If you know the basics, lessons on brush and paper is not going to be as useful. I would actually recommend the book that I mentioned earlier. If you do feel that you learn better through watching then this course is more suitable.

Enroll in the course or check out more reviews on Craftsy.

Check out other video courses from Craftsy that I've featured at http://www.parkablogs.com/tags/craftsy

Disclosure: This course was provided to me by Craftsy for review purposes. You can support Parka Blogs by using the affiliate links as I get a little commission from each sale. :-)