This class was a ton of fun!

I swatched the following paints from my collection:

Mijello Mission Gold
Daniel Smith
Turner
Arteza
Holbein (Pastel Watercolors & Designer's Gouache)
Reeves
SoHo Urban Artist
Ecoline Liquid Watercolors
My own handmade watercolors


I have some thoughts to share about each brand, and will include a brief summary of each :)




First up - Daniel Smith, 5/10

Daniel Smith I find to be hit or miss. Everything varies from one shade to the next, but even the ones I like aren't anything too spectacular. I'm not crazy about the consistency - I find I'm not able to achieve a rich "lather". Instead it feels more waxy, which I'm guessing is filler and the reason why a lot of their shades aren't very saturated (unless the pigment is naturally very strong, like phthalo blue or the Quinacridone Lilac shown below).

On the plus side: They are generally pretty affordable and easy to find. They have an enormous color library that includes some cool specialty hues like the "Lunar Blue" as shown below.

I also notice that they seem to granulate more than others - Which I don't find to be a bad thing necessarily, just something to keep in mind.


Next is Turner, 4/10


I got a set of Turner Professional watercolors and was totally unimpressed. Again, I felt like they had a waxy filler that made it difficult to see the full brilliance or luminosity of the pigments. The set I got was affordable... it retails for about $30 for a set of 18 5ml tubes, which included some interesting colors such as a turquoise blue (probably my favorite color in the set) and then Maya Yellow, Maya Red, and Maya Blue (My LEAST favorite colors, ever! Yuck! Lol)

They're just again, kinda nothing special. Although if you're a total beginner, I would recommend this set over the set of Reeve's watercolors I started with.



Last but not least for the first page of swatches... Arteza 4/10

It stinks that I couldn't rate these paints any higher because they do have some really great qualities. They are affordable, easy to find on Amazon, available in a variety of different sets (although I'm not sure that you can buy the tubes individually). Their biggest drawback is YOU CANNOT USE THEM FROM DRY! I mean, hypothetically, yes you can if you're reeeally careful and patient. But the paint cracks and crumbles like CRAZY and even if you have a shade that doesn't do that, it will just slide right off your palette when dry. It's the strangest and most disappointing thing because otherwise their colors perform really well!

I bought a whopping set of 60 when I first fell in love with watercolors (it cost around $50) and had put them away for a longgg time after I built up my collection. Of course I was advised that I did not need that many colors, and of course all I saw was "60 colors" lol. Lots of very similar tones, and while they do have some luminous, vibrant colors (even some neons) they also have lots of pastel or "milky" shades that have been mixed with white - Which is not something I mind personally. Again, it's not necessary as they can easily be mixed using a white gouache, but it is nice to have them for convenience. I just started using these paints again recently and I like to pull them all out and rearrange them to get ideas for color palettes.

Another thing I like that wasn't happening with my go-to brand is the beautiful blending and bleeding that happens when using the wet in wet technique! What I mean by that is, when you tap some wet Arteza paint into a wet area on the page, the color just POOFS into a little firework which is the beautiful unpredictable nature of the medium. The brand I use most needs a little "encouragement" when it comes to those effects.

 

The brand I'm referring to is Mission Gold by Mijello - 8/10

I purchased a set of these that came with 36 7ml tubes plus a palette with 36 wells for $60. The paints have lasted for years now and I paint quite often - The overall value of the set is exceptional, but some of the shades are redundant.

You can buy their colors in individual tubes on sites like Blick, and they have quite a selection to choose from, similar to Holbein's color library.

The colors are so vibrant and spectacular, and the paint itself gives a rich beautiful consistency that's easy to work with and easy to achieve after reactivated from dry. At one point, I think I noticed some mold growing in one or 2 of the wells, but it was tough to tell for sure as it could have been some crumbled Arteza paint that fell in lol. Either way, I'm just careful now to let them dry out well before closing the palette.

This comes down to preference but I don't see them granulate very much if at all. And again, they don't offer those spectacular bursts of color blends that you get with other brands. I've never tried it, but I know I could purchase Ox Gall medium separately and it's supposed to help. My point is, the colors can be flat and predictable, or easily controlled. This doesn't SOUND exciting, but as a beginner, I think it helped me with some of the anxiety that comes along with trying to tame the beast that is watercolor lol