Strathmore 400 Series Mixed Media Paper

Strathmore 400 Series Mixed Media Toned Pads

I got these back in October out of curiosity - toned mixed media paper? I might be able to have fun with gouache or white media on that. I like working on mid value paper. The weight attracted me - the paper in these pads is anything but flimsy. It's 140lb, my usual weight for watercolor paper. Therefore it might not curl as much under heavy washes. 

I liked the hues of the paper. The gray is just a touch cool, the tan is muted and a lot like kraft paper or the wonderful Brown Paper Grocery Bag that would be great if it wasn't something that would disintegrate in a relatively short time. It's a good color. Light colored elements stand out great, the value is just right to go both directions with Conte or anything else.

So naturally I tried it with water media. Mixed water media. Pens and wash and gouache.

Twisty Kitty 6" x 8" gouache, ink and watercolor

I was pleasantly surprised by the texture. It felt smooth, allowed me to get very fine pen details without fuzzing the line or breaking it. I used opaque and transparent watercolor, did pen work over that and had no problem. With the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen, paper texture matters - it's very pressure dependent and the fine tip goes extremely fine if handled right. This paper was smooth enough I could control it perfectly. I got lighter washes of white, wasn't limited to "white" or "bare" for values. 

The paper is very stiff even for 140lb watercolor paper. This proved to be a very good thing when it came to those background washes. Despite its being a pad, I didn't see any cockling at all. That rocks. I hate dealing with cockling and the way it moves color around.

The smoothness is convenient for pen work, but that can be a problem with colored pencils or pastels if the color won't lay down heavily or won't stick. I thought a mixed media paper should stand up to anything I wanted to put on it. Here's another wet-media example:

Sekhmet, cat portrait long hair tortie, watercolor and pen

It's easier to see the effect of the smooth paper on Sekhmet because she has so many swooping strokes with pointed ends, very fine lines with the black Pentel pen. This one also features whiskers done with a white gel pen and some gouache highlights including a gouache glaze over dark and black areas. The paper performed great. 

Sketches in colored pencil on gray, a rock, a leaf and a pear

The first thing I tried were some sketches with oil based colored pencils. The smooth surface was toothy enough to get good saturation. I was able to build up plenty of color, the bright colors on the pear didn't mute so much that they weren't intense. So I knew it'd handle colored pencils well enough. The oil based ones I used were comparable to wax ones for translucence, though I would expect Coloursoft to shine more than Lyra Rembrandt any colored pencils would work well enough on it. The paper was surprisingly toothy.

But was it toothy enough for pastels?

Doe in the Snow, pastel pencil on toned Strathmore 400 mixed media paper.

Photo reference used with permission from DAK723 on WetCanvas.com.

I loved how the paper performed with pastel pencils. It felt like working on the smooth side of Canson Mi-Tientes. I knew I could easily go to softer pastels or use Pan Pastels on it with no problem. This mixed media paper lives up to its name. It's tough, it stood up to a lot of erasing, lifting, washing, correcting and changing in a couple of those cat pieces. It's smooth and heavy, allowing fine detail or rough heavy applications.

I wouldn't worry about putting texture paste or gesso or primers on areas of it either if I were doing something multi-media. The price is decent and the paper is versatile. It's everything I wanted for mixed media. 

Many of the mixed media pads and sketchbooks I've had only had 90lb paper, sometimes with enough texture elements that clean hard inked lines or hard edges were difficult. This paper is great. What's interesting is that while it's buffered and acid free, it has 30% post consumer fiber. So I've finally got a good quality recycled paper that's got the look of brown grocery bags and the feel of brown grocery bags... and the sturdiness of heavy watercolor paper. Good stuff. I'll definitely keep this in stock, there's way too many good uses for it.

Lyra Opaque Watercolors

I bought these at Dick Blick recently. I've wondered for a while whether they were as good as my Pelikan Opaque Watercolors. They looked like a very similar product - to the point that I wasn't sure which brand it was I first got at a Blick store in person decades ago, when the replacement pans were available in bins right next to the sets.

Well, I'm very happy to report that they're a very similar product at a lower price! Just as strong, the same kind of large removable (rearrangeable) pans, inside a slightly more convenient box. While I love my Pelikans, the box is a little inconvenient for stacking because it has this curved top so I can't put it in the middle of a stack with other sets of mediums. Just a small point of irritation that the Lyra set solved. It's also a little easier taking the top tray out - the top tray is entirely internal and nests. The Pelikan set has a lever button that needs to be pressed, a mechanism that can break under repeated wear and sometimes gets annoying.

This box has a pretty similar lid with fewer mixing pans in it, but still the same function. The brush they included is a 1/4" stiff bristle brush. I had never used a bristle brush with pan gouache, I'm used to round soft sables or synthetic sables for water mediums. So it was a little odd painting with it and I'm sad to say, like many bristle brushes the dang thing splayed out halfway through the painting. The hairs swelled and stuck out sideways, eliminating any sharp-edge flat brush tricks or tip created lines. This is annoying but it's a pretty cheap thing and the other brands didn't come with a brush, so big deal. I may or may not continue using it, the small bristle brush is good for its own effects. It'd be great for spattering or other rough techniques, it's just not a precision brush.

Also included, just like the Pelikan set, a little tube of white Deckweil. It didn't say "Chinese white" or watercolor, just Deckweil - Opaque White and repeats that in a couple of other languages. Good strong mixing white. I used a little of it in my example painting to lighten some color and it worked lovely. I've always wondered why they didn't just include a white pan with these sets, what I really would have liked would be two white pans so there's enough for mixing and lightening, maybe the second one a warm white like titanium buff sort of color. But the little tube of white is replaceable when used up. It will get used up faster than the pans themselves, I say this from long usage.

So here's the art I did with it, in my large Moleskine Watercolor journal:

Two pears, one yellow and one red, painted in Lyra opaque watercolor

The paint was easy to pick up enough for thick, opaque, creamy application. The white mixed well in the little mixing pans and the colors blended beautifully. The set includes Payne's Gray as well as black, so I've got my Cool Mixer. Fleischfarbe, the peach color that gets represented as flesh tone for German kids, is on the top tray rather than the bottom - the top tray is set up to function separately if you want a simple palette. Paynes Grau is on the top tray too, so your convenience colors are there without lifting trays if you're painting in a small area. Peach color portrait highlight is actually a useful color for all sorts of things, especially as a mixer if you want to warm the mix or highlights on browns and reddish colors.

The price break between the sets is quite a lot - $22 for the Pelikan set, $14 and change for the Lyra. That was surprising to me since the quality seems so similar. I don't know if there are differences in lightfastness, though gouache is one of those illustrator mediums where they don't always worry about lightfastness even in professional or artist grade products. But other than that, these are comparable in every way. 

Hm. The Pelikan pans may be just slightly larger, but it's a pretty minor difference. Nope, checked, same size of pans unless the Pelikan ones are a bit deeper by a grain. The box on the Pelikan set is much more involved, with the release tabs and the artistic curved domed lid, the strip of sticky lamination to cover writing your name on the box. I think the biggest difference is the fancy, art deco looking Pelikan box. There's also a little more space in the Pelikan box if you want to squeeze in dabs of silver and gold gouache for detailing in the second layer, under the tray that has the little tube of white.

The paints are very opaque and pigment rich. They mix well and blend easily. They handle a lot like pan gouache. They dissolve fast and are easy to pick up with any brush. The color range is very similar and the colors are marked with their names in German. Very familiar, reminded me of the set I had in my youth. Overall I'd recommend this set just as I'd recommend the Pelikan set - the most convenient form of gouache that I've ever used.

I recommend either of these over tube gouache and for convenience, like the Lyra box a little better. Which box you like is going to be a matter of personal taste. I prefer being able to stack it to having the extra space inside.

Alvin Ruling Pen and Caran d'Ache Neocolor II crayons

Ari Cat with White Whiskers

Pen and watercolor with Neocolor II white whiskers

Behold the beauty of my cat's bright white whiskers! I have been trying for over a decade, really the past fifteen years since I got this cat as a six week old kitten, to render his beautiful white whiskers against his dark black mask. White gel pens skipped, stuttered and picked up paint from whatever dark color I pulled them over. White watercolor turned out to be too thin and translucent even applied with a narrow fine brush and once, with a dip pen.

Alvin Ruling Pen in case

approx. 6" long minus loop

Some time ago I bought an Alvin Ruling Pen. I read about this type of pen for making fine lines with an even clean edge. Ordered it from Blick and tucked it in among small things to bring a large order back up to Free Shipping level. I love getting free stuff so when they do a big coupon I'll do that. 

Then it went in a drawer and I forgot it was there, moved to California, never got around to trying it. Recently was looking for something else and found it, so took it out meaning to experiment. Like dip pens it's a little more cumbersome than my Pigma Microns or Pentel Pocket Brush pen. It needs to be filled constantly, per line almost. But the results floored me.

It wasn't that hard to use. I liquefied shavings from the white crayon by dropping water in them in a porcelain palette well and stirred around till I had a nice thick white liquid about like Half & Half for consistency - not quite as watery as ink or watercolor but still definitely liquid. Got a drop of the stuff into the tip of the pen and dared to put a whisker onto my perfect cat portrait which I hadn't reserved any whiskers on.

Caran d'Ache Neocolor II artist crayons set, closed

Wow. It was lovely. Next one skipped a little because the drop was almost used up, but I chalked that up to light hitting it intermittently and accepted it. Started reloading every whisker or two to get it right and finally had the results I wanted.

I chose the white Neocolor II crayon because they were a little more handy than digging out a set of acrylics to use acrylic paint and the same thing applied to white oil paint with the additional hassle of cleaning up after it. I wanted something watersoluble I could clean off the pen whether it worked or not and thin enough to flow like ink, opaque when thinned that far. It was my best guess for opacity at that liquidity and I wasn't wrong.

While my product photos are downloading, I'll give a little history on my Neocolor II crayons. I first bought them on impulse at Dixie Art Supply on Jackson Square in New Orleans when I'd sold a bunch of portraits, made my rent and bills and saw this beautiful set of watersoluble crayons sitting out. They were a little expensive but completely new art supplies. I thought they'd be easier to use than gouache or acrylic with a wet brush and I was right. They are fantastic. So I bought a set of 40, experimented, the paintings didn't sell because they weren't portraits of people's loved ones but I liked the results both wet and dry.

Then I found out that they could be used for face painting. They're pigment rich, non toxic, opaque, easily liquefied and blend wonderful. I started using them with costumes for Mardi Gras and various conventions, found some professional face painters using them and treasured the set for that. Lost them in a move, so years later replaced my set of 40 with the 84 color set. Colors below.

Neocolor II Watersoluble Artist Crayons 84 set open.

Look at that rich variety of earth tones, all those lovely lights and darks. I like having certain colors in my palette for both face paintin and painting. These are lightfast, pigment rich and have a texture a lot like firm oil pastels - very similar to the Caran D'Ache Neopastel oil pastels I reviewed on my oil pastels site. Used as paint by liquefying shavings, they are opaque about like a good gouache but do not have the matte look of gouache.

Instead, the surface is a little waxy and has a bit of shine, less than graphite but more like a latex paint. It's a lovely look in itself. Moreover, a toothy surface for going over it with more dry marks or with oil pastel. Thin them far enough and like gouache they become transparent. Thin them just enough and you can easily lay light over dark with a brush.

I have also tried the similar Cretacolor AquaStic watersoluble oil pastels. I'm not sure why Neocolor II crayons don't get called watersoluble oil pastels, they act just like them and are a step softer and more opaque. I prefer the Neocolor II to the AquaStic product but both are very good and versatile.

These are a far cry from the Crayolas you used as a kid. They are an adult artist material and works done with them either mixed media or by themselves are archival, lightfast, top quality and can be sold with confidence. If your skills are high enough to sell your art, they will easily pay for themselves as a bold, saturated medium with enormous possibilities. My big set is currently $148 at Dick Blick and I've got a small pocket set of 15 in my cart for my next art supply order. They are wonderful for field sketching in the same way watercolor pencils are, sketch and wash is easy with them.

They are extremely cost effective! You can sketch fast on toned paper like Canson Mi-Tientes or just use watercolor paper and tone it with a wash. Wet and dry effects are easily controlled and their bluntness encourages free style looseness. However if you want fine detail they can be sharpened in a pencil sharpener or with a knife that doesn't need to be sharp. That white stick is great for dabbing in an eye highlight if sharpened.

Overall five stars for both products, a great new tool and a wonderful, versatile old friend painting, drawing and sketching medium.

Winsor & Newton Watercolour Markers Travel Set

Ari Cat posing with the W&N Watercolour Markers Travel Set

For scale and because he's beautiful.

Winsor & Newton Watercolour Markers are a new product. Pigmented and archival, they join pan and tube watercolors plus their brand of watercolor sticks as another form of delivering artist grade watercolor. With 36 open stock colors, the range is small as markers go but very good as watercolors. Colors include a lot of hues, which suggests to me that modern pigments like quinacridones that are lightfast, transparent and vibrant form the backbone of the color mixes. Pigments are not listed but the color names with "Hue" suggest it.

Cheap Joe's has a sale on these for the holidays including tin sets of 6 and 12, open stock, sets of 24 or 36 and the 8 color Travel Set. Open stock is about $5 a marker and my Travel Set was $39.99 - the usual big discount at an online store. 

I have a great fondness for travel sets and portability. So with the case, two good if small W&N Sceptre brushes size 0 and 4 rounds, water bottle, clear folding water bucket and 7" x 5" Bockingford watercolor paper pad essentially free in the sale, I decided to go with this range rather than the 12 color tin. 

Case and accessories are all good. I'll review the paper later both with markers and with other watercolor techniques. The water bottle is generous, so is the bucket and the case is deep. There's plenty of room to add other markers and a small pocket between the water bottle and brush loops to add Niji water brushes, pens, or a candy tin with other supplies. There's room above the markers to put in a Sakura or other pocket watercolor pan set or any other self contained small field supplies you want. Pigma Micron pens fit across it neatly. So this case is a good choice to contain all your field supplies in one unit as many of my friends do for their journaling adventures. Small oblong art journals would fit in the paper pocket depending on flatness or width. Very useful zippered case with nylon over a sturdy stiffener.

Colors included are Alizarin Crimson Hue, Cadmium Yellow Hue, Dioxazine Violet, Prussian Blue Hue, Sap Green, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Umber and Ivory Black. Color swatches on the website seemed pale both on the Winsor Newton site and at Cheap Joe's but came out stronger in person although Alizarin Crimson Hue doesn't go as deep dark as I'm used to with Permanent Alizarin Crimson let alone the original pigment. 

The markers have a bullet tip with a pointed cap on one end and a brush tip with a blunt cap on the other. Warning! The blunt tip has to go down when you put them back in the case. If you put it in upside down with blunt on top and pointed cap downward, you can't get the marker cap out again. It gets stuck in the pocket and takes needle nose pliers to wiggle it loose to get it out. This is a weird, mildly annoying thing about the case but irrelevant in tins or other cases. Just remember that if you get the Travel Set, the case won't let you put them brush tip up even if you use it more. 

My first test was a monochrome sketch in Prussian Blue Hue.

Monochrome Prussian Blue Hue Skyscape and Mountains

Wow! Unlike my first color tests on printer paper, the color washed out beautifully. These perform well for pen and wash sketching using the bullet tip. I experimented with some techniques to gradate a sky using a very dark blue pen-wash and it worked well. Some lighter areas I just pulled color out of the darker ones or used what was on the brush after blending. I love how they wash out.

On the packing slip I tested each color to see if the markers all worked. I always do this with any set of markers, they can be factory defective even from the best companies. The color didn't wash out well on that slip so but both tips performed beautifully. The brush tip reminds me a lot of the Pitt Artist Pen Big Brush tip - pointed, springy, very sharp point good for precision and juicy.

I found out by accident knocking around one of them that they're juicy enough to splatter some tiny droplets of Alizarin Crimson Hue on the plastic coated cover of the Bockingford pad. So using a pencil and tapping the marker on it to do splatter effects will work, at least while the markers are new.

Sketches with W&N Watercolour Markers

Mixing and Blending

Next, I started testing overlays, color mixtures and wash textures. I had a lot of fun creating both mixed violet and dioxazine violet passages in the daisy. My life sketch of my sleeping cat worked well, similar to pen sketches of him but the soft wash on his brown back added another dimension plus gave me some brown on the water brush to darken the shadows on the pillows. I played with different colors on the pears, oranges and persimmon to see what kind of hues I'd get mixing and washing.

Sap Green is actually a vibrant, very bright neon green. I knocked it back with Alizarin Crimson Hue, Burnt Umber and Dioxazine Violet and it's still very saturated. If you're doing underpainting, this could be great or you may want to start off with Yellow Ochre and just bring in a little of the green on it. You'll find your own favorite combinations and techniques.

I easily pulled color off the tips with the waterbrush when I wanted to gently modify a wash without mixing as drastically as I would putting marks of another color or to make light marks. I've been using my Niji waterbrush for convenience but the included Sceptre brushes, water bottle and bucket would do the same thing. Mixing colors was very easy and on the brown-gold pears I was able to soften fresh marks and work them into the area gently. It takes a little getting used to, washing out marker lines and dots.

I love using a brush tip marker. That's one of my favorite sketch modes. My favorites to date were Tombow dual tip markers and Pitt Artist Pens Big Brush as well as their smaller Brush Tip. But the Tombow Dual Tip brush pens are not intended to be lightfast. They're fugitive design tools. Not something I'd feel comfortable underpainting a pastel sketch with or using for a painting on good paper for fine art or mixed media fine art.

Winsor & Newton has filled a big gap. Handle them as you would brush tip markers, but be aware this is real watercolor, strong, mixable and more lightfast. They have a few quirks but overall I'm glad I got them beacuse of that big gap.

Pulling the Ivory Black out and taking the cone cap off the bullet tip, I pulled the bullet tip right off once, but was able to put it back in place. It seems to be working right now. So handle them a bit gently, if they come apart put them back together and always put the blunt tip down if you're using the Travel Set.

These are not markers like Prismacolor markers or Copic or other design markers. You won't find a range of hundreds with gradated tints and darks to use individually, tints are created by wet brush pulling color off the tip or by pulling tints out of darker marks. Or by scribbling some color somewhere else and pulling it up out of that.

It's very easy to mix colors back and forth between areas, An accident putting violet into the green pear to mute it brought some green back to mute the violet shadow, so I started doing it deliberately to all the shadows to mute them a little. If handled delicately, the bullet tip can make very small dots. For the oranges in the back, I covered them with Cadmium Yellow Hue solidly and then dotted Alizarin Crimson Hue over it, then washed, giving a suggestion of orange peel texture while creating a good bright mixed orange. I could have smoothed out the persimmon but didn't because this is a typical quick sketch, not a refined painting.

In conjunction with other watercolor forms this can be a very powerful tool. They're fast for sketching, the tips are high quality, the paint's good and they're worth the money. Just be really careful about mechanical problems like putting them in upside down or pulling the cap off too hard. They're not quite as sturdy as other markers I've owned but those were all fugitive except the Pitt Artist Pens. Those really did need tint markers because there was no thinning out the colors once down. 

I bought these largely to use for underpainting field pastel paintings but with how they handle, sketching and painting is irresistible. It'll take a while to discover all the techniques possible with this new form of watercolor. I've often thought some of my Tombow sketches could be taken seriously as paintings but it's frustrating that they're fugitive. 

As a combination with Pitt Artist Pens it's great. These are watersoluble, the Pitt product is also archival but permanent and nonsoluble. Marks you don't want to move go in Pitt, marks you want to be able to soften in Winsor & Newton. I may invest in the full range eventually or not, but this set is going to prove very useful. The travel kit is a good bargain and can become a carryall for assorted small field supplies.

EDIT: 11-19-2014

Went out, decided to make the Bockingford paper a new entry.

Rembrandt Pastels

 Rembrandt 60 half sticks 

Back in 2004 or 2005, an oil painter friend gave me a box of 60 vintage Rembrandt pastels. He got the set from an oil painter who tried the medium and didn't like it. He'd tried the medium and didn't like it. The box dated back to the early 1950s or earlier, it might even have been older than I was! The pastels were wonderful, just as good as the 30 Grumbacher assorted and 30 Grumbacher Skin Tones that I originally started with back in 1992 when I became a street artist in New Orleans. I soon found myself taking up pastels again.

I didn't review them because they were antiques. Rembrandt had changed its formula more than once since then, some pastel artist friends warned. There'd be no way anyone would be sure of getting vintage ones. So I went on trying other brands, got Senneliers, got Art Spectrum, got a number of hard pastels sets and other brands and samplers. I didn't think of writing about Rembrandt.

Friends and teachers including Charlotte Herczfeld described Rembrandt as "Good workhorse pastels." She used Rembrandt color numbers for her listed Colourist palette in her free class "Still Life the Colourful Way" on WetCanvas, which completely revolutionized how I paint and view color. Still, I used my old ones as part of a mixed brands set and didn't think about getting more until recently.

Rembrandt like many other brands came out with a good 120 color half sticks set. This makes them great for beginners. You can get a good large palette at half the price with twice the colors. Moreover, Rembrandt's palette is extremely well balanced! They were sold out on the big half sticks set when I ordered. I'll still get it sometime to have a nice big studio palette. What I realized was that I could do far worse for plein air than to get a good 60 color half stick set in a sturdy compact set box and a trusted artist grade brand. Maybe "Workhorse" medium texture pastels were just what I needed!

I looked over the pictures of the 60 and 90 color palettes and discovered to my pleasure that everything essential is in the 60 color range except one stick. I can easily transpose one stick in later on and plan to - it could be improved by swapping out one of two gray-browns I rarely use for a deep dark violet that I often use in landscapes. That's personal. Someone who used gray-browns more than I do might not want to.

 Rembrandt 60 half sticks colors

This is one of the better balanced 60 color sets I've ever seen. Important hues like violet, turquoise, magenta aren't just there but there in values too. I've got a selection of darks, brights, neutrals, lights around the spectrum and that slightly toned stick at upper left is actually a white. It's just a little smudged.

Because I used this box so much last month!

Once in a while an art supply comes along that is so useful it literally changes my habits. I wound up painting in pastels more thanks to the compact palette and versatile textures of the Rembrandt 60 Color Half Sticks Set. I'd recommend the full range if you want an anchor set of medium-soft artist grade pastels with good lightfastness, open stock easily available for replacements, moderately priced and available in places around the world that don't always enjoy the variety we get in the Continental USA. Rembrandt is a solid value. 

Their texture is medium soft. They're firm enough to create hard pastel effects, linear strokes, tiny details with edges of sticks. They're soft enough to scumble or do some basic impasto strokes though they won't go on as juicy as Sennelier or Terry Ludwig. You can use them from beginning to end and have a good painting on sanded or unsanded paper.

Marigolds artwork with Rembrandt 60 half sticks pastels

on Aquabee Hemp Draw unsanded paper 9" x 12"

I wound up doing eight pastels the month I bought them and 13 pastels this month. That's how much this little set affected my habits. From doing pastels perhaps once or twice a month I went to prolific sketching and painting. Something about the sheer convenience and flexibility of this bright little range made them much easier to use than specialty pastels I bought in smaller ranges or very large sets that took more setup and cleanup.

I admit some of that is personal and has to do with my life situation. If it's next to me and I don't need to get up, I'm more likely to use an art supply more often. I collect pocket sets and field kits not because I go out to paint every day, but because at least nine times out of ten I'm using it to set up in a very small space and do not have room to spread out something like my full range Pan Pastels or 200 Winsor & Newtons. I bought those knowing they were discontinued for a bargain - and trusted I could use Rembrandt similar hues to replace any I used up. So why not get an actual set of Rembrandt too for convenience?

It worked. A half stick set this size and this well thought out in palette can help anyone who paints with limited space. I cut pieces of sanded paper to size 9 x 12" or smaller, painted on Uart and in my pastel journal as well as on the Aquabee and Canson Mi-Tientes pads.

Pacific Wave, 5" x 7"

Uart 600 grit sanded paper, Rembrandt pastels

On sanded paper I got all those textures and varied effects entirely using this set of half sticks. The best seascape I've done in my life happened on impulse when I saw a reference that brought back memories of the Pacific coast. I was able to get tiny ditails of spray, heavy impasto strokes in the foam, linear marks, side strokes, scumbling, layering, stick-mixing, every technique I know worked in that quite small space with these pastels.

Pigment rich, consistent in texture, reasonably priced and well organized for hue and value, these are the first artist grade pastels I would recommend for any beginner. I'd also recommend a 24+ color set of hard pastels for sketching and underpainting and a 20 or larger set of Sennelier half sticks for finishing marks when you've filled the paper tooth - also to give the beginner a feel for different softness of pastels and how to use different textures. The finishing ones don't need a full palette, they need darks and lights and some accent colors. 

Some beginners get confused at a very large range and choke on making so many choices. Others like me thrive on a big range and love having many choices available. This has all the necessary colors and some very useful convenience colors. Thanks to Charlotte Herczfeld, I think of neutrals as convenience colors now but there are many useful ones and good earths in this range.

The rich textures of these pastels are very different from the standard super soft student grade pastels. Uncrushed pigment crystals shine if you don't finger blend them, soft gradients can be achieved by stick blending as well as finger blending. You can learn on these - and then rely on them over the long run, building up earlier layers and using more expensive pastels in final layers. 

One warning for Rembrandt buyers. The first time you try to make a side stroke with a half stick or peel the wrapper off a full stick, you may find it hard to make a mark at all. There is a "coating" on the outside of the sticks. The tips don't always have it or it comes off on the first mark, but it can be very frustrating. Sand that off with a sandpaper paddle. Just the kind you'd use to sharpen pastel pencils or soft graphite leads. It doesn't take much to remove it. I was swiping it off on the borders of paintings on sanded paper or even scrubbing through it on margins of regular paper to get a smooth plane to paint with because that coating also kept my fingers relatively clean. Your choice to sand it all off or just sand down one side to paint with.

I think the "coating" comes as a side effect of the extrusion process, compacting the paste as it goes through the tube before it dries. It's there on almost all colors, it's not a big deal to remove and no great loss of pigment. Just be aware of that and don't think yours are defective if it occurs.

The box is excellent - a sturdy heavy cardboard box in black with the R logo swashing across it gloss on matte, very elegant, and a cardboard sleeve that keeps the box firmly closed. The lid flips over and slides under the bottom with the top tray in it and a little pamphlet about the product with the entire color range listed by color number is included. The cardboard sleeve includes tiny swatches with color number for every pastel included in the set. Very useful for reordering or for customizing - if you'd rather change out several colors for those you use more often, it's not difficult to get some full sticks from open stock and just store the displaced extras and other halves elsewhere in your studio. Open stock usually comes in padded small boxes good for storage or they can go in a mixed brands box for general use.

I seriously recommend 60 half stick Rembrandts as a plein air set, the palette is well balanced for any climate I've lived or subject I might run across. If I want to paint a woman on the park bench, the flowering bushes in front of the fountain, a colorful city street here in San Francisco or a bunch of palms near the ocean, I can do it. I could manage a decent Southwestern painting with this range. For a general use palette it is superb. I can't praise it enough.

But then, my varied subjects for the past few weeks are why I can say that. In convenience, it really does matter what colors go into the small portable sets - sometimes so much they blow all the rest out of the way!

Autumn Sunset 5" x 7"

Rembrandt on Canson Mi-Tientes orange paper smooth side

I was able to get the impression of frost on the fields in that little sunset and the fine details of those receding distant trees. Not just the bright sunset colors I wanted but the subtler hues on the land were easy with very little layering since I was doing it on unsanded paper.

These are the ones to learn on and the set to have with if you feel like painting outdoors. If you don't want to put together a custom plein air set with multiple brands in a Guerrilla Painter pastels tray box and build a personal palette, you'll still get good use out of these and be able to start right away. The beginner's artist grade pastel is just what Charlotte Herczfeld said: a good workhorse.

We go off in many different directions but this old friend keeps on being a good friend. Also for beginners - 60 is a good manageable number. Bigger palettes are easier but smaller palettes may prove difficult or specific to subject, 60 will usually be about right for general use. 

Yes, I'd buy more of these and I'd even get the full range along with my W&N set given more studio space. This old friend still pulls through and opens up so many possibilities. Besides, I still have vintage colors to add to it.

Metallic Pan Pastels

Metallic Pan Pastels are the latest invention from Colorfin LLC, makers of Pan Pastels. The range was originally 60 colors, then expanded to 80 with 20 more useful Deep Dark Shades. Pan Pastels are soft pastels that handle like paint. They come in sturdy plastic compacts and are applied with Sofft micropore sponge tools, either knives or sponges shaped to work like different paintbrush styles. I've got the full range, both sizes of trays, a good assortment of tools and found out which my favorite tools are.

I was thrilled to get a pack of four Metallic Pan Pastel colors to try. Metallic Pan Pastels are available now everywhere Pan Pastels can be found, individually or in two sets of 3 or a full set of 6 colors. The two lightest Metallic Pan Pastels, Silver and Light Rich Gold, are each available in one of the sets of 3. Like all the Pan Pastels, they are a little less expensive in sets than individually. If you only get one, Silver would be the mixer handling most like white or light gray, Light Gold more like a bright light yellow. But if you can, get the set of 6 - it's a little more at first but you'll want the deeper Rich Gold, Bronze, Copper and Pewter hues. Pewter is not a dull grayish product but a shimmering rich deep shiny Pewter. The photo doesn't convey the photos that well compared to their shimmery iridescence in person.

My first expectation was that they should handle exactly like the other colors. No matter what artist pigments go into the other colors of Pan Pastels, the texture of the product is the same in every color.

Yes, that's how they work. These are exactly like all the other Pan Pastels. Just shimmery metallic.

That this is a huge big deal only made sense to me at time of writing.

I'm not sure readers who aren't serious artists appreciate just how difficult that was for them to invent. Pigments have different qualities. They weigh different, they feel different, they clump different, they're transparent and opaque, for the makers of Pans to get 20 pure clean colors all with exactly the same texture, feel and handling qualities is darn near a miracle. I think of it in relation to other pastels or paint and I'm boggled. Yet I trusted them to do exactly the same thing with Metallic Pan Pastels. Same feel, some texture, same thickness when it goes on, same opacity, mixability, everything.

To be friendly to them, I started off my test with my favorite surface for Pan Pastels, Clairefontaine PastelMat. This coated pastel card is soft and smooth, clings to pigment like the sticky side of glue and lets me layer as much Pan Pastel as I want. Colors don't mix without a good heavy layer but it's not hard to blend once there's enough color on - so hard edges are easy to get, mistakes easy to lift and mixing on the painting as easy as painting in oils. Painting with Pan Pastels has a little in common with oils except that it's actually dry, it's always workable and much smoother. It's hard to get textured brushstrokes in it, the pigment goes down flat and texture is created by adding new strokes or using sticks for texture accents.

Despite the color it looks in the photo, that's Pewter Metallic Pan Pastel on a Maize color card - a bright sunny warm yellow something like a strong tint of Yellow Ochre with a big dose of Cadmium Yellow Medium to jazz it up. I sketched the composition and subject with a dark green Col-Erase pencil for easy erasing and used a Vanish eraser to correct the lines. Shown is a wedge sponge on the bottom, at the bottom of the next photo I showed the eraser - it's a great eraser. Nice, soft, clean and leaves no residue.

I decided to do a stylized water rendering, just irregular ripple shapes in two or three different contrasting hues of the same value. That'd push the background back while giving it some nice variegation and most of all give my main subject a Shiny Metallic Background - as metallic as if I did this on variegated metallic card. Something closer to Christmas card fancy than impressionist depth. If I'd meant depth, I'd have started playing with the values too and shaded it top to bottom to flatten it into a horizontal plane. So far so good. The value of Pewter is a nice middle value, maybe 6 or 7 if your scale has 10 for black. (I've seen value scales run both ways.)

There's my pretty variegated background! I blended some of the edges to softness to see how the colors mixed, used Copper, a touch of Bronze here and there and Rich Gold for what became a lovely group of Metallic Primaries. Those three colors together are a palette! Start shading them up with Titanium White and down with Black and you will have a muted spectrum of metallic color before you add in any other colors. Pewter is not actually as blue as it looks in this photo because the light from my light well was very bluish sky light - it's a light well and the sun was not directly coming down it so it had a heavy blue cast canceling out the Maize and making the neutral gray Pewter look very blue. But even in the electric incandescent light of my room, those Pewter areas look blue across the room by color contrast with the Copper and Rich Gold.

You get something like the Zorn Palette where black tints can be substituted for all the blue mixes using Pewter and Silver as your cool colors. So in this abstract watery background, I've got primaries and I could paint anything I wanted in a metallic varied-metals icon style. Like all metallic mediums, Metallic Pan Pastels create a glittering surface of matte metal. They look like you took polished metal and gave it a matte surface. It will not create Chrome Effects or burnish to looking shiny and chromelike.

You do those by shading it up with White and down with Black. The best way to get shiny metal effects with the added shimmer of metallic color is to treat it as the value it is. Ignore that it's a metallic pigment and use it for what color it is, then create distorted reflections of everything around the Shiny Thing. I would not necessarily choose Metallic Pan Pastels to render a shiny red Christmas ball ornament because I might get truer realism using Permanent Red as a base and shading, tinting and modifying it with all the other colors in the scene including the hue of the lights on it. I will be tackling this in a lesson in Rob's Art Lessons soon, paint a shiny metallic object using Metallic Pan Pastels. Meanwhile, what I have is exactly what I intended - something that looks like a metallic card for a background to my duck.

So let's paint the duck! I used 10 Painters Colors for him, plus 5 Deep Dark Shades and 5 Tints. This is what I keep for a field set in two 10 color trays, what I use to paint when I don't have the table space to spread out all four 20 color trays at once. 10 Painters is a great starter for using Pan Pastels if you haven't tried them before - it has all the essential mixing colors and several good convenience colors, it's comparable to your 10 or 12 color basic watercolors set for plein air. 20 Painters gives you all the pigments. Tints, Shades and Deep Darks are convenience colors and I love having the Deep Dark Shades for sketching colors because they're like using tinted charcoal on white sketchbook paper.

He was my big test. I used just the Painters colors on his beak, white band and fluffy chest and most of his wings, was painting him basically as a duck from a photo reference on WetCanvas posted by DAK720 for the December "Spotlight" challenge in the Pastels forum. What drew me to him as a subject was his shimmering iridescent green head. I knew I could get an added punch to that iridescence using Metallic Pan Pastels and I wanted to see how well the colors mixed with other Pan Pastels. Could I get Metallic Green by mixing Rich Gold with Pthalo Green and Ultramarine Blue?

Yes. I sure did. I used Violet, Pthalo Green and a little Ultramarine Deep Dark on the shadow side of his head - sketched it in with Deep Dark and touches of Deep Dark Violet, then laid in the color. Did the light side with Pthalo Green and Yellow Ochre to lighten and yellow it, made a tint up near the top where the sun was hitting his head with a little White. I got all my values and hues right before I started in with Rich Gold. I was satisfied with him, he looked natural and some Violet in the shadows gave the green enough punch to create an effect of iridescence. I'd used Violet Deep Dark with White over it in his chest and gotten that difficult grayish lavender fluffiness just right. I liked my duck.

Pow, when I started bringing in the Rich Gold into the sunlit areas first I was stunned at what it did. The sparkle blended into the green and vanished, blended as if I'd brought in more Yellow Ochre. He'd be a touch more shiny if I hadn't used the Yellow Ochre at all but stuck with the Rich Gold throughout, but I built up a final layer and got him to a shimmering iridescence. Shadow side I used Ultramarine Blue with Rich Gold to balance it out closer to the cool Pthalo blue of the main tone and it didn't lose its intensity at all. you can see individual sparkles in the large version of the photo.

What this looks like on my wall is spectacular. It looks shimmering metalic, that addition of Rich Gold into the green head was just enough to unify the painting. I used a little swipe of Rich Gold and background color into his wing to create a splash of metallic accent to tie it all together at the end. The painting would work as a Christmas card though I think I'd need some kind of specialty printer to create the metallic prints! It'd take special inks - or it'd take doing a hand painted design, which might be a whole lot easier.

Whether you're a professional, a leisure painter, a crafter or art journaler, Metallic Pan Pastels have a good place in your palette. They perform like all other Pan Pastels, they're archival artist grade materials and will bring that metallic shimmer to anything you paint with them. Add black and white for a Metallic Zorn palette and try doing a Christmas landscape. I purchased the other two Metallic Pans when I replaced some lost supplies and the Light Rich Gold is exactly the hue of the 24kt Gold Dot available from Jerry's Artarama - that is, Light Rich Gold is precisely the hue of real gold ground to a pigment. Silver is very bright and looks like the Silver Dot, so Gold and Silver accents in icon style paintings or fancy medieval calligraphy are the true hues of precious metals.

Copper is extremely bright pinkish-red copper. Bronze is a very bright bronze, polished bronze warmer than Rich Gold and sitting between the two as a hue - Rich Gold is a very bright cheery brass color. So you can play around with these different metals and their values, shade up a bit with Light Rich Gold and Silver before getting to White and get a stronger "metallic chrome" effect that way. I love the color of the Copper and will be having loads of fun with that painting still lifes - just be sure to shade it with the right other pigments to get the real hues and values of your subject. But that's a topic for another article!

Five thumbs up for Metallic Pan Pastels. The range on one of my all time favorite mediums just expanded. Pan Pastels are insanely versatile, clean, handy, powerful, convenient and archival. Metallic ones now make it possible to get lively, whimsical and dramatic with them. Happy Holidays!

PS -- Sorry about my absence of over a year. This happened due to health problems and some money trouble that made my health problems worse. Since then I've gotten things sorted out and my life is back on track, better than ever. Slowly I'm putting together my habits again. Watch for more reviews in 2013 - I'll start by trying for monthly updates and build up from there!

Masters Water-Soluble Pastel Sticks

Masters Water-Soluble Pastel Sticks are a new product in an old category - semi-hard pastels. It's a little bit of a marketing trick that these inexpensive hard pastels are advertised as water-soluble when many brands of dry pastels are water soluble. Cretacolor Pastels Carre' are also watersoluble, Sennelier pastels are water soluble and most pastels will respond well to a water or alcohol wash in the first block-in layers of a pastel painting.

What these Masters Pastels offer for a beginner is decent quality, manufacturer's claim of lightfastness and water washability at a loony low price. Available in sets of 24 and 48, Jerry's Artarama carries these inexpensive hard pastels. The sticks are short compared to most brands, 2 3/8" rectangular sticks 1/4" wide. They look thick because they're so short, but they're a standard width. The 48 color set I bought to test was only $10.99 on sale at Jerry's.

Getting a big range for a low price is an important factor for beginners. If I was kitting up a student, these beat even the other low priced brands for getting more colors at less initial outlay. Their texture is very firm, there's a good range of darks, neutrals, skin tones and brights but very few tints or light colors. The white is going to wear down very fast and there's no ivory in the set, so I would supplement it with a Cretacolor Pastels Carre' white and perhaps an Ivory for lightening when you don't want to cool the underlying color.

One of the other ways the manufacturer cut prices is with inexpensive yet effective packaging. The box is unbleached, uncolored heavy cardboard, designed so that each piece has an indent on two sides. That makes it easy to lift out the top tray to get at the bottom 24 colors. There's a 1/8" thick pad of dense foam over the top tray and a sheet of wax paper over the second tray to keep the pastels clean and reduce dust migrating into other colors. The sticks are packed into thick dense slotted foam inside thin black cardboard trays. A heavy cardboard lid goes over the top, then a thin cardboard sleeve goes over the box to keep the lid from flying off.

By spending less on printing and colored pictures, the company's focused most of its resources on producing a decent product in a 6" square box sturdy enough to survive being knocked around in a backpack. I appreciate cost cutting that doesn't hurt quality and packaging that's usable in rough conditions for the life of the product.

I tested these over a washed Inktense underpainting. I was very pleased with how they performed. Similar to other hard pastels, they have a firm texture, blend well and mix easily once blended with fingers or sticks.



Of course that didn't tell me much about the product's big claim - that these sticks are water soluble. I decided to see how well they'd dissolve with another pears study. I deliberately scribbled loosely with distinct marks to see how well a good scrubbing would dissolve those marks.



So far, so good. They went on well over bare paper with good strong color. If I pressed hard I got strong distinct marks, just dragging the sticks lightly over the rough cream paper of my Stillman & Birn Delta journal produced good broken color.

Using a water brush, I scrubbed hard at all the marks, swirling the water around to dissolve everything as well as I could. I was happy with the results. Washing the Masters Pastels is as easy as washing any other water soluble pastel. They dissolve easily and didn't leave irritating specks of undissolved pastel or deep marks that didn't come up. If I wanted a lighter sketch and wash technique I would have to wash carefully to leave linear marks or redefine them by drawing into the wet area.



Then I finished my test painting working over the washed pears and background with the same Masters pastels. Just as with the Inktense underpainting, they covered easily and blended well. This time instead of the finger blending I used in some areas of the first test, I blended the background and pink covered table with the white stick to lighten my earlier scribbled marks. I used some complementary colors to tone the russet pear and the very bright green pear, mixing a mid-green with the lemon yellow to get the light yellow-green that wasn't in the set.

They do mix well enough to make up for any essential hues not in the set. There's no peach skin highlight stick, but white over any of the sanguine or russet colors will give a good skin highlight. Stick-blending and finger blending both work well. Colors are reasonably opaque, responding like other semi-hard and hard pastels.



My conclusion: Masters Water-Soluble Pastel Sticks are a good starter set for anyone thinking of trying soft pastels. These plus a 64 color Mungyo Gallery Standard Half-Sticks set will give a beginner a good range of colors plus a combination of firm and soft textures. When the paper tooth fills, switch to the Standard Half Sticks to add final details and accents. Working soft over hard extends how many layers you can use on non-sanded paper.

When you're ready to move up to using sanded and coated pastel papers and surfaces, consider buying a more expensive range of semi-hard pastels such as Mungyo, Richeson, Cretacolor, Sanford NuPastel or even the wonderful but expensive Faber-Castell Polychromos. However, even experts may benefit from having cheap and copious sketch supplies at a loony cheap price. There's something inspiring about not having to worry about cost even if you have to replace the whole set to get an extra white. It's easy to let yourself go and play like a kid.

SoHo Urban Artist Gouache

When I reviewed my Ebony Splendor Brights brushes, I didn't realize that I hadn't already reviewed the SoHo Urban Artist Gouache that I tested them with. I used them with the SoHo Urban Artist Acrylics but didn't post that example - only the gouache painting I did with them. Well, here it is again in context.



This is an example of the kind of subtle mixing and texturing possible with SoHo Urban Artist Gouache. The set's regular price at Jerry's Artarama is $9.99 for 12 big 30ml pots of rich, highly pigmented designer gouache. Pigments are non-toxic and binder is gum arabic - this is traditional opaque watercolor suitable for any illustration uses, sketchbooks, art journaling, sign painting, color mixing and color theory courses, recreating medieval and Renaissance illuminations (the miniature artworks and borders in manuscripts, scrolls and documents).

Because lightfastness is not mentioned with this product, I do not recommend it for wall paintings that may be exposed to light. If you use it for those purposes, consider a UV protective varnish and glazing the painting with UV protective museum glass or acrylic. It's possible to preserve fugitive mediums and I expect the lightfastness to be better than children's products, but not up in the range of expensive artist grade gouaches like Lukas, Holbein or Winsor & Newton.

In fact, even in those top quality artist grade gouaches, it's important to check the lightfastness rating of the pigments you choose. That's only a consideration in one sort of gouache painting - those that hang framed on walls. For all other applications, this is excellent gouache and can be used for any design or illustration purpose. ACEO/ATC miniature artworks are normally kept in albums with UV-protective sleeves on them, so I don't concern myself with lightfast mediums when doing them other than to caution the buyer or recipieent that I may have used some fugitive colors. Don't display gouache paintings for a long time, store in cool dark places and enjoy.

This makes them perfect for art journaling since the bound artworks aren't exposed to light until you open the book to that page. I'd suggest using lightfast acrylics for cover decoration on art journals.

I've used gouache for decades. A good gouache is opaque but can be thinned till it behaves like watercolor, which takes a lot of water. It can be as runny as ink or used as a heavy body paint that even takes some texturing strokes with a bristle brush.

The quality and pigment load are comparable to Yarka/Richeson gouache, along with the price. Yarka's a couple of dollars more and the pots are 40ml instead of 30ml, making this set a little bit more compact. The quantity of paint for that price is excellent in both products. The mixing qualities are splendid.

The red is a good spectrum red that tints to clean magenta or rose with just a touch of violet. The blue is a spectrum blue that's very deep and dark, it reminds me of Prussian Blue and probably is. Cool it toward Ultramarine with just a touch of the deep brilliant violet. Yellow is a clean primary yellow that doesn't lean as greenish as lemon or as orange-cast as a Cadmium Yellow Medium. You can retain full saturation around the color wheel with just the colors in the set.

Three classic useful earths are included, a deep brown earth, Yellow Ochre and an iron oxide red. For landscapes it's very useful to have Iron Oxide Red as one of your hues, it'll balance the vivid greens and modulate them.

Gouache is the perfect medium for color studies. If you're a serious pastelist, it can be a wonderful underpainting medium and used by itself is the wet medium that comes closest to the effects of pastel. Use with a bristle brush to get strong textured strokes or a softer brush like the Ebony Splendor multi-media brushes when you'd rather blend smoothly.

If you're teaching a class in color theory, these inexpensive sets plus a couple of Ebony Splendor brushes are the perfect medium to have your class test mixtures, create color wheels, study any aspect of color and structure. You can mix all the secondary and tertiary hues from the primaries or use the included secondary colors to get vivid tertiaries.

Black and white allow for tints and shades to create good value map sketches in monochrome or tint and shade any color for an infinite variety of hues.

One of the advantages of Gouache is that it's rewettable. Some types of gouache reconstitute better than others if dried. You can put some of this paint into a palette and create pre-mixed colors, even if they're dried into it you can rehydrate to thin or thick texture as desired.

Just like the Yarka set of gouache that I won in the 1990s for a medieval scroll painting competition, the jars don't have a perfect seal. The paint may thicken and crack, taking on a texture more like heavy mud or even drying solid. My set was slightly dried when I got it, some colors more than others.

Light goes over dark easily. This is one of the ways it's so good for creating studies to plan pastel, acrylic or oil paintings. Dry brushing can create broken color and interesting optical mixing. Loose marbling effects are easy to achieve by not thoroughly blending mixtures - drag a brush with one color through a patch of another on your palette, swirl once and mix on the painting. There is a reason gouache is beloved by traditional art schools and design studios - it's that versatility and opacity.

Here's where the quality of SoHo Urban Artist gouache really comes in. Rehydrating dried-up pots is a slow process. Add a little water and let it sit for a few hours or overnight. This softens the surface of the dried up paint and helps it rehydrate better. Then take a paint stirrer, can be anything, plastic, metal, a popsicle stick or toothpick, and stir patiently until all lumps have been smoothed out.

I've rehydrated two of the twelve colors now and the process went quickly. The dried paint softened in only a few hours and stirring the lumps away didn't take as long as I expected. So don't throw them away if you open a jar and it's dried up. Just put some water in up to the level the paint should be at, let it settle for a few hours and gently stir. Wipe any paint off the lip of the jar when you close it and out of the threads. This will both help keep too much air from getting in and also prevent a dried-paint seal that would make it harder to open later.

Of course, the sooner you catch the paint drying out, the faster and easier it is to whip it back to creamy smoothness. Texture should be something like thick house paint at its optimum. You don't need to lose even a speck of the paint. So if you like using pan watercolors, consider putting a good dab into the wells of a small folding palette to create a portable set. It'll rewet easily out in the field too when you want to do color studies for later studio painting.

These are great. Have fun illustrating your webcomic, illuminating an award scroll for any occasion, creating ATCs, art journaling and don't worry about it if your kids or grandkids want to join in. It's safe for grownups to share these paints with smaller loved ones. If your cat walks through it, just rinse his paws off in the sink. I still wouldn't advise eating nontoxic paint but it's a very useful thing to be able to illustrate with cat and kid safe supplies!

Ebony Splendor Brushes and Derwent App

One of the most useful items in the big box of review products Jerry's Artarama sent me is a seven piece set of Ebony Splendor multi media brushes. What I tried is the Brights set, but other sets are available - Filbert, Rounds with both long and short handle sets and Wash brushes with short handles. Prices for the sets range from $19.99 to $24.99 but these are a frequent sale item. Watch for bargains up to 50% off on individual brushes or sets in this series.

These are true multi-media workhorses. I used mine with gouache, acrylics and watercolor. It doesn't matter what consistency of paint I'm using. They're soft enough for watercolor and strong enough to shove around full body acrylics. You'll get more bristle texture from a stiffer nylon brush if you want them to look more like oils, but the multi-filament structure of these brushes stood up to my tests for use with both thin bodied and heavy body paints.

When I first opened up the package, my 32 year old daughter was thrilled with this brush set. I'm ordering another set because she definitely put these on her Christmas list, especially once I opened it and we tried them with watercolors and acrylics. I want the long handled round set and the Wash Set because these are such good quality that I feel a need to expand my range.

Below is a gouache painting I did using the smaller Brights. The smallest two sizes are good miniature brushes with excellent shaping and razor edges. The size 2 looks a little more than 1/16th inch wide - more like 3/32", definitely smaller than 1/8" and still a perfectly shaped small bright. The next up size is about 1/8" and so on up the line. The biggest is a convenient 7/8" bright, one that I reach for every time I look to wet the paper or lay in a big wash.

In painting, it helps to use the largest brush you can for the area or layer you're doing. The size range in these seven brush sets is excellent for that. I can work to any size in my comfort zone. Wash brushes are 1/2", 3/4" and 1" sizes.

The wooden handles are varnished with a mtransparent burgundy finish, very distinctive, with black dipped ends. They're not scraper ends but work well enough as scrapers with how thick the black enamel is at the end, easy to wipe paint off if you use them to sign or carve lines into the paint. The grip is pleasingly shaped, though of course the handles have gradated sizes and the big giant brush is a bit wide.

I'm fond of good synthetic brushes. These may not be "the butt hairs of an exotic male weasel caught in winter" as my daughter teases me about Kolinsky brushes, but they are reasonably priced and perform beautifully.

Right now these excellent brushes are half price - $9.99 for the $19.99 sets and $11.99 for the $24.99 sets. So if you miss this sale, watch for it again. They're definitely a high quality workhorse brush. You may want to get both the long and short handle sets though, because acrylic use over time wears out brushes differently than watercolor does and if you use any of them with oils, you won't want to use that brush again with watermedia. Grabbing a lot of them on sale is a good way to get around the demands of different mediums and always have the size and shape you need.

I did not test my Ebony Splendor brushes to destruction by letting acrylic dry in the hairs. By previous experience, you can sometimes revive a gunked up brush using a good brush cleaner/conditioner soap or dishwashing liquid. But it's much better to keep them wet while they're in use and rinse them immediately with the solvent for whatever paint you're using.

They've definitely become my favorite brights. While I do finger-shape them after washing, they dry perfectly into their original shape rather than splaying out the way some natural hair brushes do when they're dry. Some sophisticated technology went into creating the mix of synthetic hairs in these brushes.

They may not last as long as a Kolinsky sable, but there are uses for old battered fuzzy brushes too. I'll add notes on their condition when they start wearing out for a home test of longevity, but so far they survived their first few months of use in pristine condition. I do use The Masters' Brush Cleaner/Conditioner on all of my brushes, synthetic or natural, so this is qualified by "when well cared for."

Any brush, if you leave it hairs end down in a jar of water, will get hopelessly mashed and bent. Even the best brushes don't survive that treatment and having gobs of dried oils or acrylic sticking the hairs together is another brush-killer. These are strong for synthetic brushes and some of my other synthetics have showed wear under the same number of uses I've put these through. Definitely a bargain for a high quality synthetic brush, especially when they're on sale. Stock up on them to always have the size and shape you need for thick or thin bodied paint.

I also recently got an iPhone4. Not the latest-best 4S but the previous latest-best that's now half price. Of course I got some drawing apps for it that I'll review in a later article after I've learned to use the new medium. I'm reviewing the Derwent App first though, because I am so fond of Derwent's products and it's so darn convenient for checking up on them.

It's got Hints and Tips videos and articles embedded in it, plenty of the sorts of fun things you can find online at Derwent's site.

Easy to navigate, it includes a bar code reader so that the unidentified black pencil that still has its sticker on it and says Derwent, you can find out what it is and what it does, whether it's lightfast, which range it is and get some hints and tips on using it easily. Very useful if you're at a store, see some colorful new product from Derwent and want to find out a lot more about it using your phone than the display tells you.

The lightfastness charts and color charts arrows direct you to the Derwent site, which you can read if you double tap the screen to zoom in to a comfortable reading size. So it's not a big library of information right within your phone if you're not online, however you can copy these charts and turn it into one if you like. The videos link to YouTube.

It's a fun little app that puts the Derwent site into your hands for convenience without having to type the link in. Also you can add your art to your personal Gallery using the app, or contribute it to the Global Gallery, surf around and see others' artwork done with Derwent products.

It's free, it's fun and easy to use, so definitely worth a download if you like using Derwent's products. Just watch your data plan usage for the videos, see if you can download them rather than watch them repeatedly on streaming.

SoHo Urban Artist Acrylics and Painting Boards

SoHo Urban Artist Acrylics are a bargain brand of heavy body acrylic paint with surprisingly good quality. Familiar pigments, consistent texture with good pigment load make these an incredible bargain at a very low price. Frugal artists, students, muralists and painters who do scenery for theatres should give these a try!

SoHo Urban Artist Acrylic paints have a good texture for heavy body acrylics. These aren’t the bottled acrylics for decorative painting, they have the texture of oils straight from the tube. Covering power is excellent on the Titanium White, though some pigments are by their nature transparent such as Dioxazine Violet.

The 24 color set provides an enormous range of choices for a new artist. The palette’s almost too generous for a beginner. Most painters will find their favorites in it. I found many of mine - Payne’s Grey, Dioxazine Violet, Sap Green, Prussian Blue as well as Pthalo Blue. My only staple pigment not represented is Permanent or Quinacridone Rose, though if I wanted a separate tube, Rose Madder is available in open stock.

Texture was the same across all colors that I used. I combined at least half of the colors in the box in my miniature, testing Yellow Ochre, Titanium White, Permanent Green Light, Sap Green, Alizarin Crimson, Dioxazine Violet, Raw Sienna, Burnt Sienna, Cadmium Yellow Hue, Lemon Yellow

Toxic pigments such as Cobalt and Cadmium are represented by Hues. Pigments aren’t listed by pigment number, but all the colors are available in open stock as well as the sets. Lightfastness is not listed on the tubes. It may be able to be derived by looking up the pigments. If you’re looking for an inexpensive acrylic paint to practice or do preliminary works, the price is right and the quality is good for student grade.

After I painted the red apple with Alizarin Crimson and Cadmium Yellow Hue, I recognized that this isn’t the fugitive traditional Alizarin Crimson that’s transparent, nearly black in mass tone and has an odd brownish undertone. It’s the brilliant, cool, purple cast Permanent Alizarin or a mixture and that bodes well for the lightfastness of the set. I’m pretty sure from the actual color of the paint that it’s more like a quinacridone and so it does superbly take the place of a Quinacridone Rose in my palette.

The price on all of the SoHo Urban Artist products is remarkably low for their quality. These acrylics are no exception, they’re comparable to Liquitex and other acrylics I’ve used. The big 24 color set is a starter with sample sized 21ml tubes. It’s a great bargain for a miniaturist especially, if you don’t use up much paint at a time they’ll likely last well or if you prefer thinning them to ink consistency for watercolor-like effects.

If you prefer working larger and bolder, all colors are also available in 75ml tubes, 250 ml big tubes and a 500ml jar. Muralists will be glad to know the regular price at Jerry’s is only $9.99 for the big 500ml jar, $3.99 for the giant 250ml tube or $2.97 for the full size 75ml tube. At time of writing they're on super sale $1.49 for the 75ml tube and the larger sizes are marked down too. Watch for sales.

The 24 color Value Set is only $19.99. Jerry's also carries a complete painting set with walnut finish table easel, 5-pack of painting boards, brushes, palette knives, 24 tubes, gloss and matte mediums plus an instructional DVD for $79.99. That one might make a great gift for a friend or relative who's interested in taking up painting. Non toxic hues and water cleanup mean the set's safe to purchase for your kids or grandkids.

Watch for sale prices if you’re planning a big project. These inexpensive good quality acrylics may be just the thing to paint large on canvases, walls, gessoed masonite or any other type of acrylic painting surface. Anyone painting flats for live theatre will be able to cut costs with those big pots.

It’s not hard to thin tube acrylics to the liquid texture of bottled acrylics for crafts projects. Just add a little water to achieve exactly the texture you want. Acrylics are the great mimic medium - you can use them for crafts like enamels, thin to transparency to use like watercolors, paint heavy bodied pictures as if they were oils and clean up or thin with water. Impasto mediums and special texture gels from Derivan and others extend the variety of effects you can get.

They dry quickly and leave little or no mess if you use a glass, ceramic or other non-porous surface. Gloss and matte mediums are available in the complete painting set but not listed separately at Jerry’s. These paints are compatible with other brands of acrylic paints and mediums, so using Liquitex, Golden or any other acrylic mediums with it should work just as well.

They dry to a very nice semi-gloss finish. If you want a gloss finish or matte finish, get some matte or gloss acrylic medium in any brand you like. Acrylic paints are compatible across brands. SoHo Urban Artist acrylics should work well with any acrylic paints you already have, whether bottled or heavy body tube paints.

A couple of tips for using SoHo Urban Artist Acrylics. Synthetic brushes are best for use with acrylics. Either use the stiff white taklon brushes that have a texture like bristle, or softer golden taklon or nylon brushes for a different look. The stiff ones will leave distinct brush strokes and painterly texture effects. Softer golden Taklon brushes can be used to smooth out all texture and hide your brush strokes for realism.

Don't use natural bristle brushes with any paint that thins with water. The flagged tips will soak water and degrade. The brush loses its stiffness and stops holding as much paint if it's soaked in water. Synthetic imitation bristle brushes stay good and firm and the hairs don't soak the water at all. They're also easier to clean if acrylic paint dries in them and cheaper to replace if ruined irreparably.

Keep your brushes damp at all times - they do dry fast and may stick in the brush hairs if you let brushes dry with paint in them. Rinse brushes in warm or hot water to soften clumps if you make a mistake and get bits of film on them, after loosening it up with Master’s Brush Cleaner cake or a gentle dish detergent. Likewise washing out a palette with warm water will make any dried paint peel up clean, while diluting and dissolving any paint that’s still wet. Don’t let large acrylic skins go down the drain or you’ll clog it though. Peel them off and chuck them in the trash.

Along with the SoHo Urban Artist Acrylics value set, I tested the SoHo Urban Artist Painting Boards that I also received to review. The surface is white, impressed with a very fine canvas pattern simulating portrait grain canvas on a sturdy 2.3mm board. They’re lightweight and didn’t warp while handling, something that can happen even with ATC size boards.

Sizes range from 12” x 16” to 2 1/2” x 3 1/2” ATC boards through several other common sizes including 11” x 14”, 9” x 12”, 6” x 9” and 8” x 10”. They’re sold in packs of five or bulk boxes of 120, 240 or 360. They’re inexpensive and convenient for a prolific painter, good for color studies, practice, display or framing. Prices range from $1.81 for the five-pack of 6” x 9” to $6.35 for the 12” x 16” so these are very inexpensive even in relation to canvas boards.

If they’re framed, it wouldn’t matter that the sides of the painting panels aren’t wrapped. It’s a small thing that bothers me a little about them but this is definitely a bargain product.

For studies, practice and frugal painters, they’ve got a good surface that takes the paint exactly as well as gessoed canvas boards. For ATCs, I might want to run a black or gilded marker around the thick sides to give the edges a nicer look. Testing that with a gold Sharpie, it didn’t take very well but using deep gold metallic gouache worked great. A bottle of metallic gold acrylic would work just as well.

If you want to paint a lot, the combination of SoHo Urban Artist Acrylics and SoHo Urban Artist Painting Boards is a good way to practice without spending a fortune. If you have big projects in mind, they may be a cost effective solution for murals, theatre sets and other very large works. Any frugal painter will have a good time with these products.

Don’t be afraid to botch anything you do with these acrylics because at this price, you can just redo it again and jot the date on the back to record your progress. Because lightfastness isn’t listed for the paints and acid free or archival isn’t listed for the boards, I’d recommend them for preliminary work, decorative work, illustration, practice, leisure painters and students.

Art journals are another excellent use for SoHo Urban Artist Acrylics. Any interior paintings aren’t going to get the kind of sustained light exposure as a wall painting in a sunny room. Another thing to remember is that while lightfastness isn’t listed, many times the non toxic hues are more lightfast than the traditional pigments they replace. They may have different qualities, such as cadmium hues sometimes being less opaque.

The colors mix beautifully, exactly as I expect for the listed pigments. Most of the named pigment colors are lightfast as far as I know, with the exception of Alizarin Crimson. It’s popular with painters but I prefer both the hue and the permanence of Permanent Alizarin Crimson. I was very glad this company's Alizarin Crimson is the modern pigment rather than the historic one.

What I’ve found as a serious painter is that being able to create color studies and preliminary versions of my paintings improves them dramatically. With art supplies, you get what you pay for. There is a reason to pay more for specialty artist grade acrylics with well known brands. Do you really want to spend that much to paint a stage set or a mural in your child’s bedroom? SoHo Urban Artist acrylics are good value for a very low price, enough to let any painter have uninhibited freedom to experiment. The best prices are on the 24 color Value Set and the biggest jars.

One last point. Sometimes even though for years I’ve been purchasing top quality artist grade supplies, I’ll freeze up and hesitate to use them or constrain myself to subjects and techniques I’m already confident with. These handle with the same consistency as other brands of heavy body acrylics, even the most expensive ones I own. When I want to cut loose and try something loony or fool around in my art journals, I’ll definitely reach for SoHo Urban Artist Acrylics. They’re priced for any budget and handle like the best.

It’s the same thing with the boards. Bulk boxes of SoHo Urban Artist Painting Boards means no need to scrape or paint over any failed experiments. Just date it, set it aside, try again and keep the series to appreciate your progress over time. There’s a lot to be said for bulk quantity in budget supplies to stimulate creativity. If you want to become a better painter, get a bulk box of boards in your favorite size. You’ll never hesitate to practice or experiment with that many chances to get it right.

Here's my example painting using SoHo Urban Artist Acrylics on an ATC size SoHo Urban Artist Painting Board. I worked from a photo of some fruit I took months ago back in Arkansas and cropped tonight to create a new ACEO.


Still Life with Violet Curtain by Robert A. Sloan.