Sennelier pan watercolors, 8 color pocket set

Sennelier mini 8 color watercolor set and small journal with painting of mossy bark.

I collect pocket watercolor sets. I enjoy them and I like having one on me whenever I leave the house, along with my beloved pocket Moleskine Watercolor journal or some other small journal or pad I can paint in. There comes a point where I felt as if I'd overdone it on these and didn't need another one, so I put off buying this one no matter how tempting its size and colors were.

After all, with a Winsor & Newton Artist's Field Box would I ever use a different artist grade pocket watercolor set? That one lived on me, just as its Cotman predecessor did for 30 years. Yet this was alluring, with its tiny pocket brush and intriguing palette. Plus that clear window to see the colors. I didn't stop to think "that means my mixing area is clear." That sort of presentation is tempting and makes me want to paint.

Which is not a bad thing to find in a pocket set. It encourages me to use it with that clear window. Sennelier is a great manufacturer, been around for a really long time, provided supplies to all sorts of famous artists for generations. So their watercolor has to be good, right?

Well, yes it is! It's artist grade watercolor, very pigment rich, dissolves easily, lovely texture and the pans are just as you could want them. The set is compact with only 8 colors - and the palette is the 8 colors I would have chosen. A good clean yellow, a bright red that can mix to get a decent violet, a light blue suitable for skies, a deep blue that goes near black, two greens, a warm dark and a cold dark. Best of all, the cold dark is Payne's Gray rather than black. I think that's what decided me. I can't count the number of times in 12 color sets where I've replaced black with Payne's Gray. 

Greens and a sky blue are convenience colors especially for outdoor painting. Those two dark neutrals can be mixed to do all sorts of on the go sketching and it's much easier to mix muted greens when starting from a bright one than from various yellows and blues. No matter how traditional or classical it is to use mixed secondaries, in outdoor sketching it's much easier to modify the hue you want to the exact hue you want. There are few bright orange or purple things in nature but lots and lots of greens, even in cities. There's lawns. There's trees. There's foliage in gardens. It all does work well and I did get very good mixed purples when I wanted them.

White Cosmos flower on dark multicolor blurred background

I painted this white Cosmos flower with the Sennelier pan watercolors 8 color set as an experiment. The flower's been glazed over with another product that I'll review soon, Finetec Pearlescent Colors, but I posted the example to show how dark I can get a loose multicolored background just using the eight colors in the pocket set. The soft violets in there involve French Vermilion red and the deep blue, French Ultramarine Blue. I used both Pthalo Green Light and Sap Green into the Payne's Grey as well, to get a lot of different combinations. 

The watercolors are pigment rich and strong. Deep colors go nearly to black very easily and the bright Primary Yellow went on very strong as well. I mixed a nice maroon for the tiny pollen spikes with French Vermilion, Burnt Umber and Payne's Grey as well, going over the FineTec colors.

French Vermilion was a bit of a surprise since I thought it would lean too much toward yellow to mix a clean violet, but it mixes beautifully with French Ultramarine about the way Daniel Smith Quinacridone Coral does. It's a good choice for a single red in a small set. 

I did a lot of blotting and lifting and deliberate backruns with this, while the paint performed as well as Winsor & Newton or Daniel Smith, any of my favorites. There's a reason this little 8 color set has become so handy and convenient. It's just right for most things I'd want to do on that scale, whether I'm indoors or off on an outing.

The little round brush they included works out well. It has a lovely point, which is the main thing I want in a round brush, especially a small round brush. This one is good enough that I could have repeated my calligraphy stunt, creating an 11" x 14" scroll with fancy lettering using only the pocket watercolor set and its brush. It is a good equivalent to the brushes in either of my Winsor Newton Field Box sets, a little larger than those actually. This makes it a good one for general use in a small journal.

Though I bought this on a whim, it keeps getting into my pocket more often than I expect to use it. Or sits around on my desk and inspires small sketches just because it looks inviting. Don't knock that in an art supply, if something about it makes you feel like going back again and again to paint, it may seriously improve your productivity. With that, up go your skills on more serious painting. Nothing improves so much as constant practice.

This fun, engaging little set is well worth the cost. If you haven't already picked up any pocket watercolor set for urban sketching, seriously consider it. The quality's excellent, the palette is perfect with its Payne's Grey inclusion and enough blues and greens for most outdoor subjects. Inevitably in outdoor painting, blues and greens get used up fast and reds and yellows last and last, probably due to how much space they take up on the page. But this proportion will wear down more evenly, I think. The insert is one piece but could easily be refilled with tube watercolors.

Overall, I like it and it became an unexpected favorite. Sennelier pan watercolors are great. Once again I've come to trust that brand.

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.

Winsor Newton Field Box

Winsor & Newton makes a variety of 8 to 12 color pocket sets to suit any budget. There's the cute little 8 color Cotman Mini that flips open like a cell phone, there is a very inexpensive Cotman 12 color Sketch Box that's got 12 half pans and a good Sceptre pocket brush inside, there's the 14 half pan Compact set in both Cotman and Artist ranges and a beautiful metal box pocket set of 12 Artist's half pans with water bottle included. Out of all this variety of pocket sets, W&N's best for taking anywhere from Renaissance faires to camping trips is the Field Box pictured above.

I first bought a W&N Cotman Field Box in 1978 or 1979 at Flax in San Francisco. It was horribly expensive for a 12 color watercolor set and the same colors were available with a brush in that simple Sketch Kit. I bought it for the water bottle and included brush and water cup. I bought it for the case, plain and simple.

That felt like a dumb decision at the time. $40 more to get one that includes a water bottle and flips open to hold on your hand with a thumb ring? It was a gadget, not a serious artist supply, let alone a necessary one. I felt like an idiot overpaying for a gimmick as I walked out of the store.

Then I went camping with friends and the Cotman Field Box went in my pocket. I did my best to do a watercolor of the lake at the campsite, and got a good watercolor painting of one tree branch and a line vaguely resembling the horizon. I kept at it, but somehow when I would decide what to bring on trips or going to the park or going to medieval events or Renaissance faires... it was my "Renaissance Polaroid" that would wind up in my pocket.

Usually with its water bottle pre-filled and its water cup nicely washed out because I got in the habit of cleaning and refilling it immediately after every use. Sometimes it wound up with me in places I didn't expect to get an opportunity to paint, like trying to do flowers in a friend's garden. It was already in my pocket. It lived in my coat in more climates than I can count.

Eventually a windfall in the summer of 2003 convinced me that I was ready for artist grade watercolors, so I gave my trusty thirty year old Cotman Field Box to a friend and bought this one, the Artist Field Box. I would actually recommend getting the Artist version from the start, but either one is a joy to use.

It's an expensive little gimmick that will trick you into doing more plein air watercolors than you ever expected to. It fits in any pocket or bag, women artists probably keep them in their purse at all times. It's about the size of a pack of tall cigarettes, the 100's length. A little thicker. It fits in a shirt pocket.

And it has the water included, plus the brush. The little metal W&N pocket box doesn't include a brush. The whole thing folds out neatly and has three mixing areas. They do wash perfectly clean, especially if you go over them with a dampened facial tissue after they stain. The included brush is a very small one, a size 0 or 1 round, so you may get used to painting rather small.

I discovered a fondness for doing miniature portraits with it. This set shines for doing miniature portraits or ATCs. You could cut a stack of ATC blanks, put them into a fat top loader or each into a soft sleeve, rubber band the lot to your Field Box and paint on break at work. I did that more times than I can count, because this sometimes wound up in my pants pocket back when I had my typesetting job.

The gimmick actually makes sense.

Because it does include everything you need except the paper, it takes no trouble to prepare for any outing. Just shove it in your pocket or leave it in your pocket and you're good to go. The result is that over time, I got very used to my Cotman Field Box. I owned a lot of other watercolor sets, but that was the one I'd use up and need to refill more often than any other. That was because of its sheer convenience.

The little flat white plastic bottle that forms the third mixing area holds a lot more water than you'd expect. I can fill the water cup from it two or three times or more, depending on how deep I fill it. I like to leave some space to the top so that I can dump it when it's dirty and pour in clean water. The half pans are excellent quality.

Winsor & Newton's Cotman paint was so much better than anything else I used at the time that I didn't realize it was student grade. The set had an unusual palette -- lemon yellow and a warm buttery yellow, orangy red and Alizarin Crimson, Sap Green and Winsor Green, Ultramarine and Winsor (Pthalo) blue, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber and Chinese White. I got used to having white for painting on dark paper, though didn't use up the white as fast as the other colors. I got used to mixing black. That is a good lesson for a student to learn!

Much to my surprise, when I upgraded it to Artist Field Box in 2003, I found out I had to do without my favorite Sap Green but they'd added Ivory Black to the lineup! I guess professional artists do monochrome value sketches with Black and know better than to use it in mixes, but they also replaced the Burnt Umber with Raw Umber, which I didn't like as much. It took me a while to get used to the new palette.

Recently on WetCanvas.com, I met some other artists who use my favorite field box. I saw it in one of my watercolor books as the author's example of "a handy pocket box." I wasn't the only one who loved the convenience of having water, at least a small brush and a place to put the water along with the mixing areas in a 12 color half pans watercolor set.

My Artist Field Box is still in its original state. A small natural sponge gets included. This is important for doing any washes or big areas. I think most artists who use this kit get used to using the sponge where you'd want a larger mop or bigger brush, or they lose the sponge and rubber band a larger pocket brush to it.

The trick is though, that you can add two more half pans if you move the sponge from its little compartment to keeping it in the empty water cup instead. So as of this Friday, I'm actually modifying my palette. I ordered a half pan of Permanent Rose and another of Quinacridone Gold, noticing Hookers Green is just a mix of Winsor (Pthalo) Green and Quinacridone Gold -- that gets me my warm green again with a simple mix but also gives me the very useful Quinacridone Gold for all the other mixes I love it for. Everyone's favorite palette is different.

If you invest in a Winsor & Newton Field Box, it will last a lifetime. My old gray Cotman one was still in perfect shape after all those years. I replaced the little brush once and replaced the half pans many times. Later on I learned that I can just refill the half pans with tubes, which saves my getting half pans of Artist watercolor except for the first time, when they'll fit in the box.

The palettes in both sets are well chosen, but you can easily purchase half pans to swap them out if a favorite color is missing. I plan on swapping out the Ivory Black for Payne's Grey, Raw Umber for Burnt Umber and maybe drop Yellow Ochre in favor of another color, possibly swiping the spare Chromium Green out of my Lukas 1862 half pans set since it had two of that color. An extra green might be handy. I can do that, because the Winsor & Newton half pans are standard sized.

So if you have favorite half pans of another good artist grade brand like Lukas 1862 or Schminke or Sennelier, nothing's stopping you from customizing your Field Box. Every artist develops a personal palette based on favorite subjects and favorite mixes. But don't lose the little bitty sponge. If you do, cut a new one from a larger sponge and keep it handy, because that small Sceptre or Kolinsky brush will not be large enough to fill in skies or do broad masses of color.

Below is the first page of my watercolor journal, including a color chart and a self portrait I did entirely with the Winsor & Newton Artist's Field Box. It's very good for any subject I've ever run into and it's got that incredible advantage of being so self contained. In a jacket pocket or purse you can put a small Moleskine watercolor journal rubberbanded to it and have that available no matter where you go.

This watercolor set has withstood all tests of space, carelessness, laziness and hard usage. I recommend it 100% -- it's worth the initial investment to start out with the most convenient pocket set there is. That alone may trick you into painting more, just the way it did me. This is something to last for a lifetime. Just refill as needed.


Color Chart and Self Portrait
5" x 8 1/2"
Winsor & Newton Artist's Field Box watercolors
Moleskine watercolor journal