Some watercolor brands I use

I was in the mood to do some sketching with a black ink pen and watercolours I drew tubes of some watercolour brands I used so far in my daily sketches and whoever does a lot of watercolour painting, knows by heart the names of the five different brands I drew above.

What do I like about these?

1. In my opinion the White Nights / St. Petersburg are very affordable artist colours. I am satisfied with the good pigmentation, the lightfastness and the way they mix on the paper and rewetting is no problem. Some greens are very strong like emerald or light green (like viridian) and should be mixed with other colours to obtain more natural greens. I usually use some convenience premixed greens in my day-to-day outdoor palette so I still have to get used to those different green colours. (For my home region I need to have fast access to some premixed more natural greens while painting outside, as we live in a area with lots of forest). All in all I like the so far tested colours and above all the small wooden self-made pallette I showed a few days ago. It proved to be good for sketch outings.

2. The second one is DS and these colours are top range for me as they do a lot of earth-, granulating- and beautiful different highly pigmented colours. They have a range of 250+ colours and what is remarkable is their range of primatek colours made from minerals. Being a great fan of the brand the only thing I regret is that these colours are quite expensive in my homecountry.

3. Schmincke (Horadam) is the brand I began with and I still use it a lot as it covers the full range (139 intense colours with 95 one-pigment-tones), and the colours are very reliable and with strong pigmentation, good mixing abilities and good lightfastness. I definitely continue to use them. Above all I like their ultramarine and cerulean. The colours are not cheap, but affordable and reliable for any artist use.

4. WN is a very reliable brand too. The colour range is big and the colours are very vibrant. For clean colour mixing single pigments are important and most of their colours (75 out of 96) are like that and 93 of them are permanent for artist use. I like these as well.

5. This french brand is also among my favourites. They are a pleasure to paint with. They are highly pigmented and honey-based. (Sometimes when it is very hot in summer this is a problem for sketching on the go. Some of the colours wander around in palette if it is very hot - this is what you have to keep in mind, but if you know the colours behaviour it is no major problem.) I definitely enjoy the strong colours like their yellows for bright highlights.

If you know my outdoor palette you see that I have a mix of brands. I pick out my favourites of the colours available. Any of these brands are good with good mixing abilities and they all rewet great, but there are slight differences in colours with the same name from brand to brand. For example there are big differences in cerulean blue from different brands. My preference here is Schmincke. 

Try for yourself and don't hesitate to mix your outdoor palette from the best of different brands...

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Ich hatte mal Lust einige meiner Aquarell-Farbtuben mit Tinte und Aquarellfarben zu malen.