I found them soft, powdery and they clogged up the paper.
It feels like there is too much filler relative to pigment in them.
Just had a doodle with some giant Arch Manet pastels that I bought ages ago. The paper is Pastelmat.
I found them soft, powdery and they clogged up the paper. It feels like there is too much filler relative to pigment in them.
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Testing out 3 different makes of pencils to see which laid down the best on the Bockingford Hot Pressed paper that I bought.
The toadstool on the left is Derwent Coloursoft. The one in the middle is FaberCastell Polychromos. The one on the right is Caran D'Ache Pablo. On this paper I give the thumbs up to the Coloursofts, Easier to work and I got more colour onto the paper. I bought some new paper to try out. It's called Clairfontaine Fontaine 300g HP. Just did this doodle to see what it was like. I used mixed watercolour pencils. Didn't particularly like it as I found it a bit too grainy with the pencils so the next day I had a go using watercolour paints on it. Got a much nicer result with it so will be sticking to using the watercolour paints on it, I think.
Postman came a few days ago and delivered a new set of Shinhan Professional watercolour paints. All the way from Korea!
They were inexpensive and reasonable quality. They're certainly not the same paints as the Shinhan Premium paints that I have and the term "Professional" can be a bit misleading. I don't regard them as being any better than a decent student grade paint. In fact I would say my Van Gogh student paints are slightly better. The colours of the Shinhans are a bit strange when compared to the same colours in the Van Gogh range. Kaz is still doing her fundraising stuff and is selling some of her handmade items on Ebay with all proceeds going to AMMF, which is the UK's only cholangiocarcinoma (or bile duct cancer) charity. This is the cancer that her Mom died from in Dec. 2013 and she raises funds for them.
I've given her some of my artwork to sell and you can check out the items here She will also be doing an online auction through her Facebook page in March for them and I'll be donating a few more paintings to that aswell. Just placed an order for some more supplies - going to have a go with some coloured inks. Will do a blog post about them when I give them a try. .I found these on ebay really cheap so I thought I would give them a try and see how they compared to my usual artists quality brands. The set I bought is a box of 24 full pans with removable pallet. This is the old style of box and is a bit flimsy. I doubt if it would last long under regular use. The pans are held in by a small plastic hook at one end and are extremely insecure. I put sticky fixer under these to stop them falling out. Although described as full pans I think that they are actually a bit smaller than a regular pan. I decided to do a couple of sketches to see if they lived up to expectations. The colour's names were quite strange compared to what I'm used to using so the first thing I did was to paint a colour chart There was one in the box but it was printed so didn't represent the actual colours. On adding water to the pans I noticed a couple of them were quite hard and I had to wet them up to soften them before use. My first painting was a simple sketch of an apple. As with any other watercolour paint I decided to let the paint do the work. The pigments were quite strong so I expected the task to take only a few minutes. Unfortunately the paint didn't behave as expected. The paint didn't adhere to the paper very well and was difficult to layer. Each subsequent layer seemed to lift of the previous layer. Also, the stronger pigments seemed to bleed and dissolve the dry paint underneath leaving large watermarks. It took an awful lot of work with the brush to correct the problem. My second sketch was of 2 plums. I thought the strong colours involved would make them easier to work. Unfortunately the outcome was the same. The finished product was a bit messy and not up to the standard of what I would describe as artists watercolour paints. Conclusion.
They are loaded with pigment with some unusual colours. Not really a beginner's tool as they are quite difficult to work. It might be best to try them on a variety of different papers to get a better perspective of their potential. Worth a try but if I were to start from scratch I would go for one of the student brands such as Van Gogh or Cotman. On a positive note, they are inexpensive for what they are. Foot note: These paints that I purchased were unused but I guess quite old. I wonder if the problems that I had might have been down to this product having a limited shelf life. Kaz has been on at me for ages to paint small. Guess she has a point as we live in a teeny tiny flat so to keep her quiet (and to use up some odd bits of paper that I didn't want to throw away) I've done a few ACEO's.
Don't know what they are? Well, ACEO stands for Art Cards Editions and Originals. They measure just 2.5 x 3.5 inches (6.4 x 8.9 cms) and are quite collective apparently, although we shall see about that! Anyway, done about half a dozen or so and its a bit of a challenge painting with small brushes after being used to using the large ones!! Bought a couple of new paper stretchers as I was getting bored waiting for the paper to dry on the one I had already got!!
This is Bockingford 198g watercolour paper. It's a bit too thin to use without being stretched as is has a tendency to cockle really bad. Even on the stretcher it's hard to stop it from cockling but at least it drys relatively flat. I like to use this thinner paper for practising because the quality is good and it's economical to use. My only gripe is that the clips on these can be difficult to put into place if you have problems with your fingers and they also tend to catch any loose paint that runs off the edge of the paper which has to be mopped up regularly. At least now I can have 3 pieces of paper stretching, and be ready to paint anytime! When I buy new stuff I generally like to test it before using it in anger.
These pomegranates are done in soft and hard pastels on Fabriano Ingres pastel paper. Although it is a pastel paper there isn't a great deal of tooth. The result was a bit blurred and rough round the edges. Maybe I could have layered the pastel over workable fixative but the would have negated the benefits of buying this economy paper in the first place. Sadly, not to my liking but might be worth trying it with charcoal. |
AuthorMe - Terry Molloy. I paint for pleasure not profit! Archives
June 2020
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