I wandered into my local art supply store recently to get a couple very specific pencils. But of course I had to browse. I wandered down the watercolor aisle muttering to myself, “I do not need anymore watercolor palettes.” So of course, I bought a new palette. But it’s different!!!! It’s the Derwent Inktense Paint Palette Set ($25). The set includes 12 small pans of color, a sponge along one edge and a portable waterbrush. The waterbrush is too long to be assembled. The top brush section cannot be screwed into the water reservoir bottom section and then still fit into the space at the bottom of the palette. Weird. I didn’t bother filling the waterbrush and instead used a watercolor brush but it seems like an odd choice. If the sponge section had been made smaller, I think the brush would have fit. Anyway…

If you are not familiar with the Derwent Inktense line, the line started with a variety of water-soluble colored pencils. The interesting thing about the Inktense pencils is that after water is added to create a watercolor effect, once dry, the color is no longer water soluble. So, its water color, until it dries and then it sticks where it is. For multimedia artists, art journalists and collagists, this is a very cool feature. Inktense pencils, and now the Paint Pan Sets, can be used like watercolors then dry and other water soluble art supplies can be used over the color.

The set includes a range of colors including an opaque white. Many watercolor sets will include an opaque white gouache pan but the Derwent Inktense set has a waterproof-when-dry “watercolor” white. This pan is particularly interesting for adding highlights, eye lights, and other touches of white over color.

The other colors include a cool yellow (sherbet lemon), bright orange, cherry (warm red), fuchsia, violet, turquoise, ionian green (forest green), Hooker’s Green (spring green), red oxide, Payne’s Grey (cool grey) and antique white.

Some of the colors show a lot of granulating when applied directly from the pan. I did begin to blend colors and add more water and the granulation wasn’t as apparent.

The swatch above is the opaque antique white which is slightly visible on white paper.

I played around with colors both blended and straight from the palette. I really like the turquoise shade, it is quite dark and really pretty.

Shown above is a close-up of the shadow which was added under the apple after the paint was dry so you can see how the colors can be layered without the previous color moving or changing. I really like this!

The above image shows the orange I painted with added Payne’s Grey and Antique White after the original orange color had dried. In previous efforts, I would have had to use a gel pen to create the white highlights which may or may not have stayed in place because gel pens are water-based as well.

Overall, I think the Inktense Paint Pan Set is a very cool addition to anyone’s art supply kit. I look forward to experimenting my layering these colors with a wider range of supplies. I do wish the pans of color were larger and that Derwent just skipped trying to squeeze a water brush into the kit as its a waste of space.

DISCLAIMER: Some items included in this review were purchased with funds from our amazing Patrons. You can help support this blog by joining our Patreon. Please see the About page for more details.

Finally, I acquired a new iPhone last week and with its new fancy camera, I am trying to determine if its now higher quality than my Canon that I’ve been using for the last few years. Can you tell which photo below was taken with the iPhone and which was taken with the Canon?

The post Art Supply Review: Derwent Inktense Paint Pan Set appeared first on The Well-Appointed Desk.

I always say (to myself and others) that I’m not a sheeny, shiny, glittery gal (I’ve only ever purchased one bottle of shimmery ink, and I gave it away soon after). Obviously a liar, I recently found myself craving some sheeny, shiny, glittery watercolors. The Boku-Undo Gansai Watercolor Palette in the Aurora colors (6/$14.75) looked mouth-watering.

Before I plant my face into the sheen, I thought I’d mention that I’m already a fan of the Boku-Undo mini palettes of unique watercolors. The E-Sumi palette I reviewed a few years ago are a lot of fun to use when I’m in a dark mood. While the e-sumi palette is subdued, the Aurora set is on the opposite end of the scale: It’s all about the dazzling light.

The set includes (from left) gold, silver, red, green, blue and purple. I used both my scanner and my phone to photograph swatches in direct daylight on black and white papers. Each time, the swatches look very different! 

On white paper, the shimmer is apparent in direct light, but the hues are difficult to differentiate and even seem to change. I’m not sure they are worth using on white paper. 

On dark paper, however, the effect is entirely different. The sparkly, metallic particles glow on black paper. I rubbed a finger across the dried swatches, and some sparkly flecks smeared a bit like powder.

It was obvious that I had to make a test sketch on black paper, so I used a black Stillman & Birn Nova sketchbook. And I had just the right reference photo to use! During the summer months when the sun doesn’t go down until 8 or 9 p.m., my spouse guy and I take after-dinner walks through the neighborhood to enjoy the light. The gorgeous “golden hour” is too brief to sketch on location, so I snap a lot of reference photos to sketch from later (like the long, dismal winters when the sun goes down at 4). The photo I used wasn’t as dark as my sketch appears, but the low, warm light gave everything a lovely glow. 

Whatever gives these paints their sparkle also makes them thicker than typical watercolors. I applied them fairly thick to retain as much concentrated shimmer as possible, and they felt a bit creamy rather than watery.

Oooh, these paints are fun on black paper! I have fully embraced my inner glitter gal.

Tina Koyama is an urban sketcher in Seattle. Her blog is Fueled by Clouds & Coffee, and you can follow her on Instagram as Miatagrrl.

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I took a watercolor class a few months ago that left me frustrated. Using a limited palette of pigments, I wanted to learn to mix colors. As I tried to achieve the hues I was looking for, my paint mixes would become increasingly diluted. I’d add more paint to get a thicker concentration, but then I’d have to adjust the mix again, over and over. With practice and help from my instructor, I got better at it eventually, but I started to see the benefit of having lots of pigments easily accessible, all on one palette – without mixing!

Ana had reviewed 36 of the Kuretake Gansai Tambi Watercolors a few years ago, and I liked the range of colors I saw. Kuretake now offers a total of 48 colors, sold as a single set or in two sets of 24 colors each. I decided to try color set A (24/$29.50; color set B is 24/$38).

Just as I was thinking about all this, I suddenly remembered that I had a set of 24 Akashiya Gansai Watercolors ($37) that I had purchased years ago but hadn’t used much. My product reviewer’s mind clicked into gear: Wouldn’t it be fun to compare these two sets!

Their presentations are very similar: Unlike what I think of as a typical watercolor set, with paint pans fitting solidly together in a box, both Akashiya and Kuretake sets are made of loose, individual pans that can be removed easily from their cardboard box and rearranged or replaced (JetPens sells open stock pans for both lines). This form factor makes them impractical for field use, as it would be more than easy to drop the box in transport and see the paint pans go flying. (Kuretake does offer a version of its Gansai paints in a portable palette.)

The upside of this form factor is that the pans are larger than standard (Western style) full-size pans, so it’s possible to use large, flat brushes to make wide washes without a mixing tray. (I also have a Sakura Koi Watercolor Field Sketch Box, but without mixing, the tiny pans can only be used with small brushes.) The Akashiya pans are 1 3/8-inch squares, while the Kuretake pans are 1-by-1 ¾ inches.

Both products consist of artist-quality, lightfast, non-toxic paints. They are made in a traditional Japanese way that can give the result a slightly glossy, opaque finish when heavily applied. Like watercolors, some pigments are more opaque than others, but I wouldn’t say any are as opaque as gouache.

My Akashiya set is more than 10 years old, and some paints have cracked and shrunk so that they are now loose and rattling around in their pans. I don’t think the paint quality has degraded, however. I’ve sometimes seen aged gouache pans shrink in the same way, so perhaps these watercolors contain some of the same binders as gouache.

Akashiya helpfully puts the color number and name on the side of the pan for easy viewing (but unhelpfully in Japanese only).

Kuretake includes the same information in both Japanese and English on the less accessible bottom of the pan. It also includes the number and Japanese color name on the box tray itself. This feature I find less useful, since I might want to rearrange the colors to suit the way I work.

Next I’ll show the color ranges. Each set includes a blank color chart on the inside of the box lid for making swatches. Unfortunately, in both cases, the cardboard lid’s paper doesn’t show the colors to best effect, so I made additional swatch charts in a Hahnemühle watercolor sketchbook. The black grid lines are intended to show opacity (and apparently, I can’t count when I’m drawing lines).

Akashiya colors:

Kuretake colors:

In general, this Akashiya palette is more muted, while the Kuretake set is more saturated. (Kuretake’s Set B looks like a more muted range.) Interestingly, the Akashiya set includes metallic gold and silver, which are unusual in any watercolor set.

With basic comparisons done, it was time to put the pedal to the metal. I had just purchased a bright bouquet of peonies from a family of flower growers who have a weekend kiosk at our neighborhood gas station. Despite my initial impressions from swatches that the Akashiya paints were less vibrant, I had no problem achieving intense hues in this sketch (the rough lines and marks you see on some flowers were made with watercolor pencils). My method was to dip a Kuretake water brush into the paints and apply them directly to a Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook page with no mixing or blending except as it occurred on the paper. Looking at my swatch sheet as a color guide, it was fun not to otherwise test the colors first to see if they were “right” (which I am constantly doing when I mix in a separate mixing tray). Aside from my enthusiasm resulting in a bit of overworking, I was happy with this test sketch.

The following weekend, I bought another bouquet, this time to take to the cemetery on Memorial Day. Using the same methods and the same water brush and sketchbook, I painted the bouquet with the Kuretake set. This bouquet had lighter pink blossoms than the first one and a challenging white peony, too. I was thrilled by the hues I was able to achieve with no laborious mixing. And even though the paints look intense in my swatches, giving my water brush a squeeze as I dipped into the paints gave me nice pale tints for the lavender and pink blossoms. Again, it was great fun being able to simply dip and paint without all that mixing fuss! In fact, I know now why I like to paint this way – it’s more like using colored pencils!

Looking at the two sets together, the palettes complement each other well. I like the selection of greens better in the Kuretake set, but the Akashiya set includes some lovely muted tones (not to mention gold and silver). I don’t think I can say one is better than the other in terms of quality, so the choice is more a matter of colors included in the sets. In terms of packaging, I prefer the Kuretake’s tray, which may be slightly more secure than the Akashiya box, which has nothing but the box itself holding the pans together.

Some would point out that it’s more economical to buy tube paints and fill my own empty palette. But what’s the fun in that? Both of these Gansai (which means “vibrance”) sets are the colored pencils of paints: An instantly gratifying rainbow in a box. Get yourself one for the next time you feel compelled to paint a bouquet (which I heartily recommend for an immediate lift in your spirits).

DISCLAIMER: Some items included in this review were provided free of charge by JetPens for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.

Tina Koyama is an urban sketcher in Seattle. Her blog is Fueled by Clouds & Coffee, and you can follow her on Instagram as Miatagrrl.

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Although I’m mostly a colored and graphite pencil sketcher, sometimes I get into a painty mood. If I haven’t used paints in a while, though, I get a bit overwhelmed by choosing and mixing colors; I just want to grab a brush and hit the page with it. That’s what I love about a watercolor set like the Kuretake Gansai Tambi Graphite Colors (palette of 6/$16.50). The neutral, near-black hues require no mixing to have fun with.

The set comes in a cardboard palette of six pans that are larger than traditional watercolor full pans (though a bit shallower). The color name (in English and Japanese) and color number appear on the underside of the pan, and the number also appears on the palette. I find the color name on the pan to be especially handy because the subtle, dark hues can be difficult to identify when dry. (Apparently, these paints are not available individually at JetPens.)

When swatched, the hues become more distinct. The lightfast colors recall the Boku-Undo E-Sumi Watercolor Palette that I reviewed a while back. While that set evokes the rich blackness of ink, the Kuretake set is more subtle and matte like graphite. (I love having both pen- and pencil-like watercolor sets!)

According to the JetPens product description, “the surface of the paint can be polished to reveal a metallic luster.” That statement piqued my curiosity, so I took a paper towel and rubbed the concentrated ends of my swatches. It was difficult to photograph to show the luster, but with light reflected directly, the paints do show a subtle, graphite-like sheen.

To make test sketches, I first used green and red to sketch a portrait (reference photo by Earthsworld).

Then I sketched my friend Skully (inspired by the X-Files character, of course) twice in a gray Stillman & Birn Nova sketchbook – once with blue and once with violet. (The white highlights were made with an East Hill Tombstone white brush pen that Ana and I both reviewed several years ago.)

I used a standard-size East Hill Kumadori water brush to make these sketches. With a finer brush (and a finer hand), I think these graphite-inspired paints would be lovely for calligraphy as well as painting.

DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were provided free of charge by JetPens for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.

Tina Koyama is an urban sketcher in Seattle. Her blog is Fueled by Clouds & Coffee, and you can follow her on Instagram as Miatagrrl.

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I don’t normally keep marker or brush pens in the packaging but with a large set like this 30-color set, the sturdy, translucent plastic box is easy to use, easy to see the pens and easy to store so the pens might live in this box for the time being. I do store the box with the tips down or horizontal so that the tips don’t dry out. The 20-color set came in a long flat plastic sleeve that is lovely for presentation but too big to be usable for me so I took the pens out of the case immediately, which may explain why I managed to lose some of the pens.

What I like most about the Sai Watercolor Brush Pens is the unusual color range. Unlike many pen sets that offer the standard ROYGBIV spectrum in smaller sets, the Sai sets all have a more sophisticated, complex color range.

The pens feature clear caps with a clip to keep the pens from rolling away. I did discover that the caps need to be pushed firmly to close the pens completely.

With the 30-color set, I do feel like there are more common colors then in the 20-color set but overall, I think the set offers a great range of colors.

Of all the brush pens on the market, the individual nylon bristle tips on the Sai brush pens are some of the sturdiest while also being the most like a real brush. Other brands feature the soft, flexible “felt tip” style tips which can often dull or the tips can get worn out but the Sai bristles have survived a wide array of paper surfaces and abuse and kept the tips sharp and usable. I didn’t go out of my way to try to damage or abuse them so I’m sure they can be damaged, but in regular use, I’ve found the Sai brush pens to be the most durable while also being the most brusk-like.

Using a standard Tomoe River A5 notebook, I tested the full range of colors in the 30-color set. My favorite colors are the dusty blue in the center of the second row and pretty much all the greens.  I think for nature sketchers, this set has a good variety. Lettering artists will like the spring brush tips and unique color range especially.

The red-orange color always reminds me of ripe, heirloom tomatoes. All things considered, its probably my favorite in the set. It is also in the 20-color set and I used it all the time.

DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were provided free of charge by JetPens for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.

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Viviva Colorsheets have been on the market for a couple years but this is the first time I’ve tested them. Tina has reviewed them in the past but I thought it would be handy to (1) try them myself and (2) provide another perspective about the product.

The Colorsheets come in a folded heavy cardstock booklet with a square of thick, dried watercolor pigment for each color included. Each page in the Viviva Colorsheet booklet has four colors, two on each side of the fold with water resistant, translucent divider stock in between. The divider stock helps to keep the colors from merging together, particularly if they are still damp.

The bottom of the pages are stair stepped with a color key to make finding colors faster and easier.

Often, the dried paint swatches do not look at all like the color they are when applied to paper. Doing a swatch key is definitely important in order to recognize each color accurately.

The set of Viviva Colorsheets I purchased was the 2020 Inktober edition which featured 20 colors. Two of the colors were basically black and an opaque-ish white which I seldom use in watercolor.

Above are swatch tests on three different papers — the top is the Leuctturm1917 sketchbook then the Stillman & Birn Delta and finally (bottom) Alpha.

There is a little bit of color shifting depending on the paper stock but overall the colors are pretty consistent on good multimedia or watercolor paper.

The swatch above is in the Shinola Sketchbook.

I get hung up on the three largely similar shades of red and the dusk orange and gold ochre being nearly identical as well. On some papers, the Vermillion or Burnt Umber also looked quite similar.

I’ve been trained that with a portable watercolor palette, you need a red, yellow and blue — each with one in a warm version of the color and a cool version. Then maybe a specific pre-mixed green, a a warm and cool earth tone (ochre and sepia, for example) then whatever is your whimsy — maybe a pre-mixed pink or purple, payne’s grey, etc. So, 10-12 colors maximum and then mix thee rest.

There is a coated paper palette included that can be attached into the back of the booklet but it’s relatively small so I am not sure how effective it would be for mixing paint. The paper squares of pigment are difficult to look at and determine how much pigment is left on each square. Also, if you use up one color in the palette there is (currently) no easy way to replace that one color short of buying a whole new set.

I like the idea of having a very portable little watercolor palette to keep tucked in my bag with a waterbrush so I have quick, easy access to colors when I need them. This set is definitely small but lacks a truly functional mixing palette and no easy way to replace or add new colors easily. I still think a small watercolor pan set with swappable pans which can be replaced or refilled is still the better solution. If I decide I want to paint four pages in my sketchbook blue, I want to know I have enough blue paint and that I can add more pigment to my palette as needed.

DISCLAIMER: Some of the items included in this review were provided free of charge for the purpose of review. The Viviva Colorsheets were purchased with my own money however. Please see the About page for more details.

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In late September as I geared up for InkTober, of course I inked up a few favorite fountain pens. But I also picked up a few new things to keep it fresh and challenging (you can see them in my inky previews here). One was a Boku-Undo E-Sumi Watercolor Palette (set of six $17; single colors $3 each). Since I fully embraced colored pencils, watercolors have not been in my regular sketching arsenal for years, so I thought these paints would be nothing more than a novelty. I was so wrong! They nearly took over my InkTober.

According to the product description, Boku-Undo colors are “made with a combination of traditional sumi ink* and colorful dyes.” The six “shadow black” shades in the palette are, indeed, mostly black with a hint of hue. They evoke the “off-black” shades of some gel pen inks. (Swatches below made in a Col-o-ring Oversize.)

One of the many challenges of using watercolors is that it’s difficult to get intense blacks and other dark hues, but these inky paints make it easy. I find it especially fun to make values studies with varying dilutions of color. (Still life below made with greenish-black on Canson XL 140 lb. watercolor paper.)

Seattle’s Smith Tower is one of my favorite buildings (and where my spouse guy and I were married a few decades back). I made this anniversary card with bluish-black (Canson XL 140 lb. watercolor paper).

For my daily InkTober sketches, I continued my series of hand drawings, and that’s when I really fell in love with Boku-Undo. Typically with watercolors, I get wimpy washes, but not with these – the washes are as rich and dark as I want them to be without much effort. I love pairing the inks with a Uni Posca Paint Marker with a brush tip for highlights. I used a notebook containing colored, coated pages that made the ink bead up – a surprising effect that I like! On the blue paper below, I used bluish-black. On the yellow page, I used reddish-black.

Perhaps my only problem with Boku-Undo is wondering what they really are. Traditional sumi is made of soot that comes in a solid form and must be slowly ground with water to make a liquid ink. It’s conveniently sold as a liquid ink, but I’m pretty sure traditional sumi masters would frown on using that. (Grinding your ink patiently and meditatively is part of the process, said my instructor at a workshop I once took. The workshop was only one day, and we must have spent half of it grinding the ink.) These Boku-Undo look and behave just like pan watercolors, so they aren’t traditional sumi, either . . are they painty inks or inky paints? No matter. Boku-Undo are a ton of fun.

*Editor’s Note: Sumi inks often contain carbon soot, pine tar and animal glues. These can be corrosive to dib pen nibs and other materials. DO NOT, under any circumstances, use Sumi inks in your fountain pens.

DISCLAIMER: Some items included in this review were provided free of charge by JetPens for the purpose of review. This review also includes affiliate links. The Well-Appointed Desk is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon. Please see the About page for more details.

Tina Koyama is an urban sketcher in Seattle. Her blog is Fueled by Clouds & Coffee, and you can follow her on Instagram as Miatagrrl.

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A couple of months ago, I got the Kuretake Gansai Tambi Watercolor 18-color set and I really liked them so I set about acquiring the remaining 18 colors to have the full 36 color range available. Luckily, JetPens sells individual full pans of the Gansai Tambi Watercolors for $2.50-$3 (depending on the color) so I was able to slowly add the additional colors. It was a bit more expensive than purchasing the full 36-color set but it tends to be sold out more often than not so buying the individual pans seemed like the only way to complete my set in the next year. So that’s what I did. Even so, $3 for a full pan is still much less expensive than many other brands of watercolors.

I placed the new colors in the lid of the original 18-colors box and tried to align the colors in the same spectrum as the original palette with the metallics at the bottom. Without the paper dividers like the original set, the pans slide around a bit but I’m thinking I might get a little OCD and make cardboard dividers for the lid to make the whole set-up a bit more stable.

You’ll see that, of all the individual pans I ordered, only one yellow was damaged in shipping. It shattered but it still works just fine. I think if I wet it really well I should be able to get it to sort of mold back into the pan but it doesn’t really bother me that much.

I swatched all the colors in the order in which they appear in the palette on two pages of an A5 140gsm Seawhite of Brighton softcover sketchbook paper.I love the Pale Aqua though it is definitely a more opaque color than a traditional watercolor.  The Dark Pink is definitely more of a warm purple color when applied thickly which provides a wider range of violet colors. The Deep Violet is also a lovely addition to the palette as its a very deep, rich indigo violet. I was also very happy to add the dark brown to the palette as it added a deep neutral to an otherwise candy-colored palette of colors.

The metallics are a lot of fun. The silver mixes well with the other colors to create a range of metallics and the two shades of gold will be good for details and lettering.

I am definitely glad I have the full 36 colors because who doesn’t want ALL THE COLORS?

Overall, I find the Gansai Tambi paints to be a strange hybrid of traditional watercolor paints and a more opaque gouache paint. I can pick a good deal of paint and create an almost opaque color or thin with water for a more traditional watercolor look.

The prices for the Gansai Tambi paints is incredibly reasonable for the large pans, beautiful presentation and decent range of colors available for the prices. However, if what you are looking for is a traditional transparent watercolor than I recommend trying the Winsor & Newton Cotman set instead. While the set is not as broad, I think the colors will blend more easily to create a wider range and are more transparent. Also, the Gansai Tambi pans are definitely NOT a portable set. Between the paperboard box and the large size of the box, this set is definitely something to keep on your desk but is not convenient if you are looking for a set to use for traveling and/or urban street sketching.

If you like the idea of having both gouache-like painting abilities and watercolor effect, than the Gansai Tambi paints are a great option and the large pans make it much easier to use larger brushes. Because the sets come in cardboard boxes, you’ll have to devise your own mixing trays for blending colors and thinning the paint but an old plate or pan will work if you don’t want to invest in a watercolor mixing tray.

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I was introduced to the Sakura Koi Coloring Brush Pens 12-color set ($27)  by way of Lisa Condon’s blog, Today Is Going To Be To Be Awesome. She had a post on her sidebar about her favorite tools to use for drawing and illustration and one of her recommended pens for sketchbook use were the 12-color set of Koi Coloring Brush Pens.

The pens are felt-tipped and shaped like a paint brush tip. The colors are bright, clean and vivid and are water soluble so they will blend together easily allowing the 12-color set to extend itself into a wider range of colors by blending the colors together.

If you do blend the colors together, be sure to have a piece of scratch paper handy because the colors will migrate from pen to pen and you’ll want to clean off any color transfer that might occur in the process though this can also create some interesting an unexpected results. Just be prepared.

The set comes in a plastic sleeve but I prefer to dump out all my pens immediately into a pen case or a cup so they are handy and accessible. If they are all locked away in a protective sleeve, I find they don’t get used which is a waste.  Rolling around on my desk, I wrote notes, doodled, colored and generally just enjoyed the bright vivid colors all week which was welcomed in the bleak January days I have to say!

The black pen in the set is also water soluble so I would not recommend using it as an outliner and then trying to go back and fill in with colors as the black will migrate. The word “KOI” on my sample has darker colors because the black started to creep into the center. If you want to do outlining in black brush pen and then use the Sakura Pigma Professional Brush pens instead which are permanent and then add color with the Koi Coloring Brush Pens.

I think these pens might spend a little time out with our coloring books this week and see how it plays there. I’d also like to add in a little light water brush to lighten the colors a bit and help to blend so that the colors will play even more like watercolor. I did try a water brush after photographing the samples and the colors do continue to blend even several hours later so these will definitely be lots of fun to play with. A very clean, portable way to use watercolors on the go! And, wow! Are the colors ever bright and clean and juicy!

DISCLAIMER: This item was sent to me free of charge by JetPens for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.

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