This is a guest post by my watercolor buddy Hanna. Hanna is one of the most meticulous planners and evaluators of watercolor pigments and brands that I know!
There are many professional watercolor brands out there. All have their fans, and all can be used to produce beautiful works of art. That said, they do differ from each other, and knowing the relative differences can be very helpful when building one’s collection. Here, I attempt to quantify some of those differences.
As far as I can see, some characteristics are objective, and can be found online, without ever wetting a brush, while others are more experience-based and can be discovered only through painting, or perhaps by trawling through online reviews. Here are these characteristics, in vague order from plain, objective fact, to more experience-based qualities.
- Price, which is shockingly dependent on geography and one’s willingness to shop around and wait for sales.
- Examples: Schmincke is much cheaper in Europe, while Daniel Smith and Da Vinci are cheaper in the US, and Old Holland is (for some reason) cheap in Asia.
- Color range, in terms of the number of available paints, the pigments used (lightfast or not), and the mixes on offer. (Note: most pro brand ranges include some nice exclusive or near-exclusive pigments.)
- Examples: Daniel Smith has the widest range of single-pigment paints, Roman Szmal is close where non-novelty paints are concerned. Schmincke seems to be trying to corner the market on granulating convenience mixtures.
- Paint vehicle ingredients, such as honey, ox-gall, gum arabic, brighteners, and so on… Some companies list these, others mysteriously do not. (These ingredients affect how the paints handle, in complex ways. Some can also affect the paint’s smell.)
- Examples: QoR famously uses its own dispersive binder, Aquazol. Sennelier, M Graham, and Isarol definitely use honey. Roman Szmal uses it in some colors, but not in others. Schmincke uses ox gall, and people think that Winsor and Newton probably do, too, although they don’t say so. Daniel Smith and Rembrandt use no animal-based vehicles. A few people (myself included) think that M Graham smells odd; some artisanal brands like A Gallo add in essential oils that generate a herbal smell).
- Paint characteristics often differ from pigment to pigment, even within a brand, but most brands will also have some characteristics that are consistent across their range. These properties (which include intensity, dispersiveness, transparency, granulation, lliftability/layering…) are sometimes mentioned in a brand’s marketing materials, and often discussed in paint reviews. Interpreting both sources can be rather tricky, though, because such descriptions are subjective, or at least context-dependent: if you’ve only ever used Cotmans, any professional brand will blow you away with intensity.
Once upon a time, handprint.com did some brilliant measuring of intensity, liftability,. transparency, and dispersiveness, but most of the brands tested have changed their ranges since, and nobody else seems to be taking up the effort. I tend to listen most to brand-to-brand comparisons, or comments from people who have used ten or more varied brands.
- Examples:
- Dispersiveness: Qor disperses wildly, and Schmicke, Roman Szmal, and Rosa Gallery are also frequently called dispersive, at least in comparison to Da Vinci, Old Holland, or Asian brands like Holbein.
- Transparency: Most marketing materials mention this, and it’s usually true–for all brands. Still, many artisanal brands like M Gallo, as well as Kremer, seem to be more pigment dense and opaque.
- Granulation: Daniel Smith and Roman Szmal prioritize granulation, while Winsor and Newton, MaimeriBlu, and Rembrandt are relatively subtle.
- Liftability/Layering: This is an important characteristic, but I am finding it hard to track down. Sennelier claIms to be excellent at layering, and the people who use it (many botanical artists) certainly do layer successfully! But similar art is made using Schmincke, Daniel Smith, and Da Vinci. Meanwhile, I have seen reviews claiming that Rosa Gallery and Isaro lift more than expected, while Asian brands are traditionally expected to lift well. Based on my personal experience, many Qor colors do not lift at all.
- Intensity… is an interesting one. It’s often mentioned in reviews, but I feel like it’s not something one can really get from a few quick swatches. Different paints (not just brands) require different water ratios to shine, and some only get vibrant with glazing. Anyway, most pro brands seem to have at least some intense colors. (Still, many consider M Graham and Qor particularly intense.)
- Consistency, as in, consistent quality. Can you rely on tubes of the same paint being essentially the same?
- Examples: I have put this in especially for Maimeriblu, since I have many of their paints, and most are quite wonderful–but I can see online reviews where the same exact paints look visibly different and worse. I have also read about certain batches of individual QoR and M Graham colors being odd. (Qor at least seems to make an effort to identify bad batches and fix problems, as with Permanent Scarlet batch #946593.)
- Bronzing: some paints, especially those containing honey or gum arabic, can look glossy or bronzed when applied at full strength.
- Examples: all honey-based paints can do this; Da Vinci is known for it; I have seen it happen in Daniel Smith; QoR is famous for NOT doing it.
- Re-wettability, and its cousin, ability to stay put in the palette. These are correlated with honey content (honey-based paints tend to stay moister, but there is also wide variance among the non-honey paints, and, additionally, this characteristic is highly dependent on the climate (which makes it harder to trust online reviews that do not mention the weather). Also, in some brands, this quality can vary between pans and dried tube paint, as they use different formulas. (Winsor and Newton is open about this).
Note: I travel a lot, so I have a great deal of personal experience with this characteristic.
- Examples. M Graham remains fluid in high-humidity. Honey-based Roman Szmal and Sennelier stay very tacky, but mostly non-fluid, although a few colors (often cobalts) can leak. I have seen non-honey-based Qor leak as well, however, while honey-based Isaro and A Gallo stayed put. On the other end of the spectrum, W&N dries to a rock in low humidity (possibly deliberate, because the UK is so foggy).
- Brush-feel: Another fun experience-based characteristic, which gets mentioned in many reviews, though not in a consistent way. It’s probably one of the main reasons why people avoid (or choose) a certain brand! One obvious example of it is the degree of stickiness: honey-based paints can feel goopy and require a little mixing with water before use.
- Examples: M Graham, Sennelier, and some Roman Szmal paints exhibit stickiness. Honey-based M Gallo does not; instead, I find that it has a sort of dense feel, like many other artisanal brands. Same goes for Kremer. Some people find that Qor feels thinner, like an alcohol-based paint.
OLD VERSION
I’ve been thinking about how to quantify the differences between different professional brands in a way that I would find personally useful. And I have some ideas. Wordy ones… but hopefully, interesting to some? I would love to hear others’ thoughts on this subject
.
Here are some of the differences that seem both quantifiable and useful to me, sometimes with brand-based examples:
Cost is obviously quantifiable, but shockingly dependent on geography, and one’s willingness to shop around and wait for sales.
It’s also easy to judge a brand’s range in terms of the number of available paints, pigments (lightfast or not), and mixes. (Daniel Smith is king here, Roman Szmal is close. And most pro brands have some nice exclusive or near-exclusive pigments.)
A brand’s color-making choices. The number of paints and availability of single-pigment options vs convenience mixes is part of this, but there are also other general properties that tend to be somewhat consistent within a brand, and present in even the ubiquitous pigments like Ultramarine. These properties include dispersiveness, transparency, granulation, lliftability/layering… there’s probably others I am missing.
I would love to collect others’ experiences to get a clearer picture here, but here are some examples: Daniel Smith and Roman Szmal prioritize granulation, while W&N and MaimeriBlu do not, and I have read that Rembrandt barely has any. Qor disperses like crazy and refuses to lift, while Da Viinci stays put and lifts okayish, and Rosa Gallery disperses a lot, but also tends to lift to the point of making glazing tricky.
Color intensity. This is the most common topic discussed in brand reviews, but I don’t find it all that useful. Most of the colors in most of the pro ranges are intense if you get the water ratio just right. (Certainly intense enough for most paintings.) And every range seems to have duds. Possibly on purpose, in some cases? For example, I find some of the more old-fashioned W&N colors (e.g., Cerulean) weak, but their modern Transparent Orange is at least as punchy as QoR’s Pyrrole Orange. (And lot of people say QoR has the edge here. And M. Graham. I can’t personally confirm either as I haven’t tried enough of their ranges.)
Brush-feel. This also gets mentioned in many reviews, though not in a consistent way. It’s definitely a quantifiable thing, though. One obvious example of it is the degree of stickiness:: honey-based paints like Sennelier, M.Graham, Rosa Gallery, and Roman Szmal (which is partly honey-based, depending on pigment) can feel ‘sticky’ and may require a little mixing with water before use (so, picking them straight out of a pan is not always optimal). Some people hate this. But then, some (other?) people seem to hate the ‘un-sticky/alcoholic’ feel of QoR.
There is talk about other differences too, but I am not experienced enough to feel a consistent difference between, say, Daniel Smith, Schmincke, and Maimeri Blu.
(Incidentally, brush-feel is one reason I hesitate to have a fully multi-brand palette. Using paints that feel very different right after each other makes my brain go ‘bzuh?’. I tend to go either all sticky, or all non-sticky, with W&N and QoR having their own personal palettes.)
Rewettability. And its cousin, ability to stay put in the palette. These are correlated with honey content (honey-based paints tend to rewet easily and stay moister; many people say M Graham always remains mobile) but there is also wide variance among the non-honey paints (W&N dries to a rock, possibly because the UK is so foggy; some QoR paints are at least as prone to leaks as Roman Szmal). In a few brands, this varies between pans and dried tube paint (E.g., W&N uses different formulas.) Anyway, for personal travel reasons, I would like to develop a full understanding of this! But, while people write about rewettability in brand reviews, few people make direct comparisons.
Finally, some brands have a tendency to dry glossy when used at full strength. The honey-based paints are all capable of it, but DaVinci is also known for this characteristic, and I have personally had it happen with Daniel Smith. Qor is famous for NOT doing it. Again, some people seem to hate this characteristic, and use it to guide their paint-buying choices.
Thanks to Hanna for guiding us through this comparison of brand qualities! What are your favorite brands and what brandwide characteristics do you love/hate?