{"id":1438,"date":"2016-07-05T15:15:38","date_gmt":"2016-07-05T07:15:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bauzon.ph\/cynthia\/?p=1438"},"modified":"2016-07-05T15:30:39","modified_gmt":"2016-07-05T07:30:39","slug":"how-to-choose-colors-for-a-minimalist-watercolor-palette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bauzon.ph\/cynthia\/how-to-choose-colors-for-a-minimalist-watercolor-palette\/","title":{"rendered":"What Colors to Choose for a Minimalist Watercolor Palette + White Nights Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since White Nights (a.k.a. St. Petersburg) Watercolors<\/a> from Russia became available here in Manila\u00a0via Deovir,\u00a0I’ve read a lot of reviews online\u00a0and have even heard from art-friends that they are easy to re-wet and are highly pigmented. So, being low on EQ I decided to get a few pans for myself. You might already know that I’m not a fan of buying sets (though I have some but they’re\u00a0either\u00a0gifts and\/or were purchased when I hadn’t the slightest clue about pigments and lightfastness) so I made sure to do my research before buying the\u00a0paints. My self-imposed rules:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. I must be able to use the colors and their combinations in what I love to draw the most — faces, food, and felines (okay, animals in general :))<\/li>\n
  2. The colors must consist of single pigments<\/strong> — this is to ensure lightfastness and also reduce the incidence of mud when layering.<\/li>\n
  3. They have to fit into my handy DIY mint tin palette, meaning\u00a0a maximum of 9 pans was in order.<\/li>\n
  4. I can’t spend over P1,000.00 because do I really need another set of paints? Umm, no<\/em> \u00a0(see previous post<\/a>), but then need is sometimes < want. Fortunately White Nights, like ShinHan, isn’t as expensive as the other brands so I was able to stay below my limit.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \"White<\/a><\/p>\n

    So taking all that into account, here are the colors I ended up with along with their pigment info & light fastness ratings:
    \n— 2 reds (1 cool, 1 warm): Madder Lake Red Light (PR 187 \/ LF ***) and Cadmium Red Light (PR 108 \/ LF ***)
    \n— 1 warm yellow: Cadmium Yellow\u00a0Medium (PY 35 \/ LF ***)
    \n— 1 green: Emerald Green (PG7 \/ LF ***)
    \n— 2 earth hues: Raw Sienna (PBr 7 \/ LF ***) and Burnt Sienna (PBr 7 \/ LF ***)
    \n— 2 blues (1 warm, 1 cool): Ultramarine (PB29 \/ LF ***) and Prussian Blue (PB27 \/ LF ***)
    \n— 1 neutral: Payne’s Grey (PBk7, PB15, PV3 \/ LF **)
    \n[    source<\/a>]<\/p>\n

    The last one, Payne’s Grey is not a single-pigment color (it’s made up of\u00a03\u00a0pigments) and is something I could’ve gone without<\/em> since I can mix greys using some of the colors so it’s really just a handy “convenience\u00a0hue” for days when I\u00a0can’t be bothered to do\u00a0extra mixing. \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

    Just to show you the range of colors that are possible using just these 9 pans, here are a couple of watercolor charts I made:<\/p>\n

    \"White<\/a><\/p>\n

    This one (above) shows the range of color combinations and\u00a0tonal ranges\u00a0that can be achieved from mixing the\u00a0brights with the darks. And just because I always paint portraits and people, I made a separate color chart mainly for the reds and yellows (below). I just added the column for green since there was extra space.<\/p>\n

    \"white<\/a><\/p>\n

    Here’s something I painted\u00a0using just the colors in the palette (you can view the work-in-progress video<\/a> on my Instagram<\/a>). I used them on Khadi Paper purchased a while back from ArtWhale<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    \"white<\/a><\/p>\n

    My capsule review for White Nights Watercolors<\/a>:
    \n1. Indeed they are easy to re-wet, pick up with the brush and are highly pigmented (some colors more than others though)
    \n2. They are also highly transparent — except for the Cadmiums which are opaque — so they are great for layering.
    \n3.\u00a0At only P87.00 per pan (except for the Cadmiums which are I think P120 \/ pan), they are quite affordable. My customized set amounted to around P849.00 and it consists of colors that I will actually use. (Sets usually have 3 or more pans that I always end up never using.) Also, these are FULL pans, not half pans, so you get a lot of paint for your hard-earned cash. \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n

    And here is something else I painted using White Nights, a simple maguro sushi for my Youtube Channel<\/a> (hah! If you’re one of my whopping 3 regular\u00a0viewers, thank you for not laughing at my attempts to make\u00a0these home\u00a0videos <3)<\/p>\n