Cheap art supplies
Oct. 4th, 2018 06:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellerI’ve decided to write this since it seems like a lot of fellow watercolorists who struggle with what kinds of paint to buy, or even are scared to start with watercolor because “the paints are so expensive”. So the topic of this post is cheap watercolor paints and how they hold up when compared to professional grade paints.
To demonstrate what the cheap alternatives can or can not do, I’ll show a set of ATCs I made a while ago for a swap called the “Cheap Art Supply Challenge”, in which the participants had to do their best with really cheap stuff. Being mainly a watercolorist, I used a 24-set of school watercolors for kids, you know, these big round watercolor cakes, which I received as a gift (thank you, Nelia, for throwing them out, haha!), and a 12-set of very cheap watercolor tubes (Stylex brand; sold at EuroShops and the like).
They suck.
I mean, there are reasons why I spend a shitload of money on art supplies. However, it’s entirely possible to make do with the cheap alternatives, as long as you’re aware of their limitations.
This was almost entirely painted with those kids’ watercolor cakes. The most obvious difference is their opacity when compared to professional watercolors. Note that this is not necessarily a bad thing! If you just consider them a kind of gouache-y thingy, it’s entirely possible to work with that. It’s just that the paints seem to contain a kind of chalky filler, which mutes them a bit. This is a bit annoying for me because I happen to like extremely bright colors... Also, it was near impossible to mix colors (due to interference effects, mixtures came out very muddy) or obtain really dark black (the “black” was more of a dark grey due to all that chalk stuff in the paint).
The dark green in the image, however, is from the Stylex set – and while it contains less pigment than expensive paints, it seems to be a perfectly normal PG7 otherwise.
Of course, it’s possible to even use the chalkiness to your advantage – that iris painting would have been more difficult to do in normal watercolor! I mean, it’s not my usual style, but if you’re into this “foggy” effect... Well, why not.
This dog rose, however, really shows the limitations: despite my best efforts, I was not able to obtain a convincing pink. (And I love pink! I missed those quinacridones, which are unfortunately too expensive to be included in a set for schoolchildren! ;_;) The thing is that in cheap sets, all the reds and pinks are fugitive dyes. Many of the cheapo colors are perfectly fine (the aforementioned PG7 is one of my favorite pigments, it’s very lightfast and cheap enough to be included in any set – and, of course, all the earth tones are also safe to use; they’re just ground dirt anyway, impossible to ruin that!) but unfortunately, no-one has yet invented cheap (!) lightfast reds and magentas. So whatever this pink is, it’s not an artist pigment, and if the card’s new owner ever exposes the picture to sunlight, I’m sure it will fade even further.
This begonia (yes, I’m really obsessed with begonias, LOL) looks almost normal (except for the very muted red; as discussed). I was actually very happy with how the blues and greens from the Stylex set came out. I’m less happy with the opaque white, which had a bit of a gummy texture and didn’t want to form fine lines. But I think overall the painting looks okay.
I will however admit that doing this was a lot more difficult (and took way longer) than doing something similar with proper art material. This really went to my personal limits in terms of technique! And in the end, someone even accused me of cheating on the challenge because, as they said, it’s not possible to do this with kiddie grade paints. Well, I just decided to take that as a compliment, coming from a pro. XD However, it’s not impossible. It’s just more difficult. Ahem. A lot more difficult.
One of the main technical challenges is that due to sooo much binder in the paints, I had to use really thick layers – which then made adding more layers difficult because the colors below started dissolving again. So for my usual multi-layer technique, I had to work a lot faster than I usually do, and concentrate more.
Oh, and this magnolia is not only a horror in cheap pink but also demonstrates why buying watercolor paper in a EuroShop is generally not the smartest idea unless you have to do it for a challenge. I might actually have liked the painting without those crinkles in the paper... LOL
However, that cyan PB15:3 was completely indistinguishable from professional grade paint, both in intensity and in behavior. Actually – that one single tube of paint was already worth the whole set of these Stylex paints!
So, under which circumstances do I consider those cheapo paints acceptable?
First of all, let me emphasize one thing: using these paints (or indeed any paints without a lightfast rating, or even “professional” paints using fugitive pigments!) is in no way acceptable if you’re intending to sell or otherwise give away the original painting! (This also applies to hobbyists giving paintings as Christmas or birthday gifts.) If the original goes to someone else, you will have to assume they’ll do the normal thing and put the picture on their wall. And all of those very cheap reds and pinks (and also most cheap yellows, oranges and purples) will visibly fade very, very fast – sometimes it only takes a few months! So, acid-free paper and professional paints with good lightfastness rating are a must, in my opinion. It might be perfectly legal to sell a painting that you know will be ruined in less than a year, but it’s certainly not good practice. (At the very least, it’s rude. Also, if you’re selling, you won’t have any repeat clients. Please only do this to those relatives of yours that you really, really hate.)
At this point, I have to include a little warning: even some pigments sold as “professional” paints might be fugitive! The most obvious example being Alizarin Crimson, which is even recommended (!) in shockingly many beginners’ guides (probably because it’s “traditional”, so it just has to be good) although in my experience it starts fading rapidly after only two months or so. No, the fact that famous artists throughout history had to make do with that crap simply because organic chemistry was not quite as advanced as today is not an excuse. Really. And there’s a reason why historical watercolor paintings have to be kept in museums under special glass and special light without much UV! (Also, no, unfortunately you won’t be able to paint like these artists simply because you buy the same pigments.)
Cheap paints are, however, perfectly okay if:
- you’re sure the paintings will not be exposed to sunlight. In your watercolor sketchbook, which will be stored closed on your bookshelf, the lightfastness of your pigments is simply not an issue. Also, with ATCs, you can kind of assume they will be kept in a closed folder, although there, I usually err on the side of caution because some people actually put ATCs in miniature picture frames.
- you only need the digital version of your painting. If you just want to present the picture online (on your website or in social networks) or you’re making something for print (like posters, book covers, postcards, bookmarks, ...) the original can fade as much as it wants as long as you’ve obtained a good scan first. (This is also why Copic markers are so popular with illustrators and manga artists: nice, bright colors as long as you don’t start thinking about their permanence.)
- you’re only interested in the process of painting, not in the finished result. No point in wasting expensive stuff if you’ll throw the painting away in the end.
- you’re just making fast sketches. If you’re just trying to quickly capture the mood of a scene, and you’re not using any special layering techniques or whatever, I’ve found the quality of the paint doesn’t matter so much.
- you’re enough of an expert to identify single pigments even if the info is not printed on the paint tubes. As mentioned above, some (!) very lightfast pigments (including most blacks, actually I haven’t seen a non-lightfast black yet, most browns, and the quite lovely phthalo pigments PG7 and PB15:3) are cheap enough in their production they might be found even in extremely cheap sets. If you trust yourself to identify these pigments, it might actually be worth it to buy a cheapo set, identify the four or five “safe” colors and get rid of the rest (like, for sketches) rather than buy these four or five colors from an expensive brand. It’s impossible to ruin something like PBr7, right? (I mean, that set of 12 Stylex paints cost me 2,50 €, which is less than one single paint tube of an expensive brand. It ended up having three perfectly good colors – the black, ochre and cyan, and two semi-useable – the unfortunately a bit weakly pigmented dark green and a slimy but otherwise okay Burnt Umber. Never mind the rest; it was still worth it.)
That being said... I still prefer professional grade paints, simply because they’re easier to work with. I just wanted to show that when buying expensive stuff is not an option, it’s still possible to have fun with watercolors. :)
To demonstrate what the cheap alternatives can or can not do, I’ll show a set of ATCs I made a while ago for a swap called the “Cheap Art Supply Challenge”, in which the participants had to do their best with really cheap stuff. Being mainly a watercolorist, I used a 24-set of school watercolors for kids, you know, these big round watercolor cakes, which I received as a gift (thank you, Nelia, for throwing them out, haha!), and a 12-set of very cheap watercolor tubes (Stylex brand; sold at EuroShops and the like).
They suck.
I mean, there are reasons why I spend a shitload of money on art supplies. However, it’s entirely possible to make do with the cheap alternatives, as long as you’re aware of their limitations.
This was almost entirely painted with those kids’ watercolor cakes. The most obvious difference is their opacity when compared to professional watercolors. Note that this is not necessarily a bad thing! If you just consider them a kind of gouache-y thingy, it’s entirely possible to work with that. It’s just that the paints seem to contain a kind of chalky filler, which mutes them a bit. This is a bit annoying for me because I happen to like extremely bright colors... Also, it was near impossible to mix colors (due to interference effects, mixtures came out very muddy) or obtain really dark black (the “black” was more of a dark grey due to all that chalk stuff in the paint).
The dark green in the image, however, is from the Stylex set – and while it contains less pigment than expensive paints, it seems to be a perfectly normal PG7 otherwise.
Of course, it’s possible to even use the chalkiness to your advantage – that iris painting would have been more difficult to do in normal watercolor! I mean, it’s not my usual style, but if you’re into this “foggy” effect... Well, why not.
This dog rose, however, really shows the limitations: despite my best efforts, I was not able to obtain a convincing pink. (And I love pink! I missed those quinacridones, which are unfortunately too expensive to be included in a set for schoolchildren! ;_;) The thing is that in cheap sets, all the reds and pinks are fugitive dyes. Many of the cheapo colors are perfectly fine (the aforementioned PG7 is one of my favorite pigments, it’s very lightfast and cheap enough to be included in any set – and, of course, all the earth tones are also safe to use; they’re just ground dirt anyway, impossible to ruin that!) but unfortunately, no-one has yet invented cheap (!) lightfast reds and magentas. So whatever this pink is, it’s not an artist pigment, and if the card’s new owner ever exposes the picture to sunlight, I’m sure it will fade even further.
This begonia (yes, I’m really obsessed with begonias, LOL) looks almost normal (except for the very muted red; as discussed). I was actually very happy with how the blues and greens from the Stylex set came out. I’m less happy with the opaque white, which had a bit of a gummy texture and didn’t want to form fine lines. But I think overall the painting looks okay.
I will however admit that doing this was a lot more difficult (and took way longer) than doing something similar with proper art material. This really went to my personal limits in terms of technique! And in the end, someone even accused me of cheating on the challenge because, as they said, it’s not possible to do this with kiddie grade paints. Well, I just decided to take that as a compliment, coming from a pro. XD However, it’s not impossible. It’s just more difficult. Ahem. A lot more difficult.
One of the main technical challenges is that due to sooo much binder in the paints, I had to use really thick layers – which then made adding more layers difficult because the colors below started dissolving again. So for my usual multi-layer technique, I had to work a lot faster than I usually do, and concentrate more.
Oh, and this magnolia is not only a horror in cheap pink but also demonstrates why buying watercolor paper in a EuroShop is generally not the smartest idea unless you have to do it for a challenge. I might actually have liked the painting without those crinkles in the paper... LOL
However, that cyan PB15:3 was completely indistinguishable from professional grade paint, both in intensity and in behavior. Actually – that one single tube of paint was already worth the whole set of these Stylex paints!
So, under which circumstances do I consider those cheapo paints acceptable?
First of all, let me emphasize one thing: using these paints (or indeed any paints without a lightfast rating, or even “professional” paints using fugitive pigments!) is in no way acceptable if you’re intending to sell or otherwise give away the original painting! (This also applies to hobbyists giving paintings as Christmas or birthday gifts.) If the original goes to someone else, you will have to assume they’ll do the normal thing and put the picture on their wall. And all of those very cheap reds and pinks (and also most cheap yellows, oranges and purples) will visibly fade very, very fast – sometimes it only takes a few months! So, acid-free paper and professional paints with good lightfastness rating are a must, in my opinion. It might be perfectly legal to sell a painting that you know will be ruined in less than a year, but it’s certainly not good practice. (At the very least, it’s rude. Also, if you’re selling, you won’t have any repeat clients. Please only do this to those relatives of yours that you really, really hate.)
At this point, I have to include a little warning: even some pigments sold as “professional” paints might be fugitive! The most obvious example being Alizarin Crimson, which is even recommended (!) in shockingly many beginners’ guides (probably because it’s “traditional”, so it just has to be good) although in my experience it starts fading rapidly after only two months or so. No, the fact that famous artists throughout history had to make do with that crap simply because organic chemistry was not quite as advanced as today is not an excuse. Really. And there’s a reason why historical watercolor paintings have to be kept in museums under special glass and special light without much UV! (Also, no, unfortunately you won’t be able to paint like these artists simply because you buy the same pigments.)
Cheap paints are, however, perfectly okay if:
- you’re sure the paintings will not be exposed to sunlight. In your watercolor sketchbook, which will be stored closed on your bookshelf, the lightfastness of your pigments is simply not an issue. Also, with ATCs, you can kind of assume they will be kept in a closed folder, although there, I usually err on the side of caution because some people actually put ATCs in miniature picture frames.
- you only need the digital version of your painting. If you just want to present the picture online (on your website or in social networks) or you’re making something for print (like posters, book covers, postcards, bookmarks, ...) the original can fade as much as it wants as long as you’ve obtained a good scan first. (This is also why Copic markers are so popular with illustrators and manga artists: nice, bright colors as long as you don’t start thinking about their permanence.)
- you’re only interested in the process of painting, not in the finished result. No point in wasting expensive stuff if you’ll throw the painting away in the end.
- you’re just making fast sketches. If you’re just trying to quickly capture the mood of a scene, and you’re not using any special layering techniques or whatever, I’ve found the quality of the paint doesn’t matter so much.
- you’re enough of an expert to identify single pigments even if the info is not printed on the paint tubes. As mentioned above, some (!) very lightfast pigments (including most blacks, actually I haven’t seen a non-lightfast black yet, most browns, and the quite lovely phthalo pigments PG7 and PB15:3) are cheap enough in their production they might be found even in extremely cheap sets. If you trust yourself to identify these pigments, it might actually be worth it to buy a cheapo set, identify the four or five “safe” colors and get rid of the rest (like, for sketches) rather than buy these four or five colors from an expensive brand. It’s impossible to ruin something like PBr7, right? (I mean, that set of 12 Stylex paints cost me 2,50 €, which is less than one single paint tube of an expensive brand. It ended up having three perfectly good colors – the black, ochre and cyan, and two semi-useable – the unfortunately a bit weakly pigmented dark green and a slimy but otherwise okay Burnt Umber. Never mind the rest; it was still worth it.)
That being said... I still prefer professional grade paints, simply because they’re easier to work with. I just wanted to show that when buying expensive stuff is not an option, it’s still possible to have fun with watercolors. :)
no subject
Date: 2018-10-04 05:24 pm (UTC)I feel a little absurd running around with Daniel Smith paints (well, that and Schmincke Ultramarine Finest for my PB29) at my skill level but everything I read said to invest in professional paints as soon as possible exactly because of the problems with student paints. I obsessively check handprint's guide to watercolor pigments for lightfastness info because I am too disorganized to do tests for myself...
One of the reasons I got out of Copics was I learned that they are so, so fugitive. Scary fugitive. :] Even if I mostly scan stuff anyway...
no subject
Date: 2018-10-04 05:35 pm (UTC)Daniel Smith is good stuff. :) I mainly use Schmincke, because it's the most easily available brand around here, but I've found that all the professional brands produce perfectly fine quality. So I use a mix of brands. Of course I have my personal favorites (like, I want this yellow from this brand but that blue from that) but that's just me being extremely picky.
By the way, I like Copics just fine. I just don't use them much because I'm not very good at working fast, so everything I tried to color with them became blotchy. But of course using them is perfectly justified unless you want to put the finished pictures on your wall.
P.S.
Date: 2018-10-04 05:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-04 07:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-04 08:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-04 09:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-04 11:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-06 06:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-10 12:44 am (UTC)