 Hi guys, welcome back to The Average. Today I am testing out a really interesting little product that I found on eBay that I bought myself. It is basically a little watercolor set from the 1940s and I saw this and I thought like I have to try this out. I've seen some people try out like old items before and I thought that was really interesting so I wanted to see if I could create something with this beautiful little set. Now on the cover it has this old vintage watercolor image and I think that's really cute. I think they're just playing but yeah they're just kids playing about and it says number 82 the American Crayon Company made in US so this is a US based company. I don't really want to turn it so much but it just looks like that on the back it's just kind of plain so it's nothing. It has a bit of wear and tear but it's kind of in good knit considering it's nearly 80 years old. Okay so we open it up and it does come with this bubble wrap I think whoever owned it before put that in there and we have all the colors here and it obviously is a little worse for wear but what do you expect from an 80 year old watercolor set? They look very nice to be honest so let's just dive into using them shall we? So I just realized these kind of have all normal names except this one that says flesh. It's a little bit weird. I think I did mix some of these colors up because they did fall out and I put them back so I don't think that green is Dutch brown but I can't for the life of me see where that would come from anyway because there's like tan dark tan gray so I'm like what there's no other brown though so I don't know if we're missing a brown and somebody put a green in or anyway I don't think that's the case so let's just jump into chesting these out I guess. I'm really excited. I've never tried some old art supplies before and I really like to think of somebody using these in the 1940s or what I can see as well is that this is kind of a cardboard material which seems a little bit detrimental to have around with water. I'm not expecting the best results obviously this is a fun little video and we're just testing these out so it's just fun to imagine somebody using these in the olden days and yeah so far they seem pretty nice though considering they're 80 years old let's get into doing something with them. Okay so first of all what I did was layer down some masking fluid that comes in this little pen and I wanted to create just a little illustration of fish in the water because I feel like that's something that I've done a lot in the past with watercolors and so I used the masking fluid pen to create lines of reflection of the water just so I could mess about with that afterwards and experiment with the paints and see how they would work with that and yeah I layered that down and beforehand I did a little bit of a quick sketch in my sketchbook of what I wanted to do but I didn't go into this with any really comprehensive idea of what I wanted to do I just wanted to see how the watercolor would work and they worked really nicely actually considering that they're 80 years old I was really surprised that they held up so well. Windsor and Euston paints I would say are a very good comparison even like student grade ones work probably pretty much the same as these they were a little less pigmented I guess but then in some areas they were really pigmented it's like it depended on which one I would use I'd say the yellow was a bit weak I mean sometimes yellow is kind of hard to get right in a watercolor palette I was just messing around with doing a water scene with fish and some koi fish and lily pads so it's kind of a very generic image but it helped me create some depth and layers in the image and to play with the use of light and color in different areas of deep water and I think that was a good experiment to help me understand how these paints work and how decent they were like I was saying before I just really like the idea of somebody like maybe a little kid using this palette but in of a palette of this brand and just having fun with it and playing with it and it's just it's really unique thing to to use and get into the head of somebody from that time because obviously it was such a hard time with World War two going on in the early 1940s and yeah it's just it's great to think about it and it's so weird with the propaganda of like these kids playing but on like a battlefield it's very odd you wouldn't have that now I guess it's just strange to think like that was a thing kids played I don't know but it was like seen as a cool thing I guess because they have these kids in tanks and stuff on the cover and yeah it's interesting it's saying like a cultural difference between now and then and apart from that I think the watercolors are really nice they're just little blocks of watercolor though are a little bit smashed in some areas like some of them are missing chunks from the corner but overall they work really nicely I've kind of moved away from using watercolor because I think I really prefer gouache now which is strange because there was a time when I wouldn't know how to use gouache but I think I prefer it because of how opaque gouache can be I think there's a certain style and unique color and texture that comes with watercolor but once you layer down a color that's it that's there's no going back so you have to work from lights to darks and you can't then go in with a light color that just won't work so it's like a totally different process when you're trying to think visually of how to layer down color and shape so I had to get back in the mindset of doing it that way instead of just layering down whatever colors I wanted because when I use gouache I can make a lot of mistakes and then turn them into whatever else I wanted to create so I think that was a little bit of a detrimental issue for me trying to do this process again because I think definitely I am kind of over watercolors I'd never thought I would say that because I used to really like watercolors and since finding gouache and the opaqueness of them is just really nice for me and I think that I have found the medium that I'm going to stick to for a long long time like I said I'm doing that horror comic and I want to do it all in a painterly style and I did consider using watercolors for it and then I realized no I actually do really prefer gouache so it doesn't make sense for me to take a step back I feel like I'm moving forward with my art progress I guess and gouache is the way forward for me obviously I love watercolors I love people who use watercolors I think they can be really beautiful when done well but I think just for me for now I'm into gouache I think I said that like five different ways but yeah you get the idea so if anybody knows of eight-year-old gouache I think I'll give that a whirl as well yeah I'm not sure what else to say on this subject I think it was really interesting to find this unique piece on ebay and buy it and get it delivered I couldn't see any more of similar kind I think this person who was selling it just had one set and they also it seems run a antique store so maybe they just came across it and then they sell it sold it on ebay which is really interesting it came from Canada so I would love to know the history behind this little piece and where it's been before I found it it probably just sat in someone's room for years and years and years until it passed hands and it became an antique and I suppose in a way it's kind of sad because it's sat there untouched and nobody's made any art with it but then maybe that's what's great about it is that is this unique piece of history and now I'm going to use it up and it feels like a bit of a shame but also like quite fun to be able to do that I mean one day there'll be a time when we won't be able to have this old art equipment because it will all be used and or thrown away so I really like that people have taken care of things over the years and I get to experience using something that was made in the 1940s and it's really interesting to me I don't know if you guys find that interesting just like the history behind a certain object and how did it get here like we're so we're such a throwaway culture now where in the 1940s everything was so precious because of world war two everybody kept everything and I mean I remember my grandma if she had a birthday she'd get wrapping paper and she would like iron the wrapping paper out so it could be used again and little things like that which we all kind of laughed at when I was little we were like oh here she goes again with that kind of wartime attitude but now it makes sense because we're all we're all big into using less waste because obviously our world is dying and wow this video got depressing but it makes sense to reuse stuff and be careful with things and not be such a culture to just buy buy buy and throw away and I know like obviously I buy a lot of art supplies but it is I would say one of my jobs because I do consider youtuber job and I do use everything and take care of everything that I buy and put aside and I know I will use them in the future so I think yeah just generally I'm going to take away is just be careful with what you buy and take care of things and just I hope that I can learn from the past as well and just use things with care and we'll just chuck them out and I think that's why this is so interesting to me because I did a big clear out of my house and we were moving art stuff around and I just wanted to throw out like a lot of stuff because I just thought we had too much junk but then I was just thinking like but if somebody else could use this and now I've gotten into the habit of trying to give away stuff that I think is not just rubbish and reusing things and yeah I think I'm going on a little bit harping on a bit about this I'll get down from my soapbox here but I think it is important to bear that in mind so overall these paints worked out really nice they're just like yeah like I said I would compare them to a Winsor Newton paint palette set and I think that it's really nice that they have such good quality that they lasted 80 years. I don't think most of us well I'm pretty sure nobody listening is over 80 years old so none of us were born or even on the planet and that is a thought for you to take away with you. Okay guys that's the final piece I just wanted to do something a little bit fun and away from the horror graphic novel uh comic so I just drew some fish and the reflection and I really enjoyed these paints they were actually really nice which surprised me I thought they would be really chalky or not work as well because you know they're 80 years old but they're surprisingly still really good I guess the ingredients that they used back in the day just had great longevity and I don't know I don't know a reason why um I mean I can't test out paints from today in 80 years so I don't know if these are made better I just think they're made well so they've lasted all this time to be able to be used now by me. That's the video I hope you enjoyed it I hope you liked seeing timepiece from history and maybe if you guys recognize this brand or seen it before if you're American maybe I don't know maybe you guys know this brand quite well but I've never heard of them but yeah that's the final piece and probably we'll be using these paints again because they work really well so that's it that's the video thanks for watching guys please like and subscribe and I will see you next week bye