 Hey guys, so We've been doing some watercolor comparison kind of shopping things I've been trying different brands and sharing them with all of you And I've been generally speaking getting sets of things like the Van Gogh one here And the Koi one that I have in my travel bag I have the Sennelier one here and I've been As I get them Swatching them course making color keys. It's usually the first thing I do when I get a kit and I like being able to compare them to some of the others No, I like the Sennelier paints for instance This is a Sennelier half-pan set of cake water colors and I like their colors and everything And I like the set. I like the choice of colors in this set. This is a 18-pan 14-pan set For me, I know I can't really get a selection less than that Because I'm not happy unless there's a larger variety of colors and that I have some darks and some lights for me This is an L.E.A. set. I Love this particular blue color and the Viridian is just fabulous The lemon yellow the yellows like in here. We have lemon yellow here. We have cadmium yellow light These are nice and bright I Prefer this brighter kind of pure or lemony yellow with a cad yellow and the Sennelier sets more like the azo yellow, which is a little Less true to me, but I love the alizarin crimson and the rose matter and It's a good set. I love both of these equally. I wouldn't put one of these over the other necessarily But the van Gogh has more colors in it So for that reason I would choose it you all know I love the Koi and for the price Neither the van Gogh set or the Sennelier or what you would call cheap although I did get a bargain on the price on both of them I had a coupon for one and the other one was in old packaging. So it was discounted The Koi set is still by far the most cost affordable They have it at Hobby Lobby. It's about thirty five thirty six dollars for the set and you can use a coupon Every week Hobby Lobby has a 40% off coupon where I bought these they don't do coupon. So Not all the time anyway. So I do like these and if you want something that's above a Koi I would definitely recommend one of these I did get some new paints to try when Claudia was here visiting and we went and she and Serena And I went on our shopping day to San Francisco and we went to Dick Blick Which I've been to before and I like to go to but they have more things on their website than they do in the store So if you're expecting the same selection is on the website, you won't get it They do have a lot don't get me wrong And if you want to see 99.9% of the products that Golden makes go to Dick Blick because they have one whole aisle It's just golden products. It's fabulous But I did buy some things while I was there and I did buy some things the night before when we went to Hobby Lobby So any of you who are paper crafters and you've heard about the gonzi Tom Tomy Watercolor kit from Japan it comes in a green cardboard box and I will try to include a picture of it right here because okay, so it comes in that green paper cardboard box and I Did get one and I love the paint hated the box now I did get a few tubes of Quar to try and I've added them to One of my metal kits, yeah this one so I have one of these metal This is a Schminck and a Schminck palette, but I bought it empty And it's a Schminck palette that has a selection of paints in it and actually has a couple of empty spots including Quar so this is a Set of paints and colors. I love I love these these kit these cold 48 half pans And 24 full pans these are full pans these littler ones are half pans now in this one I have some senelier tube paints at the bottom and This is a Schminck sample of a Schminck paint that they sent me in a full pan And then these are a variety of other brands including Quar and I like the Quar paints like they have the cobalt teal Which they also do in? Acrylic because Quar is made by Golden in case you didn't know So I put the tubes that came in this tin box I put them in here I squeeze them out to my little pans and then I put the tubes away in my back stock paint grower They came shipped in this metal box, and I always thought what the heck am I gonna do with the box? I didn't really throw it away cuz I thought you know there must be something that's gonna come up eventually And I know I talked in another video about how it seemed like it would be the perfect like watercolor paint palette box And because it's metal that you could probably put a sheet of magnets in the bottom and use like bottle caps or something to Arrange a paint palette and the lid has dimples in it Which is great for mixing because it's already got these dimpled holes When I got the Gonsai tombi watercolors, and I decide I looked at it And I thought it comes in these pans. They're bigger than half palette. I mean in full palette They're bigger than full pan, and I should have an empty full pan so I can show you Empty ones So this is a normal size full pan and The Gonsai are bigger So that okay, so I can't take these out and put them into one of those empty metal Palettes, and then I thought you know I wonder if they fit in that core box. I have out in the garage Sure enough not only did they fit But I have space for a water brush right here So that's convenient way to use them to make some sort of a portable water color palette isn't it and of course I right away did a color key because I always do and I love the colors and I think they're very comparable to my other favorite sets Which would be the van Gogh And so let's see let me get out the Koi one And everybody who came to my house this week to play with Claudia and I got to play with all the watercolors So here's the Koi color key and here's the Sennelier color key Now most of the time on the back of these color keys I write on the back what see that one doesn't have it look This one does so I try to write on the back what said it goes to so in case I have them out like this And I get them mixed up. I know which is which So there's that one And then I have This is just Daniel Smith. This is my mixed one I'm running out of camera space yet And this is making of these now the Daniel Smith one is in my big round palette I do have a smaller metal palette that I've made with the same paint colors that I can take a round with me I do love my Daniel Smith paints. They have colors like a moon glow that nobody else has This is the schmink so I Can see where some of these have really great bright fabulous colors in them and others Are okay, some of them are more Have more granular pigments or ground granular less smooth ways that the paint dries on the paper Like if you look at the schmink compared to some of the colors on the Daniel Smith It just looks like they dry without like almost looks like in some of the colors. There's little bits of grain or sand In the paint when it dries and that you don't see that here. I don't mind that I like those different things that happen in the paint I think if you're just starting out with watercolor that the gonzi is a really great buy and so is the koi both of these are at Hobby Lobby their The gonzi is $40 The koi is About 36. I think Use a coupon you can use a coupon on them My only gripe with the gonzi is not the colors are fabulous And it has a few colors in it like the pale aqua that you don't kind of really see and I mean look at all the Palettes I have and you don't really see that color anywhere I do really like their colors and especially I think for a beginner or A paper craft or maybe somebody who's doing cards either one of these would be great My only gripe with a gonzi is it came in that dumb paper box. I don't like the paper box and the koi Comes in a great box because when I watercolor I Open up my kit and I spray it with water to get that paint going in to get it start to get it juicy And when you if you're doing that and your paints are in a paper box That's not going to work too well that box is going to get soggy and ruin pretty fat dang quickly So that would be my only gripe. I love the paints. I will be using them, but Yeah, that box had got to go so if you have if you have them or you get them this is the selection of 24 colors and I think they had 24 and 12 and if you get them and you have a metal box Think or some kind of a metal or plastic tin That they will fit in I would recommend transferring them this is about It's like eight and a half plus a sixteenth. I don't know what that is and About six and three quarters Just a little bit less than three quarters of an inch deep So that gives you some kind of an idea of how big it is And if you have these paints then you can look for something like this to put them into now I just put them in with e6000 and glued them down You could put little magnets on the back of them and put a sheet of and then met You know stick them down to them because this is metal So you could put little magnets on the back of them and stick them in and then you could move them around if you Wanted I didn't want it to move around and pop out Don't forget when you get a new set of watercolors The first thing you should do is make a color key because the way the colors look in the pan is Very different than how they look when they're painted on paper and you can really tell that with the gonzi because Here's the cobalt blue in the pan and here's the cobalt blue on the paper Very very different. So make sure you right away do a color key Put it in the tin and then you're good to go I do recommend and as you can see I need to catch up with some of my color keys because I haven't done them All but I recommend that you laminate them or put them in some kind of a plastic sleeve I have a video on my channel for that that you can look up It should be a watercolor Wednesday video and I recommend that because you're gonna be here working with the paint and water and You want to protect the color key that you made and not ruin it or contaminate the colors so you have a true idea of what the colors are gonna look like and You know bonus if you get paint splatters on it like is on the Van Gogh one You can just take a baby wipe and wipe them off These I also got and I they're still in the tubes. I haven't opened them yet, but I did play with them a little bit and put them on this card These are may marry blue watercolors Where they made made in Italy and I've heard about them and I wanted to get a few colors to try actually You know I like sets So I wanted to get set they don't carry the sets in the store They do have them on the website, but you know I was there I didn't want to wait so I picked up a few colors and I gotta say that I like them They're really bright and I think they're very comparable to the koi colors I love this one. This one is a was it turquoise green Yes, it's called turquoise green and Is it that the most yummy turquoise color you've seen in a while? This one is called Dragon's blood. I love that color and I wasn't you know You're never sure you can't judge it by the label on the outside because that label is never the same colors The paint in the tube So I just kind of thought well dragons blood sounds interesting. I'll get that one Which one is it though? Here it is dragons blood. So that's what it looks like in the tube. It gives you an idea. What it's like It's pretty you know It's a good impression of the color. It's not an exact color But it's certainly an interesting color. So I'm going to be putting these into a palette at some point And we'll be playing with these on a watercolor Wednesday And I like them now the Compared to other art and these are artist quality paints compared to some of the artist quality paints These are a lot more affordable. These were Between seven and like eleven dollars a tube. I have series one and series. I Think there's one series three paint here One of them was eleven dollars the rest of them were seven So they're not super expensive Compared to some others that are fifteen to twenty dollars a tube, and I really like the bright colors I Thought they were really easy to use they blended out nicely and yeah, I really was pleased with them So we will definitely be playing with them. I Have to say of the smaller sets. I still think the koi is my favorite or the van go They were inexpensive the koi especially was inexpensive and it had a great color selection So if you're gonna all I know a lot of you are asking me you want to try watercolor What should I get if you can afford it and you have a coupon go to Hobby Lobby and it's going to be you know 35 35 or 36 dollars, you know use a 40% off whatever that is you have to figure out the math Start with this one because it's really nice it has enough darks and enough lights and a white And a purple I use a lot of purple when I paint or I like to anyway And I'm constantly mixing purple and that drives me up the wall So I like sets that have purple in it you can tell because when I bought the mammary look I bought three purples I Should have actually bought another red and I didn't I bought three purples. I don't know what I was thinking Anyway, so you have to figure out also what you like and what you don't and you know start to customize what you have To suit your style accordingly, but you know, I hope this all gives you some idea of what's out there and How expensive they are or aren't The guns I said I know was 40 the Koi set was about 36 this Sonelier set. I want to say it was $60 for this little set And I think this one was about the same price this one should have been more But this Van Gogh one is the one that came with The wrong old packaging and I think if I had a choice again between these two I'd buy this one Instead of this one. That's just my opinion For whatever it's worth All right, you guys all go out and have a great day do some painting think about buying yourself some watercolors and Have a nice day do something nice for yourself because you deserve it. I'll see you later