 Well, hi there. My name is Sandy Allnock and I am an artist and paper crafter and I am sharing some research that I've been doing for Oh gosh six or eight months now I took up watercolors and realized that I was better at them than I thought I would be so a lot of people have been asking me What are the good paints? What are the good brushes? What are the good papers? This video is all about the papers in the paints. I'm gonna do some testing I'll show you a bunch of different kinds of watercolors. I haven't tested out everything there is And I'm limiting this test in particular to only pan or cake Sometimes they're called either one pan or cake type watercolors Not the tubes because that just adds a whole nother factor in it And I want to do some apples to apples testing and I'm not testing every brand there is Because I can't afford that but I'm gonna test some high and low ends and some in the middle So we can kind of get an idea of what makes a good paint so these are some of the paints that I bought for this test and The the two I just pointed to there are ones. I've gotten through paper crafting and the ones on the left I got through my art store And I want to test out some very expensive ones from the art store as well as the more moderately priced ones Then I got through paper crafting because this video is primarily for paper crafters But I wanted to at least show everybody what I've learned about this so far So let's set aside the really pricey ones for the moment And I'll show you the other watercolors that I'm in the process of testing and yes I started with Crayolas as the lowest end. Yeah, I'm a little weird that way But I wanted to see if it really makes a difference. I wanted to see if Crayolas can do really cool stuff So the brush is terrible that's in here, but the paints are not as bad as I thought they would be I I have some testing that I do with him in this video as well as a whole video at the end That I did with my little five-year-old buddy She taught me how to paint with her Crayolas and my Crayolas, so stay tuned for that But let's move on now the Koi watercolor sketch box This is a travel set and I took this with me to Europe and it was great I absolutely loved traveling with this little set had a water brush that went in here Which I don't know where it is right now, but it traveled really really well It was it fit into my bag really easily you can see I've used it a lot the pan watercolors Do you hit like that a little bit as you use them? And that's normal and it just closes up really well together and Bada boom bada being perfect Next is the Kuretake Gansai Tambies and these I recommend really highly for paper crafters They work really great. The colors are fabulous They work great on in general on the papers and they're reasonably priced for all the colors you get these little Little containers for each of the colors they come out So I've put a glue dot or actually a power tab on the back of each one So they stay in place and they don't fall out because I knock things over all the time So there's also a guide in the lid of this and I need to sit and color all my little Swatches in there, but you color swatches so you know what colors all of these are going to come out to be These Kuretake's come in 12 24 and 36 sets Okay, now these are little French watercolors and I was like ooh la la French watercolors are gonna be awesome And I was a little surprised this brush is like the miniest little brush. I think I've ever seen in my life I don't know if I was supposed to have a handle to go with it But it didn't come with a little handle and they paint okay But there's not a whole lot of choice in colors and stuff with them So they're gonna be gifted to a young person Now this is my favorite case out of all of them. Oh my gosh This Windsor Newton is the most genius little case I've ever seen if everything in my life came in a little perfect case like this I would just buy the heck out of all of it So this one has a lid the lid comes off and you put your water in that and then you open the sucker up and Inside you have everything you need to paint with you have a travel brush And that just turns around and pops right in there. It's a very good little brush love it and Then you have your water jar so you can take your water in it and pour that in the koi sketchbox Did not have a little water jar, so I had to carry my own little separate water jar So this is very cool It has a little sponge and Then it has your palettes that fold out and your little watercolors. They're wrapped up right now The yellow one is undone already So that we can test it out and see but I wanted you to see how they come They're a little pained to get them in and out and stuff and they do fall out until they get wet once they get wet Everything stays in place just fine, but they fit perfectly in the little cases and they're marvelous They're really nice and I just adore adore this set Did I say I really like this set a lot just because of the way it all goes together Maybe it's just something weird in me, but I love the packaging thing and in order to get the brush back in there I make sure I don't get any hairs. I just gave it a really quick light lick I know and maybe I'm not supposed to do that But I want to make sure I didn't wreck any of the bristles on the brush By jamming it in there and not having all the bristles go in appropriately. So look how cute that sucker is. Oh my gosh amazing Now this is the whole line watercolors. This we're talking real expensive package here Has a little place to squeeze there open it up and it's got two palettes The palettes can snap on but look inside this. It's got some really cool features in this set It's got a really great number eight brush. This is a very very nice brush Goodness gracious really awesome paints really well holds a lot of water really super And again, I like that sucker get that in there right because I don't want to mess this up Then the paints themselves the the bottom of it is metal and then each one of the paints it has a you know When you unwrap it Has the paint in it that doesn't fall out and then it has these little magnets and the magnets hold it in place So you can slide them around and keep them away from each other So you don't drip paint from one side into it from one paint into another or you can just get more colors in there So I think I might have to get more colors because I like this set quite a bit But you can snap the little Little palettes on to the edges either on the sides or on the ends whichever way suits you as you're doing your painting and It's intended to be a travel set again I got the travel sets because I didn't want to invest in a giant set of them for my studio and Really really liked it a Little bonus tip for you that doesn't have anything to do with paint or anything It's a I always keep a jar of super clean water on hand. I don't put any dirty brushes in that And then I have three waters on hand and I use this little container because I like to have one for warms one for cools and one for For neutrals or something so that I don't have to change my water as often and this little container, which is really great Nests all these little parts come together. So if you have space issues This is a great way to have more room in your studio or craft room And still be able to have a couple jars of water when you need them I'm going to be using this brush from the silver brush company. It's a three-quarter inch oval wash brush So let us begin the testing I'm going to test a bunch of different papers here in this video And there's more of them on my blog with still photos And all the links to the products as well as the descriptions of them and what kind of paper they are Etc etc all the information I could possibly cram into a blog post. It's a monstrous thing I am going to test them all in the same way I'm going to try as much as I can to make this apples to apples And I'm wetting the entire piece of paper first And I'm doing them on the pad. I'm not taping them down on the board or anything because I want to test for Also to see how many of them curl like mad if if anything does And doing this will allow me to kind of check accurately for that I'm going to use four different paints And I had to pick I couldn't use them all so I'm going to start here with the most expensive This is the Holbeins And they will always be in the upper right hand corner And on my blog I'm going to have them all labeled Couldn't label them all here in the video But you're going to be able to sit here and watch as I do this all of the paints and how they go onto the paper I'm doing this in real time so you can watch how they actually flow This is the Windsor Newton set with the really swanky little case which I adore Did I say? I think I said that I adore it. I'm pretty sure And then we have the uh, Kiritaki the Gansai Tambi I hope I'm saying that right Watercolors that I've loved for so long and I use on a lot of my cards That set is just a really convenient set. It's just it's always there. They've got really big pans I really like that and this one is the Crayolas Yeah, I know I testing the Crayolas next to the Holbeins is kind of an amazing thing I'm sure the Crayola paints are probably freaking out at Being used for a test like this these these paints have probably never seen such good paper So next I'm going to do a second color on each one of these as well. I'm going to use a blue Just because I want to see how they naturally mix and you can see these Holbeins. They just do this blooming thing Which is really amazing. It's very cool The other paints don't do that I even tried giving the opportunity to the Windsor Newtons to do that bloom and it didn't do it Now you may not want that bloom to happen. So it might not be a good thing, but I love it I think it's really cool and So there's different reasons to use different paints and I may find there are some techniques I'll only use certain paints for And switch to other paints when I want to use other things other techniques But this was an interesting thing and I'm going to actually keep all these sheets in the In the pads of paper so that I'll have them as a reference point anytime I need it Or I may even put a book together or something somehow so I can keep these sheets as references And know what they do with the different paints on them So I'm going to set that aside and let everything air dry naturally Next I'm going to use the Montval Paper from Kansan lots of these are Kansan papers And this one is on a block and a block is where there's like this Gum glue thing around the outside. I guess I'm not sure what it's made of But it holds the paper down. So you don't have to Do any taping down onto a board or anything And I'm not taping anything onto a board because I don't I want to see if things curl I want to see if anything like wrinkles like mad. So I'm just painting them straight on the paper or whatever However, it comes in the pad So this one will end up being very flat and actually I'll I'll give away the ending Because the only one that actually curled significantly was the Kansan XL. That's the first one they showed It's a student grade paper. It's really inexpensive and it's fine for paper crafters It's just going to curl more than the others It didn't curl in a way that was so bad that it was Unusable it just curled and the others basically didn't but on my blog post I'm going to have pictures Of all of the finished ones these finished paintings so you can see how they dried And you'll be able to also see the side profile So you can see how much each one crinkled some of them crinkled a little bit But not very much and then the the XL did a number A number of crinkles now that corner. I just love watching how the whole binds Started moving on the paper on almost all of these Had me the most fascinating Now this is arches arches is known as expensive paper But this pad is actually not all that bad given what it is and it's a rough paper Rough means it's cold pressed But it's like really rough it has a lot of texture in it and I decided to switch it out So I put the water on and then I started with the Windsor Newtons instead because I thought maybe I'm being unfair by letting the whole binds have first dibs on the water And there is a little more spreading of all of these on the rough paper because that's what the rough paper Does it kind of makes the watercolor move more? But it doesn't seem to have made a difference between the Windsor Newton and the whole bind as far as which one Is is doing more of that. So I'm not sure that the order actually Hurt the the test by making it unfair that we always had the whole bind going first So there is another one down And here is the Muland Roy. There's a series of them and in this whole test There's a couple of the different ones. This one is the hot press one Hot press paper is smooth and that means it's going to stamp really well and Stamping really well is something that's important to us The other papers are textured and this one has very little texture to it But the watercolor still does seem to move on it even though it doesn't have that rough cold press texture So it's one of those things that I found interesting too because I wasn't really thinking of this paper as something I would ever do backgrounds on But after this test I might consider that after all So I'm going to start putting my second color in them and let them Do their whole blendy blendy thing such as they do And we're getting some interesting, you know, really watercolor pooling going on around the edges Which can make for some really interesting techniques As we get going I'm going to be testing out lots more of these papers In the future and doing more tests here on youtube So feel free to subscribe to get more of that nonsense from me Now here is the fluid 100. This is another cold press paper Again, it's a block. It comes in 9 by 12 Different ones of these come in 12 sheets 15 sheets 20 sheets And you want to be careful when you're looking at prices to make sure you see how many sheets each one comes with Because the per sheet price changes based on that I'm not going to be putting any prices on my blog or on this video to let you know exactly which one They generally go in order from less expensive to more expensive But prices can fluctuate and I don't want to put something that won't be timely For somebody watching this in years to come As we near the end of this video, I want to invite you to my blog There are four more papers that are tested on my blog that are not here And there's sort of write-ups on all the papers and paints and everything And the brushes and the blah blah blah So click in the upper right hand corner to get to that If you want just a quick rundown though the paints I would recommend would be the Kiritaki against Saitambis They are my first choice The pans are really big so you can put a big fat brush in there and their colors are nice They paint really well etc So those are great. The koi are great for those who have limited space especially But they also paint really nicely And as for papers if you really just want to get the Kansan XL It's really cheap. It's student grade paper. It's inexpensive But I want to put this thought in your head that came into mind Which is I buy a lot of stamp sets and I'll spend 16 18 20 on a stamp set that I love And I might use it three or four times maybe five And then I get bored with it and I move on to something else If I buy a pad of paper that's maybe the same price 16 18 20 dollars I'm going to get If there's 12 sheets in it, I'm going to get 48 cards out of that same investment of money So if you want to think about it that way It makes a little more sense to invest more in your paper If you really want to have fun watercolor because What I found throughout this test is that the nicer papers Make you happier when you're painting because the paint does fun things that they does It doesn't do on the cheaper student grade papers So I just put that out there if you want to justify spending a little bit of money That's one way to think about it and put it into perspective And I just want to show you see look this is what you get When you get good paints and good papers that just makes me smile All right enough lecture for me There are two more videos here one is on brushes and all that I know so far about brushes and the other is A few painting techniques just some basic painting techniques for watercolor You're welcome to go watch either one of those and I will see you again very soon Be sure to subscribe to my channel and then you'll be getting the next videos that I do and who knows There might be some more watercolor incoming up at some point All right. Have a really fantastic day and I'll talk to you guys later. See you. Bye. Bye Take them both Taking both but both in the water at the same time I like your cup that has the hole in it. That is a really cool invention You should patent that and then just put one in the paint at time Okay, so we get two different colors on both ones and just do one color on one Oh same color on both. Yeah, okay