AQUARELA WINSOR NEWTON PROF C/18 0190100 HP TRAVEL

I started watercolour painting about a year ago, I used to use cotman student colours but thought I would switch to professional colours so I purchased this 18 colour set. The colours are vibrant and lots of pigment and a little goes a long way. The tin itself is very useful with multiple mixing sections and two flip over compartments, you can fit over 26+ colours if you stack them close together. Inside the tin there is a colour code chart and a colour swatch you fill out yourself, but this is useless unless you are sticking to 18 colours or less, I prefer to make my own. The cost of this item is in my opinion is over the top as how much does a bit of pigment and gelling agent cost to produce, it’s extremely expensive they should lower the costs and then they would sell more to compensate.
Pros if you’ve got money then it’s a great little setup for indoors and out.
Cons way way expensive for this price they should put 24 colours in.

Thanks

Still early days as I have as yet done little more than have a quick go with these paints and do a little bit of colouring with them. The tin is very good and is basically the same as the 24 half pan one and therefore has space for 6 additional half pans. It has a little thumb loop underneath and so could be used for plein air sketching, but given its size this will likely be my ‘at home’ watercolour set. It’s nice after my little Derwent and Cotman travel watercolour sets to have decent sized mixing areas.

I may add some more colours to this in time to take advantage of the 6 spare pan spaces, but I want to get used to the included colours first. The colour choice seems okay to me with several cool and warm versions of all the primaries plus convenience colours, but I question the inclusion of the ivory black paint pan, which just seems a bit unnecessary. They could instead have added something really interesting like a quinacridone colour or something for interest.

In use: as I said I have not yet had the opportunity to use this set much and will need time to get acquainted with them. The colours are all very strong though and have a flat (in a good way), consistent , almost pastel-like in some cases, quality to them and they mix very well. They were easy to activate and they retweeted easily, too. I will update the review with the included swatch when I have completed it also some sketches when used to colour them. It will be inserting to compare these to my also new Sennelier and Schmincke watercolour paints, though the W&N set has the advantage in terms of the number of colours provided, plus a lower price when buying replacement or supplementary pans.

Although it is early days I am pleased with this watercolour set and see it as a bit of a steal at this price. I did wonder after buying it if I should have opted for the similarly priced W&N professional field box set, which would be more use outdoors but comes with 6 less colours. Overall though I am really pleased to get 18 artist quality half pan paints and a very good tin for this price.

Well made tin (no sharp eges) and the flap sits fairly level which is great for colour mixing. Two of the new cadmium free paints are included which I’m looking forward to trying. The white has been exchanged for phthalo blue, which is a bonus. Delivery from Amazon was great, and fast. Best price atm for this tin.