[Aquanet] Fw: paint brands?

[Barry D. Lindley]

It's good to hear of your experience, David.  M.Graham paints (see the far
right column in Nita's chart) also remain workable for a very long time and
are of the highest grade in terms of pigment quality and load.  Holbein is
actually a Japanese manufacturer; the Vermont/Montreal company is simply the
US distributor.  M.Graham is a small Oregon Company and quite delightful and
helpful in terms of technical information, samples, etc.  They make their
paint right there, and Diana Graham is always willing to answer questions.
I have used their watercolors, gouache, oils, and acrylics, and have found
them all perfectly suitable.  My working palettes are all predominantly
M.Graham.

Holbein's Peacock Blue is one paint that I haven't found a good counterpart
of - an intense greenish blue.

Barry D. Lindley
Paintings and Drawings
www.BarryLindleyArt.com

 

  _____  

From: aquanet-bounces at thedigitalbraintrust.net
[mailto:aquanet-bounces at thedigitalbraintrust.net] On Behalf Of David Becker
Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2008 12:08 PM
To: Aquanet at thedigitalbraintrust.net
Subject: Re: [Aquanet] Fw: paint brands?

 

Back a few years ago I was using mostly a variety of brands which consisted
of WN, Daniel Smith, and a few talen van gogh which is what I had
recommended to students that didn't have a lot of money to spend but needed
a good amount of paint. Then about three years ago I went with Maimeriblu
Watercolor because I was going to endorse it but I hated the way that paint
felt and lucky for me they didn't treat me very nice at the Expo in Burbank
so I dropped them. At the same time however Linda Kemp introduced me to the
people over at Holbein and they were giving me their sales pitch and I
wasn't going to fall into that trap again so I asked them for about 10 tubes
of paint and I would test them and get back to them about if I wanted to
endorse their watercolors in my workshops. They claimed that their
watercolors won't dry to a hard rock on your W/C palette but instead a
rubbery blob. So that was right around the holidays and I squeeze out a
pretty good helping of paint into a new palette, they said that you should
squeeze out a lot of paint because you won't be wasting it because with just
a squirt of water it becomes very manageable again. I also thought I better
squeeze in other brands of paint to see what they do. The holidays came upon
our class so I left the palette on a top shelf in our classroom for 5 weeks
with just the top of the palette on it. We came back in January and opened
the palette and the results were: The Talen Van Gogh 2.00dollar tubes were
pretty hard, I pried them out of the palette cut them in half and wet them
to see how well I could get them to loosen up again. It took a lot of
rubbing and mooching around to get it loosened up. The WN and Daniel smiths
paints varied by the color some were harder then others but weren't to bad
but most had a harder shell that you could break through to get more juicy
paint. The Holbein paints were sticky to the touch and when sprayed with
water would loosen up very easily. I was very much surprised but I wasn't
totally sold until I knew what colors they had and how they handled. I
called them and asked for 10 more colors from their chart which they sent.
WOW 20 colors that I didn't pay for, I figure even if I didn't endorse them
in the end I would have still come ahead in the end. I did a bunch of washes
on scrap pieces of paper in my class and had the class also help  with
seeing how they liked the feeling of painting with the Holbein W/C paints.
Our conclusion was that Holbein paints were very smooth and many of the
colors we used were very intense. I felt that I could mix some of the best
grays because of the intense colors. The only thing we didn't like was that
the names were different and we couldn't figure out which color compared to
the other makers colors. They didn't have any Quinacradone colors  on their
list so I questioned them about that, their answer was that they were the
first to have colors of that intensity like the color Opera. I am still
testing many of their paints and am finally figuring out which colors I like
that compare to the colors that I was using before.
I now use mostly Holbein and I have one or 2 other colors of WN & Daniel
Smiths in my palette, but I have come to love the Holbein paints and in the
end decided to endorse them.
That was one of the better decisions I made and found their products and the
people at Holbein to be wonderful. 
Funny that when I was in Vermont this last July I found out that the Holbein
family started in the business of paints in Montreal as the W/N main
distributors.

That's my 2 cents
David 

 
 
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