Arteza sent me some of their products to try out and review. This review is for 24 color tube set of their premium watercolors and watercolor paper pads. I will write another of real brush pens and black fineliners.
Watercolor set Firstly I have to say that I really liked the range of colors- they have 4 yellows(including ochre), 4 reds and 5 blues and some complementary colors of course. For me, the most important thing in one color set is a good range in primary colors, because you can mix all the others from them. Secondly, on every tube you can find info about opacity, lightfastness and pigment number(s). When I painted with them I noticed that some colors have some granulation and others are chalky. The other thing that I noticed is that when you work in wet on wet the paints won't move and stay where you put them, which can be a good thing if you work on a small area because you have more control, but if you work on large area can be difficult to achieve good result. One thing I really liked that the colors are vibrant and pigmented. However, they are difficult to lift and cause some staining on the paper. On balance I could say that they are very good watercolors on very good price.
pros good quality for the price opacity, lightfast and pigment info on the tube only 2 colors with ++ in the set of 24(+++ is the highest lightfastness) if you work in a small area you can control the flow of the paint nice color range vibrant colors work very well with wet on dry technique
cons some of the colors have a chalky consistency when they dry on the pallete they crack and fall out they are somehow "lazy" don't move in the wet in wet technique not suitable for large wet in wet painting when you add a lot of layers they get a muddy look
Watercolor pads
They come in 9"x12" size, 32 sheets, 300gsm, a pack of 2. The surface on the front side is cold press with canvas texture and the back side has a smooth finish. I'd tried to paint on both sides. So I have some thoughts. The front side- I didn't like the canvas texture — I paint flowers and birds most of the time, and I paint a lot of details so I can say that this texture isn't suitable for this type of painting in my opinion, but maybe someone who paint landscapes or still life's will like it. I started putting my underpainting with a lot of water and it buckled, so I had to tear my painting off the pad, dry it, flatten it and stick it to hard back to continue painting. When I added a couple of layers in the dark areas the color started look muddy and the paper fuzzy. Lifting was difficult and paper stained. However, I decided to give it another try, with a different approach. I worked in one small area on a time and on a very few layers and I got a really good result. To sumarize, it's a good paper for its price.
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