The magic of using good quality materials is something any craftsperson can relate to. Like carving a beautifully grown
apple branch into a
spoon or knitting with lovingly handspun yarn. Spaghetti sauce from homegrown tomatoes. The materials add a flavour to the final
project that is more than knowing where our ingredients come from, it adds a feeling of life to the final creation.
So when I started learning how to paint this summer, I looked around for handmulled paints that would give this feeling to my paintings. Commercial paints are lovely, but they feel like the pigment is flat on the paper and it takes a lot from the artist to add that extra dimension to the painting. Thus the quest for handmulled paints began.
I suspect if I had spent as many hours painting as I did seeking out the perfect handmade paints, I would be a master painter by now. But I finally settled on
HannahLouMyers' handmade paints on etsy and I am over-the-moon happy with these paints. (I just hope I'm worthy of them).
They look like handmade chocolates, but the inside is even better. I bought the
set of 6 handmade watercolour half pans in a tin.
Okay, I want to stop here and say that these paints smell amazing. Like all the good memories of winter holidays in one tiny tin.
The ingredients include clove oil for preservation and
honey to help the paint flow smoothly.
Local honey! This is another reason why I choose this maker as the shop is just the next
city over and they source many of their ingredients locally.
I hear you saying "
alright already, but how does it paint?"
Before I decided what colours to get, I bought some dot
cards. These are small mounds of watercolours on a bit of paper we can use for swatching. HannahLouMyers has generous size dots that I was not only able to see what the colour looks like, but to swatch and do some colour mixing to see which combination gave me the most versatile and useful palette.
I am really glad I got some dot
cards first because I had no idea that paints could be so lively. It's not just the colour, but each paint has a personality it adds to the painting. Some of these paints are so textured you can feel it on the page and it makes the most marvellous effect. The thing is, I've only been painting for two months and I worried that my skill wasn't up for those paints... yet. So I chose some of the calmer paints.
The Colour Theory or Primary set has great mixing power so they were an obvious place to start. The more muted yellow and red (forsythia and maple) are very much like my most used colours of yellow ochre and burnt sienna. But different
enough that I'm going to have fun learning what these paints can do. As for choosing brine... well, that was an oddball for me. Of all the colours I swatched, that was the one that sang to me most of all. I don't know why or how to use this colour but I just knew it would improve my painting if I tried it.
So, the next step is to swatch out a little cheat sheet for my tin until I can get to know the colours better.
I got one of those cotton bags I use for packaging stuff for my etsy shop and it fits my paint tin, thrum-cloth (the little cloth for wiping brushes), and
water brush perfectly. Just add paper.
I can use the lid of the tin for mixing different colours together.
For times when I want to do a lot more mixing, I'll toss in this little sauce dish.
I love this little set and the only big adjustment I've made is to add magnets to the bottom of the pans so they don't rattle around.
And a final comparison between commercially made paints and the hand mulled watercolours.
The commercial paints have the advantage of being consistent and predictable. But when I see them next to the handmade watercolours, the handmade paints look more lively and the commercial ones flat.
I'm very excited to try out these new paints, but I'm also worried that now I have them, I will be too afraid to use them because I'm not yet good enough. I need to find something too paint soon so I can get over the fear. There's no point having beautiful paints and not using them.
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