Beam Paints - handmade watercolour paints (plastic-free) review - made in Canada

I give this paint 10 out of 10 acorns.

Because it's not only lovely to work with, but matches well with permaculture values.  



Where to begin sharing how much I love these handmade watercolour paints?

That they are handmade is a good start.  That these are made using local (to them) ingredients whenever possible and with the pride of someone who loves what they do - the people who make these paints obviously put a lot of love and care into what they do.  We can see this with the packaging.

And the extent they go to to keep plastic away from the paints.  Beeswax soaked cloth wrap each paint-stone (their word for 'half pan' or the equivalent of 5ml of fresh paint) and a little label shares the information about each colour.

The colours!  



This is just the sample I got so far.  They have a lot of colours to choose from.   At the time of making that chart, only burnt sienna hadn't got a lightfastness rating back from the lab.  All the others rate excellent (which I think is astm 1 and 2)

I want to complain a bit because the colours!  They are so strong compared to mass manufactured watercolour paint, it takes so much getting used to.  It's been the most difficult part of learning to use these paints.  Their Mix Six are especially vibrent.

That said, some of their earth colours, like the burnt sienna, yellow ochre, and white here, tend to be a bit tough to activate if we haven't painted with them for a while.  They like to have a bit of water on them the day before painting to wake up.  


Each colour has a different personality.  Unlike massmanufactured paints, where there are efforts to keep the paint fairly consistant, Beam Paints scream individuality.  One can feel the minerals and pigments participating in the painting and I think most people who are used to watercolours stumble at this point.  They are used to paints that are mild, along for the ride.  Beam Paints aren't like that.  They want to help make the best painting ever, if we let them.

So I do what I always do with new paints - a limited palette study.

These paints are:
Mars Red
Timberwolf
Fall Poplar Yellow
Boreal Green
(later on, I use a touch of limestone white - oh, it looks like this is changing the name to trillium white)

Can it paint a chicken?



Can you see some of the personality of the paints?  The granulation of the sky and the way the blue paint fades to red (no red added).  Some of the paints lift and change, some are more opaque than most watercolour is used to.  There's a lot of learning to do here.  It's not my best chicken ever.



The same colours, but a bit of white.  Each painting is just under 3" on the long side.

Beam Paints also sells lovely wooden palettes from reclaimed wood from local sustainable forestry practices or something.  I suspect maple syrup is involved, but I have this sweet delusion that all trees in Ontario, Canada are for making maple syrup.  (they are, right?)

But, you know, spending money on a bit of wood takes money away from paint.  So I asked a family member to make me something from the old apple tree branch that blew down a few years back.



I love it!  

The next limited palette I try is a variation on the Zorn palette (I say zorn because it's easier to spell than ... asks duckduckgo how to spell it... apelles)

I'm using
Turtle Belly (red)
Harvest Wheat (yellow ochre)
Mars Black
The white is from the white of the paper.

But can IT paint a chicken?





pretty  

I had a lot of practice with this one doing a Holiday Advent calendar kind of painting thing.  I added the sparkly blue colour Winter Nights for some of the paintings, but tried to keep it just those three paints as much as possible.



More recently I've been trying to get used to the more vibrant colours of their staple palette and how they work with my current favourites.  It's tricky with how bright these colours are compared to commercial paints.  But I feel I can get there with enough chickens.




On the whole, these are awesome paints if one's painting style can give them freedom to be themselves.  They are a bit colourful for an absolute beginner, but then again, that might be just what one needs to learn to paint.  

Depending on the colour, the paint stones last almost double the length of time it takes me to use up a halfpan of mass -manufactured paint like Winsor and Newton.  With shipping and the way the world works, Beam Paints cost about the same or less as the mid brands like Winsor and Newton locally, so it ends up being excellent value for my dollar.  

I would highly recommend these paints for anyone who cares about their crafting footprint, who, like me lives in Canada where art supplies imported from other countries are way over priced, or people who like pretty colours.  

If you get a chance to sign up for their mailing list they tend to have a decent sale about twice a year.  They also have "perfect imperfects" by limited supply that they announce on their mailing list.  These are paints that have something tiny wrong with them like mismeasured, spilled water, the wood 'cookie' cracked... You don't get to choose which one you get, but it's always a good value.  

Their black Friday sale is worth saving up for.  

there perfect imperfects are in stock!  
https://www.beampaints.com/products/pefect-imperfects

This is an awesome value and great selection.  But they only have this once or twice a year.

As a result of the above notice, I ordered two “perfect imperfects” and they came today. I have don’t any painting, so can’t speak to that, but thought I’d share what you might get if you order.

Now I wish I'd put something in for scale. Those smallest two metallic blobs of paint are pretty small. I think you're really paying for quality over quantity with these, but that aligns well with my preferences.

Looks like we got the same ones.



I managed to work out some of the most likely colour names.



The gold and silver look better on top of dark paper or as a finishing touch on a painting.