Thursday Art Walk

 

In Which I Tested Out An Artistro Palette!

Christmas brought me some great gifts, as I hope it did for anyone reading this who celebrates. One of these gifts was given by some awesome friends of mine, and it was a great little Artistro palette, which I'll be reviewing today!

The Artistro Premium Quality Watercolor Paint Set came with some fun goodies!

The palette itself came in a lovely pastel mint turquoise cardboard box, which also contained a small sheaf of Watercolor paper, a little card about Artistro itself, and what I think is a sticker, though I can't figure out if it really is or not. 

The Palette itself!

The palette itself is a nice tin box in the same pastel turquoise color as the cardboard box, and while the metal isn't nearly as thick as my black palette, it's still quite convenient to have everything in a lockable case! The latch gives it a leg up on most of my palettes, to be honest, and it has a few other things going for it, too - it has a flat bottom so I can actually set it down places, it only has 2 parts when opened, so it can just sit open, it's fairly tall so I don't have to move brushes as far, and it's a nice soothing color.

Inside is quite nice, too!

Opening this palette reveals that it comes with a few goodies besides the paints! Firstly, it has a big, hefty water brush that feels like I could sit on it accidentally and not break it, plus a fineliner brush! The black pen is actually an acrylic paint pen - the first one I've ever used! And it has three mixing wells and a very large sponge, which are great for when you're changing or mixing colors. As for the lower half, there's a sturdy plastic sheet with a little cutout for your finger so you can pull it away from the paints and... guys...

It's one of the first palettes I've ever had that NAMES ALL THE COLORS outside of the swatch card!

And they're fairly popular color names, too, allowing me to try mixes I've seen elsewhere!

The palette does, of course, come with a swatch card, and it's printed on the exact same watercolor paper that came with the kit, and it's good paper, too, which really surprised me. I'm used to swatch cards that are cardstock or cheap paper, and this was great.

It helps matters, too, that the paints, while small, are very smooth.

These are, no joke, butter-smooth watercolors. Swatching the palette out, I only noticed a few tones out of the 48 that were harder to get consistent - the lightest blue, the lightest green, the fluorescents, and the metallics. Even those would probably have been easier to swatch if I'd spritzed the palette first instead of just stroking a damp brush over the pans 10 times each.

And I'm really pleased with the granulations I see because I love granulations in my tones.

Now, the Artistro palette is not the only art supply I received for Christmas. My mother made sure to buy me a nice Strathmore pad and some new brushes, since the ones I've been using are... well... they're water hogs that don't lay color well, frankly. I've been entirely relying on my waterbrushes and one or two fineliners because the rest just don't paint well.

These Phoenix brushes, however, paint very nicely.

And I will eventually have to start working on bigger paintings
Because these large sheets are tempting.

But I'm still pretty braindead from the holidays, so instead of testing my supplies out on some massive art piece that relies on vast quantities of water, patience, and time, I instead tested things out with a fun little Geometric piece.

"Bubbletime"; watercolor and acrylic; 2022

I used a 7 Round for all of the bubbles and outlined them all with the paint pen. I was very nervous that I'd spill the paint all over my bed, but I activated the pen very slowly and gently (shakeshakeshakeshake, press, pause, press, pause, press, pause, see that the tip is black, draw a small doodle on a scrap page, then get to work).

It went far better than I'd hoped, and I think I'll be adding this paint pen to my passel of liners for future projects! It layers perfectly over watercolors. Speaking of the watercolors, they went on very smooth, though if you don't use wet-into-wet as your technique, it can be a bit hard to even tones out. The paints also dried fairly fast, though that could have been because I had my ceiling fan on and the air was fairly dry.

All in all, if you've been thinking about trying out the Artistro 48 color watercolor palette, I'd say go for it. It's perfect for someone who is trying to make art, especially on a budget. The paper is good quality, the paints are fun, and if you're not planning on preserving the original pieces (I can't speak to the colorfastness of the paints, since I haven't had them long enough to test), then this is a great kit for you. Especially if you've been meaning to see if an acrylic paint pen is right for you with your watercolor art.

If you'd like to have a say in what I paint or draw next week, feel free to hit me up on Ko-Fi with a donation and a message telling me what category you'd like to see (Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Geometric, Dedbert, Location, Word), and I'll pop it up here with a little thank you note!

And thank you to all my readers who kept me posting throughout 2022!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC