Pan sets

“welcome let's take a look at aalo watercolors these handmade paints have been featured in a lot of reviews lately they're high quality and gift ready presentation have been impressing many artists over the past couple of years over 80 colors previously only available through a Gallo's website were recently added to Jackson's online store making it easier to just pick up a color or two while shopping for your other art supplies since more people are now stumbling onto this brand and may be debating which colors to try I wanted to point out my personal favorites their unique convenience mixtures and note which colors are made from rare pigments I purchased some individual colors a 12 half pan set and a 66 color Dot card aalo provides large paint samples plenty for doing Swatch cards in addition to some small paintings like most handmade paints these are more expensive than Mass manufactured watercolors whether or not they are worth the price is up to you but I will share some of the reasons I decided to buy some for myself having compared a lot of paint Brands I've come to appreciate the pigment load look and feel of hand Mt paints some big brands use too much Gum arabic resulting in glossy shiny spots on your dry painting but that is rarely the case in handmade paints these watercolors are matte easy to rewet and perhaps most importantly offer some uncommon colors for pigment collectors these watercolors flow smoothly but don't disperse too quickly in water these have a relatively low flow rate without feeling sludgy or streaky instead of colors racing uncontrollably over the wet paper I was able to brush these into a gradient blend as someone who likes control over Precision details I appreciate that these paints provide predictable results they seem to have a really good balance of binder ingredients including honey Gum arabic and rosemary oil a natural preservative they do smell slightly Herby mostly when opening a pallet case after being closed for a while or upon rewedding I found the smell to be mild and pleasant historically clove Rosemary or lavender oils have been used in paint making to control mold growth while some oils can disturb the pH balance or yellow over time this is rarely an issue for watercolor since the tiny amount used is only a drop or two in the binder spread out across dozens of pans this choice in natural preservative may be appealing to those who have allergies to the strong modern bios sides found in big brands or those who just prefer more natural products these first 12 swatches are the colors that came in the signature 2 palette featuring Yin Min blue I ended up getting this set because it offered a discounted bundle price for yinmin I will be doing a separate comparison video on this blue which is very expensive to make so only a few Brands offer it for those who are not as tempted to throw money at rare pigments ultramarine blue pb29 has a very similar appearance and is more affordable this set also contained some other interesting colors such as the very gently granulating haido orange a deep orange version of py 216 compared to the muted pale version of this pigment scene in Sha's Turner yellow I also enjoyed their vibrant and superbly transparent metchi red and The Uncommon chromite Brown the textural chromite brown is fairly similar to Burnt umber but is a little darker cooler and more granulating I was impressed that many of my top favorite light fast red and violet pigments are offered in a sea of paint Brands relatively few offer Quinn purple ultraviolet Potter's pink and dioxazine VI Violet as PV 37 instead of the more common pv23 they offer great red options for mixing including a cool magenta pr122 mid red PR 254 and warm red PR 255 agalo does not offer cadmiums or Cobalts but they do offer some really nice Alternatives Vermilion red is a smooth Hue match for cadmium red light there's no Cerulean but the rare zirconium blue PB 71 is a granulating sky blue that is a similar color PB 71 is pretty rare I do have it from Kremer but the agalo version is much more transparent Potter's pink PR 233 is a granulating earthy pink that adds a beautiful texture to mixtures I found aalo version to be the lightest pink leaning option compared to darker Brown leaning ones found in other brands agalo uses their gently granulating mostly transparent pale PR 233 in the Petra Rose mixture creating a beautiful convenience color useful for florals there is no Cobalt teal or turquoise instead they offer smooth phthalo based mixtures which are beautiful but lack granulation texture every brand makes their own creative custom conven venience mixtures every so often I find one that is a perfect fit for my art and saves me time or trial and Air in replicating the color I would like to achieve aalo offers several stunning combinations that I find particularly useful such as Harbor blue NATO and olive green deep of course you can DIY mix replicas using the single pigment ingredients as mixing inspiration for those looking for a more affordable alternative Roman SCH has competitively priced paints and offers a ton of granulating and unusual pigment choices that will provide similar effects aalo also introduced me to tintoretto paint brushes which I will briefly talk about since these are included in some of their pan sets and sold individually from either aalo or Jackson's these brushes are synthetic but hold a lot of water like squirrel hair if I didn't already have a favorite imitation squirrel brush Princeton Neptune these might have impressed me more one positive is that the belly of the brush holds a lot of paint so they are really good for broad washes or really long strokes you can load the brush and make shapes really flattening the side of the brush to widen the stroke without getting dry gaps in coverage unfortunately it is easy to overload these brushes causing them to dump a little moisture with each new Mark they can be difficult to control When painting short Strokes or small details I struggled with causing little back runs or blooms where part of the stroke is already drying before it dumps moisture at the end if I were painting one-stroke florals such as wreaths of flowers or Fern shapes the tintoretto brushes could be good for doing long extended marks where you use up more of the loaded paint at once they have a very fine point but because I did not find these quite as easy to control the dispensing of color as my Princeton Neptune or the detail capability of my Princeton Heritage I won't be using them for my painting today though in general the best brush is the one you're used to the more you use a brush the more you start to naturally anticipate how to load and move it in order to get the best performance the majority of colors offered by aalo are light fast the exception being a few fugitive natural plant colorants like rose matter Indigo Buck Thornberry or dragon's blood made from Palm Tree resin all of these have pigment codes starting with the letter N like nr9 for natural red nine indicating organic matter prone to decay these are still of interest for those who like to collect unusual colors or prefer unique natural colors over man-made ones I did notice that p177 and py 83 are present in a couple of mixtures those two pigments have a tendency to fade in diluted tints but I have not yet light fast tested this brand to see how much of an issue it is I was overall impressed with the pigments chosen in this line I have made notes about light fastness on each Swatch card if you'd like to see over 75 still images that I've scanned head on over to the aalo website review page at kim”