They are a legend.

The best watercolor paints, which only can exist! It is not enough to say that I adore the watercolor produced by ZK (St. Petersburg). I'm just ready to sing their laudatory odes endlessly. I myself own 2 sets of watercolors "Leningrad" and 1 set "White Nights". I also have a studio watercolor from "Gamma" (Moscow), but... I'll tell you about it later, because I haven't seen colors weaker than it yet. And now we will talk about my favorite St. Petersburg watercolor.

My set of colors "White Nights" consists of 12 colors - there are both 24 colors and 36. If necessary, I can buy more colors. Cuvettes separately are not so critical. This set of 12 flowers cost me 798 rubles. However, the prices for it depend on where you live and whether paints produced by Nevskaya Palitra are available at all in your city.

This is how they look when closed. The lid closes tightly, there is no backlash. It is easy to open with fingertips.

And expanded:

Each box with paints should contain such a piece of paper with the inscription "Checked by the Quality Control Department". The date of manufacture is also stamped on this piece of paper. I lost the cardboard packaging from the paints, alas. The names of the pigments that are supplied in this set were written there. In other matters, I dare to note that almost all sets produced by the Nevskaya Palitra plant are similar to each other. Whatever you take - "Ladoga", "White Nights", "Leningrad" - everywhere the pigments will be the same.

As you can see, I use this set - there is a small dried puddle in the lemon one. On this moment I have a work in progress, but I will not show it as an example. Half of the work is not shown to the public.

Specially made almost macro-photo. I didn’t really use only dark tones - and so on in life in the dark, how much can you?

About the purpose of the paints: this is a professional watercolor. It is intended for painting and design works, as well as for art schools. Although, 24 colors are needed for painting - there are more mixing options, more halftones. But even out of 12 colors, you can mix something. Moreover, here the color depends on the water and how much paint gets on the brush. For a softer color more water and less pigment, and for a brighter one, less water and more pigment.

Also, the cuvettes are easily removed from the box:

As you can see, there is a plastic retainer under them, the cuvettes are not individually located in the box.

I took red, because. love this color. By the way, bright red is not very light fast - it is marked with two asterisks. I hope there is no need to explain what light fastness is. Everything is painted on this occasion on the cardboard packaging of paints.

Also on each cuvette there is the logo "ZK" and the inscription "St. Petersburg". This is a kind of guarantee of high quality.

In general, I am ready to endlessly praise the colors of St. Petersburg, but then my review will be too long. The only disadvantage of paints is their price, and the fact that they are produced in small numbers. As a result, they can be difficult to obtain.

ABOUT PAINTS
(a little specifics. Stamps)

(images in text are clickable)

Due to my territorial position, I had the opportunity to communicate mainly with watercolors produced by the Leningrad Plant of Artistic Paints (now ZHK Nevskaya Palitra» ).
It was there that the legendary Leningrad set was produced, which was not inferior to the best foreign analogues in terms of the quality of paints. Of particular delight was the variant of its 24 colors in a plastic box-palette.

My preserved "combat" boxes do not look so presentable now :)
Alas, the new plastic boxes of the Nevskaya Palitra are very inferior to these old ones in terms of functionality.

Perhaps contemplation"Leningrad" in childhood, and was, for me, the beginning of the path to watercolor. The plant then also produced a high-quality Neva set (in tubes). Later there were "Black River", "White Nights".

One of the last sets of this factory - " Summer garden”, is distinguished by the presence of new colors, to put it mildly unusual, in my opinion.
Recently, for a combination of reasons, I did not use the paints of this company.

Watercolor paints "Studio" ("Gamma", Moscow), at one time, attracted me with the presence of ceruleum and viridon paints, as well as the retail sale of tubes. Unfortunately (about tubes), the quality is not always satisfactory or unstable, even for the tested colors. Golden ocher, which I actively used, when diluted with water, suddenly began to “bubble”, mix worse in already tested combinations and give “dirt” on sheets, especially large textured ones.

Once, in search of new color solutions, I turned to the paints of such a famous manufacturer as. The job is very costly. The need for it disappeared after the expansion of the range of domestic watercolors.

A big "holiday" was the emergence of a new St. Petersburg manufacturer "Aquacolor", which succeeded in creating high-quality colors of "elegant" tonalities.

24 color sets "Aquacolor" are available in various designs. The photo shows boxes with fragments of watercolors by Vasily Sadovnikov, Yuri Shevchik* and Konstantin Kuzema
But the novelty "Sonet" (LLC "Sonet", St. Petersburg) ** turned out to be very unsatisfactory in quality. Well, don't look a gift horse in the mouth :)

"Sonnet" in tubes of 10 ml.
Box from the batch of sponsorship to the Society of Watercolorists of St. Petersburg.

I first learned about the existence of "Grandfather's" watercolors at the Kizhi plein air from a Moscow artist, and after a while I accidentally became the owner of these paints.

"Grandfather's" paints donated to the author by a site user

Forty flowers, divided into two boxes according to their lukewarmness.The balanced variety of the color range makes you want not to use mixtures and to operate only with pure paints.The watercolor qualities of all the colors seemed wonderful to me in the samples.
However, it was precisely such an unusual balance of shades, as well as the presence of a "white watercolor" and an increased "dullness" of the paint surfaces in the cuvettes, that alerted me.
After a series of comparative experiments with opaque strokes, it turned out that when forming the color range of these paints, white *** was used (as in gouache). Thus, "Grandfather's" paints are a kind of "hybrid" between watercolor and gouache, but with pronounced watercolor capabilities.
Not much is known about the manufacturer of these inks, and data on their lightfastness is not available.

“School” paints are not considered by default, although they can do good things, which I wrote about in the previous part.

Do not try to use the paints of one company, this will narrow your options.

Cooking this article, I came across in my workshop and just such an exotic from an unknown manufacturer:

Watercolor "coarse grinding" in tubes, approximately 50 ml each. The inscription on the box: "Part of the funds received from the sale of watercolors will go to the restoration of the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Valaam Monastery."
And the words "Honey watercolor" reminded me of my childhood. To check if this is true, we licked the colors of "Leningrad" with our tongues. They were really sweet...

Addition.

End of 2011. The first batch of liquid watercolors from a domestic manufacturer:

Petersburg Modern. Liquid watercolor from Aqua-color (St. Petersburg)

The very first paints that our children get acquainted with are far from the proud title of “watercolor”. Our child gets a nice little plastic box with 6-8 bright colors under a transparent lid and a terrible plastic brush inside, which is easier to smear glue on cardboard than to create masterpieces. Meanwhile, watercolors were known in Ancient China, and in Egypt, and in Rome and Greece, however, they were used for the most part not for their intended purpose, but for writing and graphic illustrations for the text, then for makeup, and only after that for drawing.

Painting with watercolors, as such, arose much later, only in late XVIII century. IN early XIX century, it finally took shape as an independent art form and began to be considered a subject of passion for select persons who could afford to master this complex drawing technique for hours.

The name of the technique is directly dependent on the moisture content of the paper on which the drawing is applied. So, the technique of "English watercolor" is performed on wet paper, "Italian" - "dry". The combination of these techniques gives truly beautiful works, where soft color transitions are outlined by strict frames of another translucent tone.

A la Prima - fast writing on a wet field, creating unique streak effects, flowing from one color to another, with multi-colored overflows and a transparent "glass" background. This technique requires a perfect sense of color and compositional solution, because. written in one session - the possibility of any corrections is excluded. This is a single layer technique.

Multi-layer involves the art of glazing - a method of applying watercolors with translucent strokes, darker to lighter (and vice versa), already dried layers. In glazing, strokes rarely mix, often even the boundaries of the stroke itself are visible, but the clearance of the paper must remain and the top color is not necessarily the same shade as the previous one.

It's only general concepts about the many techniques and "sub-techniques" that are accessible and understandable to artists who have chosen watercolor as their muse. But while this is still not available for the young "Michelangelo" - your child, he only has to learn how to mix colors for the selected drawing, how to choose the right brush and technique, how to find his own style of painting, so that his work is recognized "by the hand of the master", and the paintings are known "by the face".

Over time, he will begin to understand paints and canvases, the tonalities of different strokes according to the degree of humidity of different parts of the paper, etc., etc., and for a start he just needs to buy good watercolors in 12 colors of any brand you like.

On the video: checking watercolors for quality.

Watercolor domestic production

Let's put aside artistic paints for children with 6 cuvettes and a brush that bristles in all directions, shamelessly called a "painting brush". Let's take a closer look at the products of JSC "Gamma" (Moscow) and ZHK (Factory of artistic paints) "Nevskaya Palitra" (St. Petersburg).

"Gamma" is a very good watercolor for the first steps into the world of art, but it still does not reach the level of professional paints, although it is listed as such.

But St. Petersburg watercolors are a real legend from the times of the USSR. Names such as "Sonnet", "Neva", "Ladoga", "White Nights" sound like music to the ears of watercolor artists who have known from childhood with bright, beautiful flowers in mini-containers. This is not only the widest range of colors, it is the highest quality of products!

The watercolors in the Ladoga set are marked as professional paints and for professional training.

"Sonnet" and "White Nights" will suit both cool sharks of the brush and a child to get acquainted with the canons watercolor painting. Paints differ in excellent miscibility, profitability of use.

The cuvettes-containers themselves are completely filled, a film with the correct color names in two languages ​​is applied on top, which will help the child immediately learn the name of the paint in Russian and English. 12 or 16 colors are enough for the first lessons, 36 are a lot and expensive, but it is best to purchase a set of 24 cuvettes. Of course, from 12 colors you can get a fairly large number of beautiful mixed colors with various shades, but the choice of 24 will be optimal, and the price will not hit your pocket.

In principle, no matter which of the St. Petersburg sets you like, you will not lose: they are all similar to each other, they all have bright, decorative colors, and the pigments are generally the same. The only difference is the price. It is also convenient that any of the used cuvettes can be easily replaced by purchasing the exact same one separately from the set and inserting it into the vacant socket.

Advice! Do not throw away empty cuvettes! They will come in handy for your young artist for storage mixed colors which he will learn to compose himself.

Foreign analogues

Is there an alternative to St. Petersburg watercolors? Eat. Since we have decided on a Russian manufacturer, let's see what watercolors our "foreign friends" offer us:

• Holland.

Famous not only for its tulips, but also for the amazing Van Gogh watercolors (Van Gogh), produced by the Royal Talens factory. The name of this artist should mark high quality colors, and this fully justifies its name. Considering respectable age brand and its steadfastness in the market of art products, there is no doubt about the quality of these picturesque colors.

The VG brand produces pastels, paper, canvases, brushes and pencils. All paints can be both in cuvettes and in tubes (tubes).

Holland can offer another line of Royal Talens - watercolor, oil and acrylic paints Rembrandt (Rembrandt). This is the oldest brand, known since 1899 as wine - the older, the better the taste (quality). This is truly an iconic brand!

Launches Royal Talens and Ecoline liquid watercolor in branded square bottles.

• Germany.

It is famous for the brand of "Florentine production" - watercolors, oils, acrylics of natural and synthetic composition Da Vinci (Da Vinci). Paints are produced in two sets: for professionals and beginners - study. But German brushes, which are made by hand from kolinsky, sable, arctic fox and ox bristles, received special recognition. There are also synthetic analogues. If there is an opportunity to choose brushes, then stop on them. These are the best of the best!

Among German brands, Schmincke paints are clearly in the lead - AKADEMIE® Aquarell watercolors (premium class). They are created according to old, one might say, family recipes. But we will not dwell on them - the price of $ 130 for one cuvette does not scare away only professionals.

• France.

Represented by the Sennelier company, founded by Gustave Sennelier in 1887. Picasso, Cezanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh himself could use Sennelier paints. The company produces professional artistic watercolors by Sennelier Artists for high professionals (another name is “L’aquarelle”) in 98 (!) Colors and watercolors of a lower class – “Raphael” (Raphael). However, regardless of the class, both paints are made only on natural bases, in particular - on honey.

• England.

Of course, she could not stand aside, and since 1832 she has been producing a fantastic quality product from Winsor & Newton - artistic paints (watercolors, oils, acrylics) "Winsor & Newton" (Winsor and Newton). The beginning of the triumphal procession of products was the union of the professional interests of the artist Henry Newton and the chemist William Winsor.

As is customary in many other companies, winsor newton "W & N" watercolor paint is available in two grades: "Winsor & Newton cotman" - for general work, and "Winsor & Newton artist" - for creating highly artistic watercolors. The company is also famous for its products for graphics and calligraphy. The head is spinning from a variety of watercolor delights!

What is better to choose?

We will conduct a small comparative casting between the most popular brands. In the casting for the right to be called the "Best watercolor set for beginners" are:

• "White Nights" - BN.

• "Winsor & Newton Cotman" - W&N.

• Van Gogh - V.G.

The palettes of all sets are bright, juicy, rich, grains are not noticeable (high-quality grinding of pigments), which means there will be no residue. With a dense coating of VG paper, the surface of the paint begins to gleam a little, as if covered with a thin film of varnish. Neither BN nor W&N give such an effect.

However, the VG set does not have purple, but the heavenly shade of blue and blue is beyond praise! Violet will have to buy (another brand) or mix from the available colors.

Washing is used to remove the main coating (paint) from paper with a wet or wrung out brush on a wet layer at the request of the artist. All three watercolors are easily removed, leaving behind only a faint shade - part of the pigment.

Let's try the transition of color to color. In VG watercolor, the transition is smooth and blending is easy, without harshness or dirt. BN "hangs" in the structure of grainy paper, the same is demonstrated by W&N. It's not a disaster. When changing the paper field, everything goes like clockwork!

W&N colors have a less saturated green than BN and VG. To get the proper color, you have to apply the paint thicker - it is better to replace the cuvette with a bath from another set.

All three applicants showed high light fastness (the pattern will not fade), the brightness of the coloring pigment and good transparency even with strong water dilution. All three shades are soft and perfectly interact with each other (good mixing), a high degree of viscosity. Comments on BN - they lose in terms of the fineness of the composition, but they are significantly ahead of their “rivals” in terms of ease of typing on a brush and in creating dark, deep, bewitching shades in the process of mixing paints.

It turns out that the process of buying a good watercolor for a child is delayed: each of the contenders is good in its own way and each has its own specific shortcomings. So what to do? Buy your child any desired set that he likes. Let him choose!

Make sure that the set contains the basic watercolor colors: cadmium yellow, orange, cadmium red, ocher, iron oxide red, kraplak (carmine), green, blue, ultramarine, emerald and burnt umber (black). The rest can be purchased separately, regardless of brands and brands.

And paper! Paper is very important point! It is no less important than the watercolor itself and the brushes for working with this paint. Those who have been painting in watercolor for a long time assure that 50% of success does not depend on the composition or brand of paints, but on the chosen paper. Choose paper with a well-defined structure - graininess. Watercolor paper doesn't have to be perfectly smooth. Never!

Comparison of watercolors White Nights, Van Gogh and Sennelier (1 video)

watercolor paints are combined in the series "White Nights", "Ladoga", "Sonnet". Traditional recipes are preserved in these paints using modern production technologies.

Today, the Plant's watercolor palette for painting has 57 colors.

Watercolor "White Nights"
The watercolor paint of the White Nights series has a high concentration of color tone, which remains even when diluted with a large amount of water, which is ensured by the high concentration of the pigment and the fineness of its grinding. The colors blend perfectly, blend well and blend well.

watercolor art paint The White Nights series is presented in the Leningrad sets of 16 and 24 colors, in the St. Petersburg sets of 24 colors and the White Nights sets of 12, 24 and 36 colors.

Now we will understand in detail what is inside and from what colors the palette is composed. Each paint has its own name, but more importantly, it is the pigment composition. Single-pigment paints are presented (they contain only one pigment and binders), as well as two-, three- and even four-pigment paints. Color indices (name of pigments) included in the composition are indicated with Latin letters, which indicate the color of the pigment and its number. For example, yellow pigments (yellow) have a color index P.Y., red (red) - P.R., blue (blue) - P.B. and so on, where the second letter in the color index comes from the English name of the color group.
PW = pigment white
PY = pigment yellow
PO = pigment orange
PR = pigment red
PB = pigment blue
PV = pigment violet
PG = pigment green
PBr = pigment brown
PBk = pigment black
Paints also differ in light fastness (resistance to fading), which is indicated by asterisks (*) in ZHK. Three stars (***) - light fast paints, two (**) - medium fast paints, one (*) - low light fast paints.

Thus, to make it convenient to understand the available colors, we regroup the palette as follows:

The first group: lightfast paints with one pigment in the composition. They have a clean, open color.
The second group: non-lightfast paints with one pigment in the composition. They have a clean, open color, but are prone to fading.
The third group: paints of various lightfastness, which include two or three pigments. The colors themselves are beautiful, but in mixtures they can give dirty shades.

To continue studying paints and choose colors for your own palette, you need to introduce the concepts of "clean" and "dirty" color. According to my observations, the concept of "dirt" in watercolor is quite subjective, who is dirt, and who is 50 shades of gray. The feeling of "dirt" is not given by the use of any one "dirty" color in any place of work, but by a complex impression, which is formed from the relationship between the colors placed next to each other. It is believed that more than three pigments in a mixture already produces "dirty" shades that are more likely to look good on the palette when mixed, but "dry" when dried on paper. Therefore, the basis of the artist's palette should be, first of all, colors from the first group, light-resistant, with one pigment in the composition. By mixing two or three colors from this group, you can get an almost infinite number of shades. Paints from the second group will behave the same if you are not worried about the fragility of your work. Paints from the third group "put a pig" on an inexperienced draftsman. They already consist of two or three pigments, so in mixtures with a high degree of probability they can give "dirt". However, there is no general rule and many famous artists use these paints for their work, but in order to do this successfully, you need to understand in what situations how they will behave. A careful experimenter who knows how to compare letters and numbers will assume, as I did at the beginning, that some of these colors can be obtained independently by mixing colors from the first group. Here are some examples:

We look at the composition of the "Green Original": P.Y.35, P.G.7, which we have, respectively, "Cadmium Lemon" and "Emerald Green";
"Earth green": P.Br.7, P.G.7, respectively "Burnt Sienna" and "Chromium Oxide";
"Yellow Green": P.G.7, P.Y.3, respectively "Emerald Green" and "Lemon".

Paints "Azure blue" and "Turquoise" have the same pigment composition: P.B.15:3, P.G.7, but different color due to the percentage of pigments in the paints. The pigments in the composition are "Bright Blue" and "Emerald Green".

The situation is similar with the paints "Indigo" and "Payne's Gray", they contain three identical pigments: P.Bk.7 (Gas soot), P.B.15 (Blue), P.V.3 (Purple) in different percentages.

I think everyone knows very well that watercolors are water-based paints that contain a lot of binding materials that make them bright, clean, transparent, plastic and long-lasting.

At first glance, the choice seems great, especially considering the number of colors - the head is spinning! But in fact, everything is not so difficult. Watercolor comes in the following forms: solid (in tiles), semi-solid or pasty (in tubes and cuvettes), liquid (in vials and jars from 29 to 35 ml) and mother-of-pearl. Well, let's look at each of them.

Solid watercolor in tiles

Absolutely any solid watercolor is an economical option, and great for beginners. Agree, it makes no sense to throw money away on expensive paints, which we will discuss below, if the student takes up the brush for the first time. Such paints are of pretty good quality, since the days of dry paints have already passed.

Where is it used? In addition to children and schoolchildren, it can be used by professionals in painting, creating posters and drawing work, unless of course these are the highest grades.

Semi-solid watercolor in cuvettes

Semi-solid watercolors in pans produce vibrant color tones and adhere well to paper. Democratic price, compactness and long term storage makes this type of watercolor an indispensable tool for every writer. They mix well and give calm color tones.

They can be produced (depending on the manufacturer) in a cardboard or plastic box. Activists who mix paints directly in the trays are likely to understand all the advantages of the plastic box. After all cardboard box gets dirty pretty quickly.
Such a watercolor is convenient for small volumes of work and in order to save time on kneading.

Paste watercolor in tubes

Well, it's usually a classic painting. If you're working on large-format work, then using soft, pasty watercolor in tubes will help you out if you're spending a lot of it. This option is certainly not for economical people, but the colors do not get dirty with each other.

Judging by the experience of some artists, such paint is drawn on the brush unevenly, and the strokes fall intermittently. Also, when it is applied to the canvas, paint clots can form. Therefore, this watercolor is not quite suitable for the “painting on wet” technique.

Any set must contain all the basic colors. It is usually diluted with water in a palette bath, a tiny drop of semi-liquid paint. Can "live" for decades. And if you're lucky, you can find them in the store by the piece.

In general, if you clearly understand what they are for you, then you can take them as a second set. Especially, it will be useful if you can manipulate the mixing of paints without any problems.

I also advise you to take a folding plastic palette separately, into which it will be convenient to squeeze out paints.

By the way, when they dry, they can be used as dry ones. The used cuvettes can be filled in the same way.
Liquid and mother-of-pearl watercolors

As for liquid watercolors, we can say that they can be difficult to find on sale. It is very easy to work with them, they can be written both from the container immediately and diluted with water. Pluses - chic bright color, saturation, many different shades and beautiful combinations. There is a dropper on the cork in small vials. It is convenient in order to accurately maintain the necessary proportions.

Where is it used? When working with an airbrush, liquid watercolor is everything. The same goes for traditional watercolor work. Pros use distilled water.

As for mother-of-pearl watercolors, their color pigments fit perfectly on the surface of wood, fabric, plaster, paper and cardboard.

About manufacturers

For beginners (and for experienced ones) artists, I recommend taking paints from the manufacturers Sonnet and Nevskaya Palitra. This is the most optimal, especially since the price and quality are correlated. The same can be said about Leningrad.

By the way, the colors of the company "Sonet" are much brighter. Very good paints "White Nights": they are usually painted in art schools.

Domestic tests show that White Nights watercolors successfully compete and even outperform other manufacturers (Gamma, Luch, Aquacolor and Winsor And Newton).

Nevskaya Palitra is just trying, and very rapidly, to break into the foreign market.

One thing can be said about the foreign «Winsor And Newton»: very expensive! However, our manufacturers can only envy such convenience. It is unlikely that something like this will be produced here - a well-thought-out comfortable workplace, roomy boxes - transformers, places for a flask of water, a folding brush, a sponge, a set of several cuvettes with paints and much more. We can only dream and hope.

Conclusion

So we, perhaps, got a little acquainted with what watercolor paints are. What to choose and whom to give your preference to, it's up to you. Experiment and try, the main thing is to pay attention to the light fastness and transparency of paints when choosing them, since absolutely any paint tends to fade, but with varying degrees of intensity.

As a result, I would like to say that in a box of watercolors there can be 6,10,12,16,24,36, or even 48 colors. Is it a lot or a little? Here you can answer like this: it can be a lot for a professional, since he almost always uses only basic colors. But for convenience, even picky pros can use ready-made tones. A beginner who has not yet learned how to properly mix colors will also benefit from additional colors, because otherwise he will not be able to.

In any case, this is individual, but remember that each paint has its own qualities of light fastness and, what is very important for watercolor, is hiding power!