Daniel Smith half-pan set

I love painting with Daniel Smith watercolors, so I was eager to try out their new half-pan watercolor set. Unfortunately, the design of the plastic palette is unusable for on-the-go sketching unless you carry an additional mixing surface.

I was expecting something similar to Cotman’s watercolor sketchers pocket set, shown here, but holding more colors. In the Cotman set you can mix juicy washes in the lid and they stay put until you apply them to paper. But the Daniel Smith palette does not open flat — the lid stays slightly angled, as shown in the next photo. To make matters worse, there is no barrier where the lid meets the paint section — paint runs down the slope, through a gap and out onto your hand below.

When I first took the set out of its box, I found that the lid is very hard to open; you have to pry the corners apart with a bit of effort. Not particularly a bad thing, just a bit annoying.

I chose the earth colors set since it had pigments I had not tried previously — the pans are unmarked and there is no color map included so I had a hard time telling Venetian Red from Burnt Sienna Light. I imagine it would be even worse for someone buying the set of multiple blues or the large set of 15 colors if they weren’t already familiar with the pigments.

Standard half pans fit easily, so I went ahead and added paints that I already had (listed on the left side of my sketchbook page), but this set will remain at home instead of being the travel set I had hoped for. Who wants to carry an additional mixing surface with them when they are already juggling pen, brush, sketchbook, water and palette?

I just found that Roz Stendahl made a great video review of this set, seen here.