an early gift

After watching Teoh Yi Chie’s comparison video of two popular Japanese watercolor paint brands, I wished to try some for myself. The plastic box of handmade Kissho Gansai arrived this week (I found them on eBay) and I immediately painted out color samples in my sketchbook.

The above sketch shows the order they came in, as well as the stock number and Japanese name. In the pan, it’s hard to tell what color some of them are. My high school art teacher, Annie Lowery, was Japanese — I sure could’ve used her help! Sadly she passed away . . . on the very same day I visited a watercolor group for the first time and renewed an interest in art after ignoring it for 33 years. I always thought the timing a bit weird.

My first impression is how much more transparent they seem than Teoh described. True, they are just a bit towards the opaque side, but still very clear and bright. My second impression: the paint picks up very easily without needing to spritz the pans first with a spray bottle.

The colors aren’t so very different from what I’m used to, though I don’t have any way of knowing what pigments are used. I set them in my old “rainbow followed by neutrals” order — I can now see that one of those darks is an “indigo” and needs to be moved next to the blues. Maybe that “earth yellow” should be moved next to the bright yellow instead of with the neutrals?

I’ll have fun playing with them, especially for painting Etegami with a large Japanese brush, but after they are used up I plan on refilling with my regular paints as it would be difficult to find refills of Gansai. The layout of the plastic palette fits my new “4 primaries + extras” arrangement and I love the palette itself. Which might be the real reason I wanted to try these in the first place.