Aquafine watercolour tubes slider set review

Last week we reviewed the Aquafine pans https://artrumpus.com/aquafine-pan-review/ so lets take a look at the tubes and see how they compare.

What is Aquafine?

Aquafine is a range of watercolour products made by Daler-Rowney.
They are cheaper than the Artist’s (professional) range, and more expensive than the Simply (budget) range. They don’t explicitly state that Aquafine are student quality, but logically that’s where they fit in.

The box I’m reviewing today was part of a collection of “art thingies” that belonged to a friend of a friend who sadly passed away recently. The box has some age to it, with the packaging design being outdated. A few of the colours are made from different pigments to those in the current range. It doesn’t look like the previous owner ever actually used the paints.

About the box

I received this set in the original cardboard packaging box above. This has company branding and some basic product information in 5 languages.

Inside is a leaflet with a chart of the full colour range, some basic tips for new painters and two short tutorials.

Of much more interest is the plastic box which actually houses the paints. This has some interesting features I haven’t seen before.

It is quite a substantial box for just 10 colours. There is some company branding on the lid.

Opening things up provides some explanation on why the box is chunky. There are a series of mixing wells in the lid, and two slider wings which pop out of the sides. It’s like one of those transforming robot toys, except paintyer. Yes that’s a word now.

It is worth noting that all these mixing areas are removable, which is a genius idea because it makes them much easier to scrub clean.

I don’t think this particular set is still being produced, but this box design is still being sold. It is now part of Daler-Rowney’s Artist’s watercolour range (sold with a black lid instead of blue), and comes filled with 20 half pans. So if you fancy a box with tons of mixing areas, that option is still out there.

I think the box design has some very good ideas going for it, but not necessarily a good fit for me. Some of the mixing areas were too small to meet my needs, and the plastic stained easily. I just prefer a larger ceramic mixing palette in the studio, and this box is a bit too big and heavy for me to want to travel with it.

The set also comes with a very serviceable number 4 brush. It holds more water and points better than the brush that was included in the travel pan set.

The paints

Pigment information is also provided along the side of the tube. On the back is the barcode, company web address, and a little box that says “no health labelling required.” This is good to know if you have kids or pets that might get into ’em.

The colours

I’m gonna be real, I only used this colour maybe twice. I just don’t reach for white watercolour often, if I want to add white I use gouache instead, because of its greater covering power.

Almost identical to the lemon yellow in the pan set. The fresh tube paint seemed slightly brighter and clearer, but this is probably only because I’ve been using the pan version a lot and contaminated it with other colours.

This is a pleasing bright warm red with good tinting strength, but PR4 is not lightfast. See technical pigment info here. According to KimCrick’s article here PR4 shows signs of fading in 1-3 months.

NOTE: This colour is now made with PR255, Pyrrole scarlet, which is much more lightfast.

Alizarin crimson is a beautiful cool red, but unfortunately widely reported as fugitive when diluted. In the current Aquafine colour chart and my pan set it has been replaced by PR176, which is more permanent in masstone.

Having no permanent red really put me off this set, it’d have to be confined to sketchbook practice only. Daler-Rowney has clearly done work to correct the issue in recent years, so if you buy a new set of Aquafine paint you should not have this problem.

A saturated warm blue, I liked this one better than the Ultramarine Blue Deep in the pan set. This definitely has higher chroma, and seems to have stronger tinting strength too. Possibly my favourite colour in the set.

A dark cool blue. This one rewet easily, which makes it much better than my Winsor and Newton Cotman tube of Prussian Blue, which dries into an unusable rock.

PB27 is another pigment with questionable lightfastness. To quote KimCrick’s article “Some student brands like Daler Rowney Aquafine, as well as Winsor and Newton Cotman, seem to have unusual texture problems as well as dramatic irreversible fading.”

Phthalocyanine green PG7 (blue shade) is a very reliable cool green. This colour has good tinting strength and painted out well. As usual with phthalo green it is transparent and staining.

Quite similar to the yellow ochre in the pan set, this earth yellow is incredibly useful in situations where the bright cool lemon yellow is too strident.

I prefer the new formulation in the pan set, which is a single pigment paint and distinctly more of a orangey brown. This one is more of a chocolate colour.

A warm black with good tinting strength. I found this colour dispersed readily, flowing across the page wet in wet. I haven’t used this one all that much, as I find black can sometimes deaden and overwhelm other colours.

Overall I feel that the colour selection isn’t exactly bad, but it isn’t for me. If I remove the 3 fugitive colours, and the black and the white which I don’t have much use for, then I’m only using half the set. The box is specifically moulded to fit the Aquafine watercolour tubes, so I can’t just drop in other brands to substitute colours I’d prefer.

Test paintings

Colour wheel

Mixing lemon yellow, ultramarine blue, and alizarin crimson gave satisfying results.

Layering and Transparency

Colours are generally quite transparent, if a little weak.

Projects

This was done only using colours from the tube set, and a ballpoint pen. The colours mix nicely, I was able to get a skintone without losing luminosity. I used some black on the boot bcause the burnt sienna and ultramarine mix wasn’t going as dark as I wanted.

This one is mostly tube paint, with the addition of raw sienna from the pan set. The paints flowed nicely wet in wet, and lifted easily to create the cigarette smoke. I was able to get some saturated colours- see the yellow staple gun, but overall the painting came out lighter than I had originally intended.

This one is on hotpressed paper, which helps colours look brighter and more vibrant. I had fun with the splashy background, but ended up finishing off some details on the figure with coloured pencils because I couldn’t get the values dark enough and it was just getting dull the more I worked on it.

Use it or lose it?

This set just isn’t for me. Neither the box nor the colour selection are well suited to my needs. However the colours are fairly vibrant, and behave as watercolours should. They flow nicely, and have no weird soapy or chalky texture. There’s loads of paint left and the box is in good working order, so I’ll donate the box to local charity and hope someone picks it up who will enjoy the set and use it.