Roman Szmal Watercolour Review

What are Roman Szmal watercolours?

Technically the full name of this paint range is Roman Szmal Aquarius, made in Poland, and specialising in pan paints- no tubes as of November 2025. These are professional quality paints, and competitively priced when compared to full pans from many other artist grade paints.

The range has a lot of single pigment paints, including a few unusual ones that may be difficult to find elsewhere. There are over 200 colours available, and I have a selection of 34 at the moment. Whereas my previous reviews looked at curated sets of paint, here I purchased a job lot of somewhat random colours from another artist. Later I bought a half dozen other paints open stock from Jackson’s (not an affiliate link, I just like shopping there) either choosing personal favourites such as Cobalt Blue PB28 or unusual pigments such as Perylene Green deep PBk32.

Colour Selection

Below are swatches of the colours I currently own.

Buff Titanium, PW6:1. Naples Yellow Light, PW4, PY53, PBr24. Nickel Titinate Yellow, PY53. Lemon Yellow, PY61.

Hansa Yellow Medium, PY74. Permanent Yellow, PY139. Pyrrole Scarlet, PR255. Pyrrole Rubine, PR264.

Perylene Maroon, PR179. Potter’s Pink, PR233. Quinacridone Red, PV19. Cobalt Violet Light, PV49.

Perylene Violet, PV29. Dioxazine Violet, PV37. Indanthrone Blue, PB60. French Ultramanrine, PB29.

Cobalt Blue, PB28. Cobalt Turquoise, PB36. Cobalt Cerulean, PB36. Phthalo Blue, PB15:3.

Viridian, PG18. Phthalo Green blue shade, PG7. Perylene Green Deep, PBK32. Olive Green Light, PY129, PY150, PBr25, PB29.

Yellow Ochre, PY43. Dark Ochre, PY43. Cyprus Raw Umber Brownish, PBr7. Cyprus Burnt Umber Deep, PBr7.

Quinacridone Burnt Sienna, PO48. Red Ochre, PR102. Transparent Brown, PBr23. Caput Mortum, PR102.

Shadow Violet, PB29, PG50, Aquarius Grey, PW6:1

General performance

• These paints are highly pigmented in every colour I tested. I started testing these paints directly after finishing my Daler-Rowney Aquafine reviews and the difference is striking. A little goes a long way, and I had to consciously back off and use less paint to get the desired results with Roman Szmal’s paints. Excellent!
• These are some of the easiest paints to activate amongst every brand I’ve tried. Only M Graham’s paints have been easier to rewet (they don’t really dry out fully, and are always a bit goopy in the pans). The only colour I found difficult to activate was Viridian PG18, which is often a tricky pigment.
• When Mr Szmal labels a colour as transparent, he really means it, and there are plenty of them to choose from. With a couple of other brands (notably Blockx) I’d chosen to buy colours specifically because they were labelled as transparent, and was disappointed with how cloudy they were. None of that nonsense here. I really liked the selection of perylene colours available, and have used the perylene maroon PR179 as a substitute for the beautiful but fugitive alizarin crimson PR83.
• There is also an array of strongly granulating colours. Potter’s Pink PR233, Cobalt Violet Light PV49, Cobalt Turquoise PB36. Cyprus Raw Umber Brownish PBr7 and Caput Mortum PR102 all create delightful textural effects.
• I notice that these paints disperse readily wet in wet, flowing freely across the page. This can make some of the finely divided small pigment paints (phthalos, quinacridones, perylenes etc) a little hard to control, but once they dry they tend to stay in place.

Lightfast Test Results

When I initially got a box of these I cut swatches in half, putting one half on a wall that gets a fair bit of sun and the other in a folder in a drawer. I let them cook for 2 years then compared both halves. The only colour where I noticed a change was shadow violet, which looks slightly less purple after exposure.

Mixing and Layering

I chose 3 transparent single pigment colours for the mixing wheel. They mixed cleanly, with some saturation loss in the purples, probably from using such a greenish blue.

They also layered nicely. This scan is a bit wahsed out, the page much darker and more vibrant in person. The transparent colours get darker as you layer them (as they should) and you can see some of the covering power of naples yellow light and nickel titinate yellow.

One advantage of having a variety of granulating paints, as well as smooth transparent ones, is you can make your own separating mixtures. Similar to “super granuating” convenience mixtures, the heavier granulating pigment settles out and forms a speckled texture within the more freely dispersing pigment. You can also make super granulating mixes by combining multiple granulating paints. Not always easy to control, but can be a fun and easy way to create texture, and a time-saving way to imply detail.

Test Paintings

I have a ton of paintings where I used these in combination with White Nights, but not so many where I only used Roman Szmal. Here’s an adorable unicorn painted with only Roman Szmal Aquaruis for your viewing pleasure.

The next two paintings were completed following tutorials by Geoff Kersey.

And this one was painted from my own photograph:

The paints performed admirably at every turn. I had no trouble getting the depth of value or hue saturation that I wanted. The mixed and layered without getting chalky, shiny, soapy or any other weird thing you might get with substandard paint. The granulating colours were fun to play with, and they even offer a few premixed separating paints, such as shadow violet. I haven’t used shadow violet in these test paintings though, as it changed hue in my lightfast test. All other colours that I tested appear to have great lightfastness.

Verdict

One of the reasons it took me so long to put out this review is because I really like these paints and I didn’t want to switch over to testing the next set. I like them a lot, and I’ll be keeping them to continue using once I’ve tested all the other paints in my silly hoard. I’ve run out of Cobalt Violet Light PV49 though. Its a delightful paint, but weaker than most (normal for this pigment) and I’ve used it to death. RIP.

If you like pan paints I highly recommend these paints. If you prefer tubes these are probably not the paints for you.

Next time I’ll be reviewing a line of student grade paints- Page of London. I was given a vintage set of these recently and I’m curious to see how they handle. See you soon.