What are Aquafine paints?
Aquafine is a range of watercolour products made by Daler-Rowney. The line includes watercolour tube and pan paints, inks, brushes, paper and gouache. Aquafine is Daler-Rowney’s mid-grade watercolour line, they also offer Artists’ professional watercolour, and a basic entry level range called Simply.
What is included in this set
The set comes in a sturdy white plastic case, roughly the same size as a smart phone.
The box feels sturdy, and the clasp holds it securely shut, so it won’t flop open in your bag. There is subtle branding, with the Daler Rowney name debossed into the lid. Inside there are 12 half pan watercolours, and a size 4 travel brush. The bush is smaller than what I’d choose, but works fine. The lid has 3 decent sized mixing areas.
There are also small oval wells on either side of the paint pans. I’m not sure what their intended purpose is, but I use them for keeping a small blob of white gouache for creating opaque mixes.
To paint on the go all you’ll need is some water (or a waterbrush) and a sketchbook. Easy.
The packaging shows a picture with the paint tray removed from the box (to make more mixing space) but I’ve only removed the tray once and I don’t recommend it. The fit is really tight and I thought I might break the box getting the paints back in.
The paints are held in individual plastic half pans which can be removed and swapped around. They have the colour names and pigment numbers printed on the side, which is super helpful. I wish more paint makers did this.
Performance
The paints rewet easily and are strong and bright enough to get the job done. Earlier this month I painted a master swatch sheet of every watercolour I own and the primary colours were slightly weaker and more opaque than other brands but the others were all artist quality and most of them are more expensive, sometimes three or even four times the price per ml. The difference in quality is less obvious in the earthtones, which hold their own when compared with much more expensive paints.
Below is a swatch sheet, and a simple colour wheel.
There are four (correctly indicated on the packaging) hue colours here, the Gamboge, Cadmium Red, Alizarin Crimson and Cobalt Blue are all replacements of toxic, fugitive, or expensive pigments.
The colours all painted out well, none of them felt chalky, soapy or gritty, which can all be issues with low quality paint. In general these paints have lower tinting strength than the White Nights line I looked at in the previous post, with the exception of Yellow Ochre, which was pretty good here and disappointingly weak in White Nights.
A look at the individual colours
Lemon Yellow PY3
Lemon yellow is made with Hansa Yellow, and is a good semi-transparent cool yellow.
Gamboge Hue PY155, PR242
Gamboge Hue has rather weak tinting strength and I’ve run out of it. It mixes well despite being a multi pigment paint.
Cadmium Red Hue PR242
A really bright red, and one of the strongest primary colours in the set, More transparent than a genuine cadmium, and mixed well.
Alizarin Crimson Hue PR176
Alizarin Crimson Hue is made from a more permanent pigment than genuine Alizarin Crimson. It is more of a dull pink than a real crimson, but performs well enough as a cool red.
Cobalt Blue Hue PB29, PW6
Cobalt Blue Hue is a bit too warm in my opinion, genuine cobalt blue is a pure primary blue. I was pleasantly surprised that it doesn’t seem terribly chalky, despite containing white pigment.
Ultramarine Blue Dark PB29
Ultramarine Blue Dark is honestly not very dark and I have to use a lot of it to get a strong enough colour. I ran out of this colour during my final test painting.
Hooker’s Green Dark PY3, PG7, PV19
Hooker’s Green Dark is a convenience green (multipigment mixture) which looks a little unnatural. It is quite useful when modified by adding a touch of one of the earth colours to neutralise it slightly.
Yellow Ochre PY42
A nice yellow earth, I’ve been using it as my warm yellow after running out of Gamboge.
Light Red PR101
This earthtone is almost a soft pinnkish colour when diluted, useful for nature studies.
Raw Sienna PBr7
This dull yellowish brown is useful but in my opinion not as impressive as the other earth colours in the set.
Burnt Sienna PR101
I particularly like the burnt sienna as it is transparent, and is effective for mixing neutrals with the ultramarine.
Payne’s Grey PBk7, PB29
Payne’s Grey is nice and strong, and will go dark without appearing chalky, allowing for a full value range
This seems like a well balanced selection of colours, and I was able to mix whatever hues I wanted from what’s included here. I have not run lightfastness tests on these, as they are student grade paints and I’ve mostly used them for quick sketches and studies. The pigments listed above generally have good or excellent lightfastness ratings.
Test paintings
I’ve had this set since it arrived as part of a Scrawlrbox (which probably needs a post of its own) a few years ago, and filled a couple of small sketchbooks with these paints back in 2022. Below are some more recent paintings to refresh my memory of how the paints perform.
While I’ve mostly used these for small sketches I recently did a couple of larger paintings to see how they held up on more finished work. The above image used every colour except Cad Red Hue and Light Red, and the one below used only Cad Red Hue, Alizarin Crimson Hue, Cobalt Blue Hue, Ultramarine Blue Hue, Yellow Ochre, and Burnt Sienna. They were both done following tutorials from Geoff Kersey- *here* is his website. Not sponsored, I just enjoy the tutorials.
The paints handled well, mixing and layering to create finished paintings as good as any other project I’ve done following Geoff’s tutorials. I’m not happy with the sky in the second one, but that’s a problem with painting too slowly and paper drying unevenly, not a fault of the paint. I honestly forgot I was testing this set when doing these paintings, they were very easy to use and didn’t give any significant frustrations.
This last test painting got frustrating getting the colours as dark as I wanted, the space section took 5 layers and started bronzing so I called it done. It also took all the ultramarine I had left in the pan to do it.
Is the set a good choice for you?
I think this set is a good choice if you are new to watercolour and want to get started on a tight budget. The paints are plenty good enough to learn some basics and (more importantly) have fun.
My main issue is that I ran through some colours quite quickly, but you can always refill those most used colours with more potent artist grade paint, buying tubes one at a time as needed.
I also think it is a nice set if you’re interested in painting on the go. The box is compact and sturdy, and I had fun painting plein air with it. Of course if you’re an experienced plein air painter you probably already have a setup that’s just how you want it, but as a newbie travel sketcher this box made me happy.
This set is not a great idea if you like to paint BIG. Getting enough colour off the pans gets a bit tedious for anything over A4, especially if you want bold saturated colour and a full value statement.
Use it or lose it?
I’ll be keeping this one, the box is handy and practical, and the choice of colours included is pretty solid. I’m not in love with the paints themselves, so as they run out I’ll be refilling from artist grade tubes instead of replacing with more Aquafine paint.