List Price: $29.99
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I have never painted in my life, and thought I'd take up watercolors as a new hobby. I found this kit and bought it immediately.
For the price of about $16, you can get this w/c kit as a great gift for a child or young teen or even a novice like myself. The price seems incredibly great for what you get. Tubes of watercolors that are a decent size, several brushes, a sharpener, a clip to hold your paper to the easel, a pencil with no eraser, but you DO get an eraser to use, a plastic mixing knife, a 6 cell palette and the pad of w/c paper. The box itself also folds into a small tiltled easel.
First complaint, and these are not big issues, just things I've noticed: the box making itself into about only a 45 degree angle easel is a nice nifty idea, but the problem is is that it folds out the long way, so that if you are using a table that does not have a lot of length to it, your easel will not fit. It will not fit on my desk, which is about a 2 x 3 art desk. No big deal, I just ripped the white hard easel part from the box, and now it folds up and I can store it and use it when I want. I now can also turn it the other way, so it stands more upright, at a steeper angle, like a real easel does. It doesn't stand on it's own now, since I ripped it off the box, but it works for me, as I prop it up and secure it with tape to the table so it won't slip.
2nd problem: for watercoloring, apparently, you need a nice fat round size 10 or 12 brush. These brushes are okay, but they are really samll, for detailed work. They must be like a size 4 and smaller. You get about 5 brushes, all tiny tipped. There is no large brush to mop water onto your paper, or a large size 10 round watercolor brush to work with. I had to go out and buy me a size 10, 12, and a 14 for myself. Also, the one round tipped brush I AM using from this kit--well, all of the paint has cracked and flaked off of the brush handle itself, indicating cheap quality. And I do NOT leave my brushes in the water, do not let the dry upright, but always laying flat, so the flaking of the paint off of the handle is just cheap quality.
The quality of the paints--I guess they are fine. Like I said, I am a newbie to this, so I think the paints are fine as far as quality goes. I'm sure they are not nearly as good as say, Van Gogh tube paints. But tube paints like these are TONS better than those pans of w/c's you used to get as a kid. Those are junk! Those pans are not real watercolors, but they DO make pans of excellent quality watercolors, and one of my favorite pans has been from a japanese company--I bought them here on amazon.com---and they are pearlescent watercolors in a pan. Beautiful for doing detailed and bright shimmery final touches.
The little 6 cell palette that comes with this kit is a joke, there is NO room to put water, or to mix colors. It is practically useless, and I had to go out and buy a large 10 x 12 palette with different squared off sections inside for holding water and mixing many colors. The little 6 cell palette might make a better deviled egg holder than a paint palette!
The eraser that comes wtih this kit is driving me nuts, and it flakes badly, terribly in fact, leaving huge pieces and chunks of rubber all over my work and then my art table, and then the floor. It rubs off into little worms. Annoying and messy. The eraser is too soft. I have to go out and buy a harder less messy eraser now.
The pencil that came with the kit is just a pencil, no eraser. Thank goodness they provide a pencil sharpender, which is cheap too, but seems to do the job so far.
The little plastic knife is just alright, nothing special here. I could do the same withe the handle of a plastic McDonald's spoon.
The watercolor pad of paper had 15 sheets in it. I immediately removed each sheet for easier use. The pad was actually glued down to the fold out easel, so after I ripped the easel off from the box, I had to rip the pad from the easel, which tore some of the backing off of the easel, making it ugly, but it's on the back, and no one sees it anyhow. It was like they cleverly put this kit together, yet it all turned out to be so impractical.
I ended up using the tray out of the box as a place to toss all of my pencils and paints and things. There is no lid to it, since I tore the box apart and threw it away. It was big and bulky and useless. But the tray part makes a good place to toss my tubes and brushes for now.
A tiny pamphlet came with this kit too, but it is a joke also. Just like 4 little pages of common sense stuff. It didn't teach me a thing. The booklet is useless. I have been using YouTube to watch How-To videos and I bought a book from Amazon for first time watercolorists.
All in all, for $16, it's an aeesome gift I would have loved to have received as a younger person. The majority of the work that went into this kit was in the packaging. I suggest you buy yourself some watercolor postcards along with this kit, because you are only going to use thse brushes to do small fine work, not big paintings like on the pad of paper that came with the kit. Not unless you are extremely patient and are already an artist, or you already own a size 10 or 12 round watercolor brush. I don't know WHY they didn't include the standard watercolor #10 or 12 size with this kit. Or even a 1/2 or 3/4 chisel brush. It's almost like selling you a car, and then the most important part, the steering wheel, is only the size of a coffee cup saucer. Watercolors are usually done with a larger brush, because of the way the colors are meant to be wet and work and wash and melt and 'cook' on the paper as you use them and as they dry. After you do your initial large painting, then maybe you'd want to come back with the brushes in this kit and add in your finer details. In the meantime, get the watercolor postcards, they are a LOT thicker, won't curl up like the paper in the pad that came with this kit does, and you'll be able to use these small brushes for postcard sized work to get your started. What I did was cut the pieces of paper from this pad's kit into 4 pieces each, and each one was almost 4 x 6, postcard size, just a little larger. But not thick enough to mail as it is, as the paper is too thin. But good for practising on until you can get some w/c postcards to paint on. So be warned, the more paper you add to the paper that came with this kit, the more it's gonna curl up on the edges if you don't secure it down. BTW, this means getting some masking tape and taping your paper down to a board FIRST, before you start painting on it. Sorry--I should have mentioned that earlier, about the masking tape and this paper curling if you don't.
I would have given this kit 5 stars, but gave it only 4 becaue of the cheap quality of the brushes and the eraser and the palette that is ridiculous. The paints are nice, there is no purple, but there is orange, red, brown, 2 greens, yellow, orange, black, white and 2 blues. I'd suggest if you don't know how to mix your own colors you might want to buy a more mustard colored yellow, because the one in this kit is like bright washed out lemon yellow, not quite dark enough. Also, maybe buy a hot pink, and a purple color and you'll be set.
I know for a fact that you cannot go to walmart and buy all of these items that came in this kit for under $25 even, so the price was great. Get it---it IS a great gift for a budding artist. It sure has sparked MY interest and I've found out at the age of 42 that I DO have some artistic abilities, so I've spent a lot more money on other things I need, like those larger brushes and a darn eraser that won't flake apart and drive me nuts! I have to do all of my painting in sketches first and that requires a lot of erasing, LOL.
OH, and one more thing, the lid of the box has a magnet in it, to hold it nicely shut. Just one more small marketing gimmick that is completely ueeless for anything, other than asthetics. But it sure makes for a beautiful gift, one that looks like it's a whole lot of stuff, and that you spent a lot of money on it. ;-)
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This set is just what a beginner needs!! Nice little set that has everything you need to start painting. Great Price. Love it!
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