Half pans of watercolor go a long way. Big brushes are better with full pans if you paint directly from the pan. But I move the paint to a pallette first because that gives me more control over the amount of paint on the brush. So half pans work even with big brushes for me.

Unless I am sketching and working small, I don’t like half pans. I do think they limit the size of the brush. I still remember when I first started, trying to use half pans with a 1 1/2″ hake brush. It was funny, but not really fun. A big brush will suck up a lot of water/paint. I actually like to use tubes on a palette, though, so it’s personal preference. Hopefully the instructor is familiar with what works for what she’s teaching, so maybe half pans will be fine for her class. Perhaps you could contact her before you buy your paints and talk it over? Whatever you end up with, I hope you will enjoy your class and working in watercolour!

Noelle

Hi Sutra

I am a half-pan man. What I do is top them up from tubes the night before, and then they are good to go the next day. Topping up is more cost effective then constantly buying half-pan refills.

+1 for full pans: i find half pans too small for my large brush. Better yet, buy tubes and use to fill any size container you want..

Half pans are awkward to use even with some not very large brushes like 3/4inch flats. Larger rounds, although they fit, may cause overspills plus they’ll take more punishment digging the half pans. The price difference between the two pan sizes in some artist quality brands is not very significant. You can buy metal boxes that take both sizes and see how it goes.

I use a metal paint box in which I have replaced the used half pans with empty full sized pans.
These I have used to store paints from tubes.
You can obtain similar full pans on Ebay.

I don’t like messimg with tubes every time I want to paint, so I fill empty full size pans with the colors I use the most. I have a large tin for all the colors I normally use, and a small tin for quick sketches.

I use a half pan set of watercolors to paint plen aire but use tubes when I’m home. I wet my paints a time or two before I actually start painting and then I keep wetting the palette now and then as it seems to dry. It’s the wet paint that’s in a liquid state that we paint with and if the pans are well watered, then it’s not such a digging matter. I use rounds from size 2 to size 12 and I don’t find that I have to abuse my brushes much. I don’t work with larger than 9×12 paper and most of the time I cut those sheets in half, so I’m not needing such a great amount of liquid paint out of the pans.

Someone mentioned the porcelain small palettes (Jack Richeson is what I use) and they said they thought the little wells wouldn’t hold enough paint if working from tubes. I use tubes and you’d be surprised just how far tube paint stretches so those porcelain palettes (one with 22 wells and one with 12 wells, I have both sizes) that I use hold plenty. I use the inside of the palette lids as a mixing surface when I need more paint than the little wells hold. To start with, I just put my colors I’m going to use in the little wells along the side of the palette. Then I have three small wells left per row to use for additional paint bits for diluting for paler washes of that color or whatever. The wells are very smooth as is the lid—-nothing in them to damage your brushes at all. I’m going to fill one of the smaller ones with tube paint and let it dry, then I’ll take that to paint plen aire next time I go.