Home › Forums › Explore Media › Casein, Gouache, and Egg Tempera › Suggestions for best ‘good enough’ gouache?
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December 2, 2018 at 1:35 pm #465625
So I recently started using gouache and love it, the flat matte quality and malleability is something I’ve always looked for in a paint medium. The only problem is I started with an expensive set of Holbeins, which I like quite a bit, but I am too conservative when applying paint to the palette; I don’t have a solid grasp of the technique so I don’t want to waste it.
I’m looking for a less expensive set that I can let loose with until I know what I’m doing. Are there any brands that hit the sweet spot between student grade and artist? The price of Winsor & Newton isn’t bad at Michaels, but there’s something about their color selection that I find off putting. I have a cotman set of watercolors and feel the same way– they don’t look “neutral”, if that makes any sense. But that’s just me.
Something available on Amazon would be preferred. Thanks for any suggestions.
December 2, 2018 at 2:30 pm #740762ShinHan has a line they call Professional Poster Colour. Here in Canada at least they are inexpensive (about a quarter the price of Winsor & Newton) and they feel pretty decent to me – not quite as nice as M Graham or W&N but good – definitely superior to Pebeo, the other inexpensive brand I’ve tried.
They come in 40ml jars which locally cost 8 bucks and have a large colour selection.December 3, 2018 at 6:36 am #740736DB Clemmons has trialed the Arteza brand gouache with positive results. You can see his post HERE.
And here is the link on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/ARTEZA-Gouache-Premium-Artist-Paints/dp/B077Y6TVC8
December 3, 2018 at 11:35 am #740754Thanks for the responses. The Arteza look decent, but like the reviewer said I’m also annoyed they only seem to come in a set of 24 in 12ml. That’s somewhat limiting in the long term… As for the ShinHan, their availability seems more limited in the US. On ebay you can find sets of 30 in 40ml jars. Might be good but I’d probably want to find a smaller sample size to test them first.
Also been looking at Turner, as I think they are made in Japan. But some of the reviews on amazon are iffy, saying they are runny.
December 3, 2018 at 12:57 pm #740737Thanks for the responses. The Arteza look decent, but like the reviewer said I’m also annoyed they only seem to come in a set of 24 in 12ml. That’s somewhat limiting in the long term… As for the ShinHan, their availability seems more limited in the US. On ebay you can find sets of 30 in 40ml jars. Might be good but I’d probably want to find a smaller sample size to test them first.
Also been looking at Turner, as I think they are made in Japan. But some of the reviews on amazon are iffy, saying they are runny.
The Turner is the worst brand I’ve tried. Everytime you open a tube, they ooze a clear liquid even if you knead the tube first.
Not sure if they’re on Amazon, but Lucas has an affordable line. You can find them at Jerry’s Artarama. I consider them a step above student but not quite artist quality. I understand that Daler Rowney purchased the Lukas company so they may have improved the line as I haven’t purchased them in years.
Please let us know what you choose and how you like what you buy.
December 3, 2018 at 6:10 pm #740753I have to make a plug for this jelly cup gouache from Miya. Just search “Miya gouache” on Amazon and you will find it. A set of 18 30ml cups sells for $18 USD. Other than (probably) not being lightfast, everything else compares very favorably to professional gouache (MG is my normal artist grade). Excellent opacity and pigment load, great consistency, portable box with very secure seal, really easy to work with.
The only downside is that this 18 set of 18 is the only thing you can get in the US for now. But the company in facts makes a huge color range and many different sizes, oh and they also make cheap acrylics. Here is to hoping they will eventually sell more stuff in the US. And also hoping with more sales they can bring down the price more to match their actual pricetags in China. (That $18 set is suppose to be $7, but I guess they do have to ship stuff to the Amazon warehouse. ) I know what I am loading my luggage with next time I am in China.
December 4, 2018 at 5:31 am #740764I use Gouache only as a underpainting. In Europe you can get for the cheap price good ones from Nevskaya Palitra, the run under the names of White Nights/Master Class/Leningrad/… a Russian brand.
Sets have colors of 16*20ml or 12*40ml for 16€-19€
Amazon.de & Amazon.co.uk sell them not sure if you can order them from the US.
December 4, 2018 at 12:04 pm #740755I’ve heard good things about that Russian brand, unfortunately everwhere I look shipping is like $18.
What about poster paints? I’ve heard they are like gouache but generally lacking in lightfastness. Can somesort of spray remedy that? You can get a Sakura set of 12, 30ML for around $28.
December 5, 2018 at 12:02 pm #740756I’ve done some research on these cheaper brands, I was considering the LUKAS brand but after watching this video I’m a bit more hesitant because of the amount of pigment. They don’t seem to have a student vs artist tier, it’s all under the Studio label, as far as I can tell. This lady does a swatch comparison with holbein (timestamped)
https://youtu.be/TOmv18N2SUk?t=430
And as for Arteza, they seem to have a real problem with lightfastness, at least with reds. Some may consider this the tradeoff for being so cheap, but in this lightfast test the LUKAS (and also Turner) fare much better.
https://youtu.be/nA9axb9pO8A?t=188
I’m beginning to think the quality I like about Holbein, its slightly textured very matte opacity, can’t be substituted on the cheap. But I’m going to look into Nicker next, they make a poster color that is apparently used by Studio Ghibli, so maybe it’s decent.
December 6, 2018 at 6:38 am #740738Well, you asked for something cheaper that you could learn with but it seems you want Holbein quality for a cheap price and, even though it’s what we all want, it’s not available.
The Nicker poster color is certainly not cheap and is also very hard to come by at times. It’s also of questionable (for most colors) lightfastness as it’s designed for animation. I’ve wanted to try it but couldn’t bring myself to invest in something that might fade quickly.
Have you read the sticky thread on gouache comparisons? DaVinci is a decent brand that I like but, of course, I prefer the MGrahams or Schminke but I learned with the Lukas. I’ve been an artist for a very long time but I can assure you I didn’t make any masterpieces when I started with gouache! Learning with a cheaper brand just made sense at the time.
However, I believe in using the best supplies you can afford and only you can decide what you need to do. Good luck finding your balance between price and quality.
December 6, 2018 at 1:37 pm #740757It’s not that I want Holbein quality per se, I just want it to behave like gouache and not more of a streaky opaque-ish watercolor. I admit I need to actually try more brands to see if the compromise is worth making.
The Nicker interests me because you can get a set of twelve 40ML jars for $54 on amazon. I looked at the lightfast chart and most of the colors aside from pinkish reds score an A or B, meaning partial or full lightfastness. I may try them out, haven’t decided yet, but it’s surprising how little real world experience I can find on them.
December 7, 2018 at 11:49 am #740758I think I will take a chance on the Nicker. Despite liking Holbein there are some aspects that I find difficult: it dries very quickly on the palette, and it seems to really demand the right balance of water/paint, which makes the thicker, opaque layers tricky. I find that my cheaper synthetic brushes really don’t play well with it, though my synthetic sable ones are decent. I’m hoping the poster paint is alittle more fluid.
December 7, 2018 at 12:53 pm #740763You might be interested in this video, showing a studio Ghibli background painter using Nicker poster colour.
https://youtu.be/FTZhMGMe3SUDecember 15, 2018 at 12:20 pm #740744Ok, I know what I’m going to recommend will probably be seen as heretical, but I recommend Dick Blick Premium Tempera at $3.59 for an 8oz bottle ($5.10 for a 16oz bottle). I know that the color selection is slim at only 15 colors (I didn’t count any of the metallic or fluorescent colors). On the plus side the colors are creamy, matte, and rewettable.
I don’t know how lightfast the colors are, but Blick lists them as “Brilliant, Lightfast color.” Blick makes multiple temperas. The “Premium” is the top of the line (read most expensive) of the bunch. Before, I started playing with gouache I bought a bottle of white and black and then proceeded to go to town in monocolor. I then bought all the other colors they had.
I own a complete designers box set of Winsor & Newton (read the whole line of colors) along with some colors long out of production that I still use (why did they dump Cadmium Red Deep). I also have a bunch of other colors from most of the other makers. But, on my desk always at hand are my Dick Blick Premium black and white.
I am not a great artist just a retired guy who enjoys drawing and painting. Just to let you know who the recommendation is coming from.
December 16, 2018 at 6:20 am #740739Thanks for posting about the Blick tempera. I’ve often wondered if tempera as we know it in the US was close to gouache.
I’d be a bit concerned about the lightfastness as it seems whenever I use a non-professional art media, I end up painting something I think is frameable! Murphy’s Law, I guess.
Have you ever made a color chart and put it in a window to test the fading? If not, and if you still have all the colors, would you consider doing it?
Thanks for your input, sometimes the paint/supplies we don’t consider as fine-art worthy end up being a favorite medium – just look at gouache!
AbA
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