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Roman Szmal Aquarius

Get your own:
Half pans: [ Ссылка ]
This set:

Starter pack of 5
Purchased through Jackson's: [ Ссылка ]

Five pans for $15.04- usually Roman Szmal Aquarius watercolors average around $5ish a pan on Jackson's, so I felt this was a very good deal.

I really appreciate these types of test packs that allow customers to see if a watercolor is right for them without a huge investment.

According to Jackson;s

This starter set is a great introduction to the Aquarius range, offering a foundational palette for mixing and experimenting.
Made with high-quality gum arabic and glycerin, linden honey, distilled water, and pigment
Produced in small batches that are tested for performance qualities
Range contains a selection of unique tones created exclusively by Roman Szmal
Every pan is hand filled and labelled with watercolour paper
Excellent for professionals or beginners

These are mostly single pigment paints- 117 out of the 140 color range are monopigment paints
This helps ensure cleaner mixes
Aquarius includes tones made from natural earth pigments, not synthetics, and are exclusive to Roman Szmal (including Aquarius Green, which is in this set)

In this set: 204 Lemon Yellow, 323 Aquarius Red, 223 Ultramarine Light, 346 Aquarius Green, 239 Caput Mortuum.


The packaging:

Shrink wrap was difficult to remove
Cardboard sleeve

Individual whole pans are wrapped in foil
Layer of wax paper between the foil and the paint

Not too much waste has been generated.

Kind of a rough, hand filled look to them, very hand of the artist

Swatching on the Baohong Pad

Lightfast and transparency info are not available IN the set, but their pigment information is available online:
[ Ссылка ]

Lemon Yellow- PY61- 7 MS, NG, Semi Transparent
Aquarius Red- PR214- 7/8 S NG Semi Transparent
Ultramarine Light- PB29- 8, S, G, Semi Transparent
Aquarius Green- PY150, PBR25, PB29- 8, S, G, Semi Transparent
Caput Mortuum PR102- 8, MS, G, Semi Transparent

Swatching notes:

Colors all activated quickly with A LOT of color
Aquarius Red and Caput Mortuum seem to have a lot of opacity
Aquarius Green is gorgeous, although it's not a single pigment color- I wonder if when working with earth tones, they break the pigments down by individual elements in the soil?

Will also do a mixing test

Aquarius Green seems very similar to Daniel Smith's Undersea Green- a granulating dark green with hints of olive and dark blue. Their swatch granulated a bit more than mine does. All of the colors in this set are semi transparent according to the listing.

These didn't really seem to pollute the water, even though some of these are more opaque.

Mixing:

Optical Mixing:
It's a really humid night, so while I THOUGHT these colors were dry, it seems like they werent entirely, so we have a wee bit of wet into wet and transference going on. That's an ID10T error, not a watercolor error.

Manual Mixing:
Can mix some really lovely and interesting colors, particularly utilizing the Aquarius Green and Caput Mortuum. For the fieldtest, I'll probably need to order a couple more full pans, as the type of illustration I typically do would be a challenge with this palette, but I can see these colors being really useful for my plein air friends.

The full pans are really very reasonably priced- from $3.41ish to $5.29ish, with most hovering around $4.50. Compared with watercolor generally popular in the US, this is very inexpensive, especially for professional quality watercolor.

The Verdict:

Quite affordable. Saturated color. Somewhat lifting. Easy to mix. Roman Szmal's test set of Aquarius watercolors has me convinced that I need to try more. While I enjoy the color selection, and feel it'd be great for urban sketching, I'll definitely need a few more colors up my sleeve if I hope to do a proper fieldtest. So with that, my verdict is still fairly inconclusive, and I hope you'll join me for the upcoming fieldtest!


Aquarius Unbox and Swatch Music:
8 Bit Dreamscape
A Quiet Thought
A Typical Ride Out
Finding Me
Touching Moment
Summer Love
Silver Blue Light
Seasons
Meadow
Missing My Girl
A Quiet Thought

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