Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I LOVE these watercolors. Let me be straight with you--these are not like regular watercolors. Yes, they are student grade, but I would not suggest these for an absolute beginner, because they behave oddly in two ways--the binder is a little thick and slightly gelatinous if you don't use enough water, and THEY GRANULATE! Now, if you know a bit about watercolors, granulation is a highly desired effect for some artists, and that's a hard effect to find among student grade paints, except in very few colors. Daniel Smith paints are well known for having this effect in many of their colors, but they are professional grade and very expensive. If you've always wanted to play around with granulation but can't/don't want to fork over the money for DS paints, these are a wonderful place to start. I've attached pictures that give examples of the granulation these provide. It doesn't happen with all colors, but it does happen with most! All that being said--I give their presentation 10/10. Absolutely amazing. The pretty metal tin comes in a pink plush drawstring bag, and inside the tin is everything you need to get started (except a pencil sharpener and water, haha). The paper provided is thick and highly textured, and the swatch chart is printed on the same kind of paper. I have a few small complaints here--the color chart and swatch chart are not laid out in the same even rows as the paints, which is annoying. I also didn't feel the layout of the colors made much sense, and I may switch them around myself later. As with most student grade paints, no pigment or lightfastness information is provided. The metallics and neons are okay, but I don't feel they're quite as good/pigmented as the rest of the colors, and I don't see myself using them very much anyway. Here's the biggest problem, but one I'm not going to dock a star for, simply because these are student grade, and their strengths as such outweigh this--there is a bit of color ruboff when they're dry. This is much more of a problem on their provided paper...I tried rubbing some color off on two different kinds of my own paper, and while there was a tiny bit (just enough to see on my finger), there wasn't nearly as much. I'm sure this can be solved with some spray sealant, if you want to go that far. Otherwise...just don't be rubbing on your paintings! All in all, I'm tremendously pleased with these!