The TRUTH about KURETAKE watercolor paints - PLUS more AMAZING color combinations (and Gold)!

[Music] hi everyone Diane here welcome to my channel we've got lots of fun things lined up for you today and um so let's not waste any time and get started um I've just been into the garden and I have gathered a few plants well one plant actually and this one here this is a late strawberry very late should have been um eaten in about June and it's now September um but this time year the strawberries turn a marvelous color they're still producing a few few fruit and amazingly still producing flowers which is quite ridiculous really there's a baby strawberry there and an even more baby strawberry there um so that's happening but at the same time a lot of the leaves are dying these ones have been significantly nibbled by probably slugs or something along those lines and this one is beautiful color look at the lovely color of that so I was looking for something colorful because I thought that's what we need to get started today and so I picked these and I've brought them into the studio and they're lying here on my palette this is my kiraki 48 set and um what I've done with it I've taken all the P the paints out of the box they came in a cardboard box as you probably know if you've got this set and I couldn't work with them like that so what I did was I took the lid from a big palette that I've got this is this isn't actually the palette this is the lid um but any kind of square tray would do you don't have to have this particular one although this is from Meen um but that's neither here nor there because it just happened to have it and I found that most of them I think I had to leave out a couple so I left out the ones I don't use very often um I'm not sure actually I could probably count and tell you how many there are here 3 six 8 10 12 14 16 22 24 26 28 29 30 32 34 36 40ish so yeah I took out a few and I put those ones in a different palette but um so this works really well and it gives me a lovely big mixing area in the middle I don't normally keep my flowers in the middle but um they're there for your benefit at the moment um I'll move them in a sec so what we're going to do today I don't know if you watched the video if you didn't watch it yet you might want to have a look at it the one where I did some swatching onto card like this I made a template like that and then I swatched out the nine colors that I was able to find in um different plants that I'd gathered in the garden so this was Spa which is a shrub that's quite common around here anyway uh lavender which we all know and love uh a rose a beautiful um pink rose that we have growing in the garden and um a hyd ranger which which is drying out and changing color you know um so that's what I did and what we discovered wasn't it was that each individual little tiny sprig of um a plant will come up with a wonderful palette of colors that you can then go ahead and use in a painting whether or not you decide to paint that particular object it's not not doesn't matter um you've got harmonious Haron Harmon harmonizing harmonizing colors so that's what we're going to do today but but with the exception when we did this um I mixed the colors to match what I saw today I'm going to challenge myself to find the colors in the already quite extensive range of kuraki gansai tambi colors and this is a set which I heartily recommend if you're a beginner or whether if you just looking for a new Direction in your painting I found that this was very liberating when I started to use it it completely changed the way I thought about painting completely changed the sorts of things that I wanted to paint gave me a lot more freedom because these paints are they work differently from ordinary watercolor they will work like ordinary watercolor but they've also got a characteristic which is somewhere tending towards um gouache it's not really gouache because it's not actually that opaque but it's kind of a bit like that and you don't get backgrounds as much and you don't get um bad mixes they all seem to play happily together so um if you haven't got a set of this you could give yourself a a treat this Autumn um as the Sun starts to disappear from our skies and perhaps buy your yourself a a little set you can get them in I think they come in twelves you don't have to go for the whole 48 anyway um I do recommend them they are good I like them I don't use them every day I often use different paint but you know so there's a good range of colors there and we're going to come back to that in a minute so what we're going to do is we're going to search for the colors that are hidden inside this um Autumn strawberry plant and we're going to do it in the same way that we did um earlier in previous video like I said if you haven't seen that one I suggest you might want to go and have a look I'm so I'm using my template which I just cut out using a you know an xacto knife and a ruler somebody suggested that you can buy you can buy templates like this ready made so if you're not very happy about using a knife you could buy one I think she she call it something elephant can't remember now exactly some some one of those places that sells stamps and dyes and things like that so that's a possibility um so there we are we have our nine squares and what I'm going to do now is I'm going going to look very closely at my pieces of strawberry and I'm going to try to find hopefully I will find the colors that are lurking here in my set of kuraki paints without having to mix anything now it may very well be that it will come later that I need to do some mixing or I want to do some mixing to adjust the colors depending on how I'm using um them but we'll start off with the pure colors first of all so what I'm going to do is look for the darkest color I'm just wondering whether I'm going to use this Square brush to do I might I might try the square brush but if I change brushes um please forgive me um so this is a half in flat brush this one so we'll try that to start with I just get some water on my brush and looking here at the range of colors I have a suspicion that this color here is the one that they call maroon and that is number uh where is it on here maroon is number 72 in French maroon means Brown sort of chestnut color cuz that's what maroon is it's from Mah which means Chestnut um so it's brownish red effectively so that's I hope going to be something like that so we pick up some of that and then we just fill in that square yeah I think the square brush probably works quite well so it's that is somewhere between those two but if I take a bit more of it make it a bit thicker because when you're painting with water color as you know the more pigment you pick up the darker the result and I think that is close enough for me and then on the same Leaf we have a totally different shade of red so I'm going to think to myself I think I would call that Rose matter deep I'm going to hope that that's what that one is you could probably get a little bit closer to that if you added some yellow to it but we are not mixing at the moment are we we're just going with the nearest that we can get straight from the pan so to speak then um I'm going to leave that one for the SEC for a second and go to this one because here we have some nice Browns and I'm thinking probably burnt sienna and Indian red so this is burnt sienna it should be something like one of these Browns on here the lighter one and the great thing about doing this is it does train your eye and it's very helpful very helpful so that's roughly this color here and then Indian red I'm hoping is going to be something like this okay so that's this color here and then I'm looking here and here we have yellow Oak and then we've got green here and that is um turn that around that is greenish yellow which is here so it's very very similar to that and if you look at those six already you can see how that's beautifully harmonized and that six will make a very nice painting because it's often a good idea when you're creating a palette to work from to have basically some analogous colors so sort of different shades of red in this case and then something on the other side of the color wheel so like a a bright yellow or green as a contrast so you would use that as an accent I think we do that in in home decor don't we you know when you're decorating your house you might have all your Sofas in sort of Browns and rusts and beiges and stuff like that and then you have a few pops of a brighter color like lime green or bright orange or something and um that's I think the way well it used to be recommended I don't probably I don't do it like that anymore but that's what we used to know um so then I'm going to look the strawberry itself whoops and this is probably I would say cadmium Scarlet so we'll just go around to the Reds and not cadmium red but cadmium Scarlet for this rather unripe strawberry okay on the other side it's a creamy kind of color so you could just say oh well that's just um yellow ochre kind of more pale so I don't think we'll try to to match that one but there is a nice kind of pink here um that would be in the um art Novo set that color but I'm going to ignore that for the minute because I haven't got it handy um we have the center of the white flowers I'm looking at that and thinking Yes actually that is probably the greenish yellow is about as close as we need to go for that um and now we've got two more spaces so we want to look at the greens the stronger greens for the leaves and to give us a bit more contrast so I'm going to say I think that um olive green is going to be my first choice for these leaves so that's this color pretty much and which one have I not got yet I put bur Sienna there didn't I I should have written them down as I was going along um let me write them down now say what they are so I don't get even more confused the first one was maroon then we had Rose matter deep then that must have been burnt sienna no that was Indian red no it wasn't that's burnt sienna if I look back through the video I'll find out won't I but I can't do that now Indian red and this one's cadmium Scarlet this one's olive green this one is uh yellow ochre this one's greenish yellow and I need one more color to find in there um oh yes what have we got here this is a kind of orangey sort of red so I think we could [Music] probably um let me see I think I'm going to go for cadmium orange yeah and I think I'm finding that on this Lea here right in the middle here and now you're wondering what is she going to do next well what we're going to do next is basically we're going to do some um some Doodles effectively so I'm going to just pop those over there and uh I will um I will name the last one which I think is cadmium orange and then I'm going to label this down the bottom and I'm going to call it Autumn strawberry and then so then this palette can go together with the other ones that I had done before and um then in future I'll be able to look back and uh work with that so I'm going to put that on my bookst stand in front of me whoops sorry about that my iPad falling over never a good idea and we're going to go now to a piece of 10 by7 meden um cold press waterolor 100% cotton paper and what I'm going to do I'm just pondering how I'm going to make this work am I going to put a border around the outside edge am I going to be that precious about it is this going to be a work of art doesn't it always seem as if if you put a border around the piece of paper then it's something that you're going to be trying to make into a work of art rather than a work in progress It's a thought isn't it so I don't think I'll do that but what I'm going to do is I'm going to paint using those colors I'm I'm going to paint some random shapes well not random shapes they're probably going to be squares or rectangles but first of all we need to take them out of here and put them on another palette otherwise I won't be able to remember which ones I picked so we've got um burnt sienna this is just blue Tac uh Rose M deep um maroon I've always been an advocate of the restricted palettes because I do think that um it's in general it's a good idea not to have 109 colors in every painting you can have 109 colors if you want but you don't need to use them all every time you paint and some people do and it's not us usually that successful except of course if you're an expert but who is an expert so I'm taking these out of here put them on here so that um I will be less confused yellow Ocha when it comes to doing painting and the next one is greenish yellow greenish yellow and then the next one is cadmium Scarlet hadum orange is the last one and olive green 2 4 6 8 n that's it so we can put the big palettes away we can have rest over there and these are the colors that we're going to use today so I just want to introduce you now to the other things that are on my table here um because we're going to be doing some shapes and then we're going to be doodling over the top of them we need something to do the doodling with so I've got here um some various things I've got an artex acrylic marker in white and one in black as well and this I find is absolutely great these are excellent for doing dots so we will use those um shortly at some point hopefully um they need a good shake before you start you have to give them a jolly good Shake um and then they're fine and there's also this um white pen this is a Pentel uh hybrid gel Pentel is that right anyway it's a hybrid gel I don't know why they don't write their name on it more clearly then I would remember anyway and then I've also got a rather nice gold um fine liner gel pen thingy whatnot which is called a slicky and this this one here slicky it says it quite clearly there and that's by Pentel and it says that there too I do wish they'd make the writing a bit bigger it's getting silly um I'm sure no one can read any of it this is a nice pen it has a a very it's very small it's it's Slender as we all like Slender things don't we and so that's really good I've got that in my kit here which is I'm trying to get things together for my trip going away for a few weeks don't worry I won't be disappearing you won't know I'm gone but um I'm just Gathering things together in a container like this one here and so we could also use these brush pens from fenos their craphy pens could use those um I've got my wisor Newton one on here um and then we've got the shler fine liners and so on and so forth all of which you're very familiar with cuz we use them all the time and I'll put that over there so it's handy if I want it um I'm going to use a bit of gold and I've got a few options here and I just want to show you these options there's this paint here from mab aut colors she's on Etsy these are great they are handmade they're not you know made by big companies so if you like to support people who are doing things of their own um valtion and making things at home over the kitchen sink on the kitchen stove or whatever I don't know how you make paint um these are lovely she has a big range and they're all on Etsy and they're reasonably priced and she ships well wide and they smell nice as well they smell of cinnamon I think something like that um but they do actually and we'll probably try them out today and as well as that of course I've got my cero uh dudah what's it here these ones are good the pearl colors or you could use kurari Golds I think I might have run out now these are getting a bit low they're very intense and easy they activate quite quickly um when you drop water on them and then I've got this Aqua bronze if you want something really fancy this is by schinka it's not schminky by the way it's sha schinka it's German um this is powder I won't open it because it can be messy uh and what you do is you put a little bit of the powder in a little dish and you add a little bit of water and you get a lot of gold paint and it's lovely very nice for professional work um as well I've got my little swatches here Swatch books which I've used these rings to hold together where I've got ideas for Swatch patterns because I can never ever think of anything to do when it comes to doing things on on uh swatching so I've got those and these and we'll look through those later and then I've got another one here this is an idea I wanted to remind myself of which is um that you can actually use writing just your ordinary handwriting if you're doing swatching uh not swatching doodling if you're doing doodling okay so before I start this I thought to myself what I need to do is to do a quick sketch of what I might do on this piece of paper so I've just been and had a shower and uh done this scribbly doah just to give me some something to go by because you know like I've often said and I probably will continue to say um I have a hard time imagining things so I have to often um have something to to refer to so I think this is probably quite a good idea really and you might want to try it too so I'm going to put that on my bookstand in front of me me maaka well Domin on pom push let's start with this one and I'm just going to paint not particularly not particularly um I think I put my brush in the wrong wrong paint there but never mind not particularly um accurate doesn't have to be accurate just fun this is cadmium scarlet and we also we've got um that lovely Red Rose M deep and uh let's go for something a little bit lighter next this is a really good way not only of practicing um color work but also brush handling and um water control you'll learn a lot by doing this about how much water to use when you're painting and you'll also learn a lot about proportions of color you know how much color do you need next to another color going from light to dark and so on and so forth this is Indian red I think so we're going to put a nice strong block of that in and then I might go to I mean you don't have to use all nine it's not obligatory but I'm going to put a nice area of green here I don't want this to be too um geometric and we do want to vary the size and the shape which one haven't I used have I not used that one um I think this one and then um that was burnt sienna wasn't it so that's that one so I think we'll go to Burnt Sienna I think that one was as well okay well that wasn't very sensible but never mind okay so now what we need to do is dry it so I know I'm going to want to use a little bit of gold so I'm going to mix up and probably make a terrible mess a little bit of this powder um we probably need a pet knife something like this this is a a Meen one and we'll just pick up a tiny bit to start with of the gold and then the best way to add the water so that you can control it is to use one of these pipets so we just pick up a little drop or two of that and then we'll see if we can mix it might need a bit more water um somebody asked me last time I used this if it brushed off of the paper after you've painted with it and it it doesn't because it's got binder in it so it actually mixes to paint it's not just pigment and water it's pigment binder and water so we mix that up as best we can little bit fiddly making a bit of a scratchy sort of noise sorry about that I think that'll probably do and um the other ones I'm thinking of using are the mab M colors here which um I've put some water on there and I'll just give it a bit of a Splurge around because it does these ones do take a little bit of time to activate and they vary depending on which one you're using but they are quite nice paints once they get started I think this one the second one along this this set I think is called the gold set something like that this one is by far the strongest I have found I think it's cuz the part particles are smaller than some of the others but anyway I'll activate those a little bit like that and I think activation is probably the right word when it comes to these paints cuz they do need a bit of action um and then these ones are a bit more obedient I've wet them already and um they soften up pretty quickly they say they're made in Germany used them last year a lot for Christmas cards and things that's why they're looking a bit bit worn but they're not as worn as my kurotaki ones which practic empty and they they were the first gold paints that I got I'd never heard of them before and then I this is before we started our Channel I was watching Emma fave and she was using the kuraki ones I think it was yes and I thought oh I need to get some of them right so um we've now got lots of choices of Golds and stuff like that and we've got this and um yeah I don't know I think I'm probably going to paint a lot of gold over it I think that's probably what I'm going to do get rid of [Applause] these going to try out this I'm not using one of my best brushes for the gold I tell you what I do need though is a sample piece of paper just to make sure that it's working this is the schwier bronze Aqua bronze I think it's called isn't it Aqua bronze yeah they have other colors and I'm going to I'm just going to I don't know what I'm going to do I'm I'm playing right is that okay practicing for Christmas have you got any plans for Christmas it's not Christmas yet is it it's not even Halloween yet but if I remember rightly once the end of October arrives everything becomes glittery and shiny and christmy doesn't it okay so let's try one of these MB ones and see how different that is that's quite nice let's do some boxes here oh that's intense isn't it you could fill in the gaps so something like that or you could do joining bits you can do so many different things I think it's quite a good idea to join these together don't know if I'll join all of them let's try this one that's a kind of bronze that doesn't really show up on there does it let's try this one no doesn't really show up either what about the silver I think I'm going to have to give up on that one this will be one that we're going to put black on then or white see how sparkly that M color is it's got different um maybe it'll work on there it's got these little particles in it and I want to put some leaves four different colors of gold going down there like that can you hear the catp purring in the background that's Arthur for for I'm going to fill in some of these gaps here with this quite transparent gold I could probably make that less transparent if I added more of the pigment to it but I'm actually sort of thinking about tile grouting just filling in the gaps just go around the outside edge okay so I think I probably need to run the hair dryer over that before we come to the next thing okay just because I like using this and making dots I'm going to use this white one to make some dots okay and uh I think this one probably needs dots and I quite like this idea that's moderately popular I think on uh other channels I've seen it elsewhere of taking dots and kind of carrying them over more than one panel on your doodle so I'm going to try and do that here in a kind of way some kind of way and um and maybe I might do I don't know maybe I'll do something with black I think it probably needs a bit of black in there somewhere um perhaps perhaps we could go I don't know if that's going to be too [Music] strong might be might be too strong in which case we would go back with a gold pen or even a white one they're different shapes and I think this one's probably going to be too dark for what I want but what I'll do is find a finer one this one is a.3 [Music] so let's try it out down here do that and we could do little circles so once you've got your background prepared you know then that's when you can just go kind of alpha State and meditative and just filling in all the gaps and I do think it's a good idea before you get started to get all your bits and Bobs out so that you just can reach for them cuz you don't you know you don't want to be limited by access to your stuff um so are these dry yeah I think they are it is a good idea to have some ideas oh spirals yes see I'd forgotten about them so I'm going to immediately spiral off into the distance put some spirals here forgotten about Spirals and yet I really like them so you need you need your little crib sheet think I'll put some white ones over here do different sizes and what else do I got here little flowers got little leaves um ah berries yes we could put here we could have some stems and then we could put some berries around something like that what else have we got here well these are kind of like leaves so we could just outline them and then put some some veins in like that and then we could put another little leaf down the bottom maybe two what else have we got here Spirals and flowers what we got here we could do that we could have uh could put a shape in there and then put lines just makes it so much more interesting the thing that you have done which you thought that looks flish but it's not after all you do need that crib sheet though cuz I can't think of these things when I need them and this one I think I need to put a bit more white on um because we're a bit lacking in the white so I'm going to put some white there and then maybe put something in there but I'm not sure what should I just put a simple leaf or that shape and I can put something in the middle of that this one is in need of assistance uh [Applause] uh yeah well I think probably the logical thing is just to put the leaves in there's always going to be leaves in anything I do it seems we won't put veins we'll put circles there we are and um we could put a message we could write something in the middle here we could do that or maybe here we are it's a little message I really like that one I think that one worked out really well with those four different shades of gold coming down there like that that was a happy accident as uh Mr Ross used to say wasn't it B Bob Ross well I think I'm going to stop now because I think it's lunchtime and I think that's probably quite enough of your time taken up let me know in the comments below what you think of that and I'll look forward to reading your comments as usual and um don't forget to like And subscribe and visit us on patreon I'm not going to say anything else because apparently everybody will have gone by now so if you're still there happy painting and I'll see you again soon bye for now everybody bye F hello Orel are you meant to be there are you sure no I didn't think so