All Hail Inktober!
Even though Inktober is now officially 'finished', I am still having fun playing with inks and experimenting with the different types. Yesterday I was in one of my local artshops, The Artshed, and saw this fabulous new product from Derwent - an Inktense Paint Pan Travel Set.
This is a great little product, containing 12 half pans of Inktense blocks, a water barrel travel water brush, a little spongey thing, and a reference chart all packaged in a neat little travel box. Price was reasonable for the item at $42.95 AUS (less artists' Art Shed discount) - not super cheap but worth the price IMO.
So the first thing I did was trials and test strips of the colours. This was done on some offcuts of 250gsm Bockingford Not Press watercolour paper.
12 hues of the 72 colour range are in this set, but if you already own a 24 set of the pencils these would be an excellent back up to that set. Five of the colours match in number/hue to the 24 set of pencils: 0400 Poppy Red, 0200 Sun Yellow, 1000 Bright Blue, 1300 Teal Green, 2200 Ink Black. All the other colours are new numbering/hues to me - they are probably found in the set of 36 or 48 or 72 pencils, so if you own one of the expanded sets you will have a match.
The hues have the brilliance and intensity we have come to know with the pencils and blocks of the Inktense range. The colours wash very well, creating even gradations. I found doing tonal gradations easier with these pans than I have with the pencils. Some colours are more opaque than others (0400 Poppy Red for example).
A picky thing about the set - the brush does not come with a cap for the brush section - it does have a little black sealing cap for the water barrel. So, after use you must screw off the brush section and cap the remaining water with the cap. Not a big deal, but I know I am going to lose that little black cap very quickly. Obviously they couldn't fit a full capping brush into the brush section... but maybe they could have reduced the size of the sponge area and lengthened the brush area to accomodate this? Not a big issue, just saying.
12 hues of the 72 colour range are in this set, but if you already own a 24 set of the pencils these would be an excellent back up to that set. Five of the colours match in number/hue to the 24 set of pencils: 0400 Poppy Red, 0200 Sun Yellow, 1000 Bright Blue, 1300 Teal Green, 2200 Ink Black. All the other colours are new numbering/hues to me - they are probably found in the set of 36 or 48 or 72 pencils, so if you own one of the expanded sets you will have a match.
The hues have the brilliance and intensity we have come to know with the pencils and blocks of the Inktense range. The colours wash very well, creating even gradations. I found doing tonal gradations easier with these pans than I have with the pencils. Some colours are more opaque than others (0400 Poppy Red for example).
A picky thing about the set - the brush does not come with a cap for the brush section - it does have a little black sealing cap for the water barrel. So, after use you must screw off the brush section and cap the remaining water with the cap. Not a big deal, but I know I am going to lose that little black cap very quickly. Obviously they couldn't fit a full capping brush into the brush section... but maybe they could have reduced the size of the sponge area and lengthened the brush area to accomodate this? Not a big issue, just saying.
Then I played around with the pans more, creating a little painting of California poppies on a 300gm Daler-Rowney watercolour postcard.
I really enjoyed working with these and found mixing and creating the brilliant hues of the poppies alot of fun. Building up the tonal range and hues over dried layers worked well, there was no movement of hue from layer to layer. A little sepia from an Adel .04 pen was added when dry for emphasis. As a first attempt with this product am reasonably happy with the result.
This travel set will now be part of my reqular 'kit' I take for nature drawing and studies. Great product!
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