Trying out White Nights watercolors

 Testing White Nights watercolors!

A few days ago, I went to the art supply store, searching for a small tin palette in which I could put my dried gouache. Unfortunately, the basic 12-pan palette was out of stock, and I did not want to wait until they had ordered some new ones. Next to these sadly empty shelves were some White Nights watercolors. I had already heard about them, in a Youtube video by Emily Olson Art, they were not super expensive, so I decided to buy them!

You can find below a full video of my unboxing and first swatches, and on this video I give a short update on the tests I've made with the watercolors.

Unboxing and first impressions

The tin palette is very nice, you get 12 full pans, with a nice selection of colors: cadmium yellow, cadmium yellow medium, ochre light, red ochre, cadmium red light, carmine, cobalt blue azure, ultramarine, emerald green, sap green, burnt umber and lamp black. The colors are a little bit different from the ones I had on my small W&N Cotman watercolor palette. Globally it leans more towards earthy tones, which is great.

It's super comfortable to have some full pans, as you can dip even your big brushes in very easily. I first swatched the colors on the swatch sheet included in the box. I found it very hard to get the pigments at first, as I did not moisten the pans beforehand.

Almost all colors are single-pigments (except sap green), and they have a very high lightfastness rating. Most of them are transparent or semi-transparent.

The metal box & the colors.

Play time

Exploring the colors & loose landsape

Once I had a first idea of the colors, I played a little bit with the colors on my watercolor sketchbook. It helps me to better understand how they interact, and what type of colors I can get. I don't use any specific method at this step, it is purely to start having fun with the colors. Right off the bat, I noticed that the cadmium red gave me some very intersting earthy mixes! Red ochre is also a beautiful color for earthy mixes. When I need to go more vibrant, carmine is a powerful and clean red to mix with. Emerald green - which I'm not so familiar with - gives so incredible deep greens and blues when mixed with the other colors. 

I also did a first very loose landscape, to understand how I could layer the colors, how strong they were, etc. It also puts me on the mood to play some more with them.

Here is a scan of the first sketchbook page I've done with these watercolors. 

First test of the White Nights watercolors - playing with colors and loose landcsape sketch.

Playing some more - testing (more) defined pieces

During the following days, I continued to play some more with the new watercolors, trying to paint a variety of scenes. I did a more detailed version of my loose sunset landscape, but also a beach scene.

I sometimes find it hard to get very dark and pigmented colors, but it could be because I'm used to more opaque watercolors (especially for the yellow ochre and the lamp black).

The more I use them, the happier I am with the color choices in this limited palette. You can get some very clean and interesting mixes. 

I really like the colors for some beach scenery. And, even if I love this color, I found myself not using the sap green that much... but rather mixing my own greens and playing with the very powerful emerald green! 

Sunset over the hills in Madagascar - White Nights watercolors

French coast - White Nights watercolors

I will of course continue to experiment with these watercolors in the coming months! But for now I am very happy with this choice :)

Let me know in the comments if you've ever tried this brand, or if you would like me to try out some other brands, or run some other tests on this brand.