You may have heard of Chris Court, a watercolourist living on the edge of Dartmoor. She paints beautiful, loose landscapes, using Dartmoor as the subject for most of her work. She recently won our #HoradamWatercolour Competition with a beautiful painting entitled, ‘Bluebells on Dartmoor’
We asked Chris Court to review Jackson’s Artist Watercolour 21ml tubes and below we find out her thoughts on these paints.
A Watercolour Review
By Chris Court
Colours Reviewed:
- Naples yellow,
- Cadmium yellow light
- Lemon yellow
- Indigo
- Cerulean Blue
- Phthalocyanine blue
- French Ultramarine
- Burnt Umber
- Cadmium Red Light
- Colbalt Violet Deep hue
- Raw Sienna
The large tubes with their creamy, easy flowing paints are a joy to use; mixing is a pleasure as there are no ‘sticky’ consistencies to any of the paints I tested. I am impressed by their value for money, and must admit to being more generous with the amounts I used and mixed, but what fun I had.
All the paints have good saturation although Cadmium red light, permanent magenta and cerulean blue have slightly lower saturation than other makes I have tried. Embrace the difference as the cadmium red light mixed well and was very useful in the palette, making a gorgeous orange when mixed with Cadmium yellow light, very vibrant. Permanent magenta was exciting to use with its wonderful granulation and made a gorgeous violet when mixed with Ultramarine.
The blues were beautiful, jewel like qualities that sparkled in the light and mixed to perfection.
Earth colours, Burnt Umber and Raw Sienna are good basic colours for the palette; nothing to get excited about, but where would be without them?
I mixed all the blues with all the yellows to make a multitude of greens and they all had good saturation, and flowed really well during the painting exercise.
Cobalt Violet Deep hue is a vibrant colour with granulation that exceeds all expectations, making it a useful addition to the palette, especially when painting wet into wet in a loose spontaneous way.
I think we all get stuck in our comfort zone at some stage, having the opportunity to try different colours from different makes is often something that can move our work forward, I now have several new exciting colours from Jackson’s Artist Watercolours and I can’t wait to get going. At this price you can’t go wrong. The Naples yellow is the best, trust me I have all the makes!
My painting ‘A View to Yes Tor’ has all of the colours I tested, so that you could see them in a painting.
Chris Court will be exhibiting her work on 13th August with Jude Freeman, printmaker at The Bracken Gallery in Chudleigh until 27th August and her Dartmoor series will be on show in ‘Dartmoor Reflections’ at the National Trust, Sexton House, Widecombe in the moor for the entire month of September.
Jackson’s Artist Watercolour tubes are available here.
