This was excellent! Well designed benchmark tests that shows some of the most important properties of the same color across several brands. Our partner company Utrecht Art Supplies was so happy to see their color included! Some of the more economical versions are especially good for volume use and large classrooms, but we agree that getting the best you can afford is key to having a great first experience with paint. Learning how to objectively compare paints is an important skill every artist should learn. Well done!!!
Wow thank you so much for watching and for leaving this comment! I have tried to design tests that make a fair test across brands to show people how each perform so that viewers are better able to find the paint that best fits their needs. I’d love to do a video sponsored by Blick 😉
The application method could use improvement, from a scientific angle. She only dipped her brush into the Liquitex Basics once, when doing the painting over the black. And, she did not dip the brush in as deeply as with the Utrect, for instance.
Jeej Winsor and Newton acrylic paint. I wanna try the Winsor and Newton galaria acrylic paints. I am not starting out but i am not a artist. I love these test of paint and there colours and there texture,s. Please keep on doing it👋🏾😁🖐🏾👍🏾
I was wondering if you could please compare the golden with the artist quality liquitex paint as well it would give a better comparison . Thank you for the video you did a great job 😊
Thank You SOOOOOO MUCH for doing this comparison of Golden, Utrecht and Winsor Newton. I have been moving into Professional level of Acrylics, having seen how much more transparent Student grade paint is. I love Golden but I've noticed that it is VERY EXPENSIVE. Seeing how the Utrecht and Winsor Newton behave shows me that I can also use one or both of them. Pricing is a important aspect of buying paints and all Art Supplies.
Thank you Rachelle, I appreciate all your time and attention to detail for this review! You helped me decide to go ahead and wait until I can invest in W&N when the time is right! I LOVE that Blick even saw your review, how cool! Have a great one. 😁
Very good video, thank you!! Would it be possible to do also a color shift comparison by any chance? /if the colors darken 1 shade after drying, comparing to the out of the tube color/
🦋🌷🧸 I haven't tried Utricht yet and only tried W&N this month so feeling a bit excited about this one. The Blick I tried came from a set and was probably a student grade but I'm not sure. Now you have me curious about the different versions of Golden. Open, heavy, high flow, etc.
This is such a helpful video! I was interested in WN but was afraid how it would perform compared to Golden paint, but this helped me answer my questions!
I'm feeling the low opacity of the liquitex right now. I have their gesso and I've done 4 layers already and it's still not covering! It was a black paper background and I did add a little water to help reduce lines but you can still see a bit. It won't be an issue with regular white canvas or even cardboard but yeah, not super opaque..
Really like these comparison videos, they are really helpful for me to make a more conscious and budget friendly purchase. Would also love to see the inclusion of the very cheap craft paints in the benchmark again (decoart stuff for example, it is very easily found here in Canada). All in all, Golden seems to be consistently very good and Liquitex basics seem consistently bad, from all the comparison videos I've been seeing. Was impressed with the Winsor and Newton here though! On your other comparison video, the Yellow Winsor and Newton looked quite worse than the Golden, while here they seemed a bit more on par. Would love to see a couple other colors from those brands being compared! :)
Thanks so much for watching! I definitely plan to do more of the comparisons in the future as I'm always curious to see how they turn out. I can definitely add more cheap brands in the future! I plan to do one that also has paint that's available on Amazon (probably some off brands on there as well).
Different series of W&N. The yellow was Galeria, which is their studio/student range (one of the best in that category IMO, but here in Europe we don't have all the brands you have in the US), whereas this was their Professional series.
Another great review, Rachelle. I’m sure that you should always use single pigmented paints for primary colours. In this review the Liquitex looked orange to me! Take care and stay safe!
To be precise - this is not the case for phthalocyanine paints. They are nearly always mixed with white pigment (or another light pigment such as pale yellow) when used in paintings, in order to increase their apparent chroma and lighten the hue. Another pigment that is commonly mixed prior to being placed onto a surface is dioxazine violet - for the same reason. But, yes, there are generally advantages to sticking with single pigments for tubes of paint. Sometimes, though, the benefits of having two pigments in a tube of paint outweigh the drawbacks. This depends upon the needs of the particular artist. One example is to mix an organic with an inorganic of roughly the same hue. This can have the advantage, in oils for instance, of requiring less oil than the organic pigment alone, being more opaque than the organic pigment alone, having more lightfastness than the organic pigment alone - but also improving the intensity of tints. Inorganic pigments such as PR 108 can suffer from a greyish appearance in tints. There is no single-pigment yellow-green that offers the chroma of a mixed paint involving (for instance) phthalo green YS and hansa PY3. This is why mixtures like that are so common in paint lines. If one of your "primaries" is a yellow-green (primary just means it's a point on the color wheel where the chroma is maximized) then you'll want a mixed pigment paint unless you work with a muted palette. (As a side note, PY3 has lightfastness issues.) Some inorganic pigments are not very lightfast but are mixed with lightfast pigments so that the fading of the paint is not as drastic. Many "opera" paints do that (using a highly-fugitive fluroescent dye with PR 122 quincridone magenta or PR 19 quinacridone rose). A painter's "primary" magenta may be one of those, if the painter is creating the work for a format that doesn't require archival lightfastness. Another advantage of a mixed paint is due to the phenomenon of "spacing" - wherein the small pigment particles of one pigment fill in the gaps left by the large particles of the other pigment. There are drawbacks to the mixed pigments approach, too.
Thank you for this!! No wonder why I fight with Liquitex….🤦🏻♀️ I bought multiple colors for paint pouring, worked well. I tried painting with it…went downhill from there. Never thought to compare it against the other brands. Brilliant! 🌺😊
This is a really well-designed test plan, and definitely something we need more of. I'd love a cross-brand comparison of Ultramarine Blue. I have it in Liquitex Heavy Body and Atelier Free Flow and I find neither are particularly pleasant to use, tearing on multiple brush-strokes and generally looking extremely "plasticky". I know it's a transparent colour, but still, it works a lot better in other mediums. Cad Red Light is a king amongst colours, isn't it? Almost too strong to handle, and I find it takes a while to clean out of brush. The Liquitex basics hue formulation is interesting, because they've chosen two of the most transparent pigments around to emulate cadmium. Having said that, the warm glow from multiple glazes is a lovely quality in its own right. Final thought - it's wild to me that Golden's yellow cadmium hue is more expensive than its true cadmium red. I'll have to look up what pigments they're using in there.
Thank you. I would love to do a cross brand comparison of Ultramarine Blue :) I have never heard of Atelier Free Flow but will definitely check that out. Cad Red Light is an intense color and I find that I need very little of it to mix in before it's overpowering. I also 100% agree that cleaning it out of a brush seems like a lot more work than with other colors (in part why I edited out all of the cleaning segments) ;) Thank you so much for watching, I truly appreciate your support.
@@RachelleByersArt Atelier is an Australian brand from a company called Chroma - they also produce the Jo Sonja acrylic gouache, which I think Is better known in the US.
@@nicholascaldwell6079 Is Chroma's Atelier the one that is slow drying? "A bit like Golden's OPEN, but totally different" is the description I've recall. Or am I thinking of another Aussie brand here?
@@RachelleByersArt Yes, Ultramarine blue would be a good comparison. The pigment is fairly cheap, but it is not the easiest one to get a nice stable acrylic paint out of. Other good ones to test across brands are the Phtalos - PG 7 for green and PB 15 (& its siblings PB15:4 and 15:1) for blue. These are cheap and inherently transparent, but insanely staining, so the philosophy in how the paint is formulated varies quite a bit between companies. Just throwing as much pigment as you can into acrylic will get you something insanely dark and potent. For these you might want to add an element of tinting strength to your panel of tests.
@@tonaaspsusa Atelier have a few lines and you're thinking of their "Interactive" heavy body acrylics, which can be made re-workable with a special isopropyl alcohol spray. Their free-flow line is similar to Golden's fluid acrylics but, I've found, not quite as pleasant to use. Though to be fair I've only tried two colours. Matisse, another Aussie brand, have a Fluid line too, which is quite usable.
This is a really helpful video to compare brands. My only request is that you create a comparison video of paint brands all in the same level, so the first three you compare are professional brands. It would have been nice if the Liquitex was also professional level. Nonetheless, I appreciate seeing the differences between the first three brands. Thank you.
The Dick Blick is actually also a single pigment paint, if it is only PR 108:1 in it. Pigment Red 108:1 is just a slightly different variant of Pigment Red 108. Edited to add: Very nice video! You should have more views and subscribers.
Thank you so much! Hoping some day my channel will take off :) Regarding your comment, you are correct and I miss spoke, what I should've said is that it is not the same single pigment color as the main three professional brands that I was testing.
The colon:1 indicates coprecipitation with lithopone filler. It makes the paint more transparent and can decrease color intensity, especially with an inorganic pigment like cadmium red that has relatively large particles. However, some pigments may have slightly increased intensity with certain fillers, due to a phenomenon called spacing. Barium sulfate filler, one of the two components of lithopone (the other being zinc sulfide white) is inexpensive so it is used mainly to reduce the cost to the manufacturer. It also makes tubes of paint feel heavier which amateurs think means better-quality product. Although regulations requires the use of the colon on the label, there is a massive loophole. A company could use pure PR 108 pigment and cut the product much more by simply adding barium sulfate (and/or lithopone) to the mixture, without even putting it on the label. Generally, therefore, the :1 labeling doesn't tell consumers much. It should also be emphasized that fillers aren't necessarily something that makes a product inferior. Everything has pros and cons, although too much filler crosses a line wherein the product becomes more and more niche. For instance, too much barium sulfate can cause the opacity to become so low that the paint is less generally useful, since a person could add mediums if they want to cut the opacity and would have the opacity from the paint when they want it. With the filler-laden paint, that flexibility is lost. To obtain the maximum opacity with cadmium pigments, one would purchase the non-colon varieties and a product that isn't strongly cut with filler. More pigment = better is actually not true for several reasons, although the most pigment one can put into the product and have it perform to your expectations = better is a general rule of thumb (heuristic). Barium sulfate in oil paint, the natural variety, dulls color intensity and reduces opacity. However, its inclusion can also reduces the oil percentage in tubes of paint that use organic pigments for their coloration. (Organic pigments need more oil to wet them than inorganic pigments with large particle sizes like natural barium sulfate.) That can be a useful improvement upon the pigment(s) alone. Pros and cons. Some fillers, though, can cause very serious problems in certain mediums. Alumina (stearate and/or hydrate) may compromise the long-term stability of oil paint films, for instance. Despite that, such additives are common in oil paint to keep the pigment from separating from the oil in the tube. Due to its whiteness, the zinc sulfide in lithopone can cause some pigment mixtures to look a bit brighter. However, lithopone isn't nearly as opaque as titanium white. Too much whitening reduces the flexibility of the paint because an artist could mix an un-cut pigment with white when they want that lightening. Lithopone also reduces opacity, particularly due to the barium sulfate component. (Lithopone is a coprecipitation of the mostly transparent/colorless barium sulfate and the white pigment zinc sulfide. Zinc sulfide is more opaque than zinc oxide, known in watercolors as Chinese white, but less opaque than titanium white.) The base cadmium pigments themselves are coprecipitations, too - except for one (cadmium sulfide, PY 37). The others have zinc (pale yellows) and selenium (oranges to deep reds). The more selenium is in the pigment mix the redder (further from greenish yellow and heading toward crimson) the cadmium paint will be.
@@syrinx9196 Wow! Not only a whole lot of knowledge, also a very nuanced view. Thank you so much for taking the time to write this all out - it jives well with what I've gleaned from various sources over the years and completes it nicely. "Fillers" is such a marketing word, and so seldom do you see them even talked about as additives (or actually pigments if we want to be technical). It is really only O'Hanlon from Natural Pigments/Rublev that sells these and provides some information on them. I don't think I've ever seen lithopone or barite or any other "weak PW" in acrylic, at least not declared as such.
@@tonaaspsusaYou're welcome. Not all fillers are pigments. Some are colorless. Although some fillers can function as pigments, at least to some degree, due to their opacity typically and/or coloration, some additives/fillers are mainly or wholly there for other purposes, such as to prevent the separation of the liquid vehicle and the solids, rheology alterations (such as thixotropic gelling), to make the tube feel heavy, et cetera.
@@syrinx9196 yeah, this "Although some fillers can function as pigments" was what I was thinking of. Coming to oil paints from acrylics and watermedia this was a revelation that made me really think differently about paint and pigments: You can have colourless acrylic, put without some sort of pigment your oils will just not work/behave well.° The start is to think of paint as binder + pigment. But that is only the start. Especially in oil paints the line between pigment and additive gets blurry really fast 🙂 °Here's a nice experiement for anyone reading this: take a few different painting oils or oil painting mediums and see how they dry on their own, without any pigment. Highly unpredictable, and highly prone to weird things happening as they age. An acrylic medium otoh (let's specify a non-matte one)... You _can_ get crazing or alligatoring with acrylics, but it's not that easy, and after a week or so it will be stable for years to come.
This is a fantastic comparison. I'm currently whole-hog into Golden, but was thinking of trying Windsor Newton' s pro line. I love window shopping via youtube:D Cad red is a good choice too, since none of the "student" ranges use it, so now people get to see what they're missing. Glad to see I was entirely justified in passing up the liquitex basics in favor of real paint, even as a beginner. I hate that label "student". Just be honest and say cheap crap! (Blick looks surprisingly decent though. Guess it depends.) One suggestion for future compares: once a coat is opague, just stop right there, since more won't actually do anything, and then you have a record of how many coats it actually took.
The Windsor Newton I thought did really good at covering the detail, but you were looking at it in person, I’m just looking at it on a tiny phone, anyway this was really cool to see! I’m not even a painter and i still watched the whole thing, so I hope a lot of painters and people starting out in painting find your channel, because they could learn a lot from it. Your videos are so professionally done too, I have no doubt your channel will blow up! Just out of curiosity, does it take awhile to go through a 2oz tube? I know there are probably soo many variables there, like if it’s a common colour etc, but i suppose I just mean in a general sense- If it’s even possible to answer in a general sense
It was definitely easier to see in person and was hard to see in the video (had thought about deleting that portion because I felt the professional brands all did well, but felt that would be dishonest). So I go through certain colors very fast depending upon the project and scale I’m painting. Lately I’ve had a lot of portraits commissioned so I’ve gone through a lot of those colors. I would say that scale, technique and brand play a big roll in how fast I go through paint. For the basic color staples I use I tend to buy them in 10oz tubes minimum. Thank you for your continued support!
Liquitex has gone down hill. I bought a bunch of paint colors in different brands and i'm unhappy with all three of the Liqitex heavy body paints i bought, and need to buy them again from different brands. Their Indanthrene blue is NOT a cooler blue than ultramarine blue, and i highly suspect that they lied about using the indanthrene pigment, and instead used ultramarine with a little PB15:1 (Phthalo blue red shade) and also some mars black. disgusting. I also bought their phthalo green yellow shade and green gold. the green gold is not as vibrant as other brands and based on that i'm also re-ordering the PG36 from W&N. Ordering the green gold from M.Graham, and the Indanthrene blue from W&N. still waiting to see how different the colors turn out. Also, I've bought several colors from the Liquitex Basics line, and I have a bunch of old Basics paints of my moms that i still use, and there is a stark difference in pigment load and even vibrancy. I would avoid Liquitex products in the future, unless they apologize and shift gears dramatically. Not to mention that Jerry's Artarma has pointed out that the Liquitex acrylic gouache is not gouache at all, but just a soft bodied matte acrylic advertised as acrylic gouache. Very dissapointed in the Liquitex brand.
Thanks for watching. I would agree about Liquitex. I also have old Liquitex that I feel like performs better than the new stuff. This is a big part of why I started these tests because even if you like how one color performs from a brand doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to like them all
@@RachelleByersArt i very much appreciate yall who demonstrate the differences between brands. it saves people (and me) a lot of money and frustration. The colors and even pigments behave so differently between brands and it's very hard to know what you're buying until you buy it, esp. shopping online. And there's very few visual demonstrations that give practical information on acrylic colors. Very much appreciated.
@roach this means a lot. It takes a ton of time and money to make these. I started doing them because I wish someone had done them for me so I had known the differences between brands. Figure if I struggled with it that there are probably other artists out there that do as well.
There are two varieties of indanthrone blue produced by industry. One is a green shade and the other is a red shade. Unfortunately, C.I. pigment color codes are extremely sloppy in some regards and the use of a single code, PB 60, to refer to both shades is an example. "the green gold is not as vibrant as other brands and based on that i'm also re-ordering the PG36 from W&N" PG36 is phthalo green yellow shade (brominated copper phthalo). Green gold pigments do not include any phthalocyanines but do include pigments like PY129 (azomethine copper complex). Of course PG36 is brighter; it is the brightest organic green pigment there is. It's also not a green-gold pigment.
I'm getting into acrylics and I'm so glad I watched this video. I have watched several and they all come to a similar conclusion. Liquidex is not the way to go even if you are just getting started. I will spend a little more for quality to ensure its not the paint holding me back but my skillset for the moment.
@rccdelmte I'm so glad it was helpful! I've done a few on a variety of colors and brands in hopes that it would help people pick which brands they want to try, before making the financial commitment
That was Liquitex Basics (student grade). I understand that using the cheaper student grade paints makes learning harder. But comparing a student grade to professional grades isn't exactly accurate either. Not all Liquitex paints are student grade.
@Teresa Grigsby-Rose, that's the point of the video. To show the differences between various paint brands and levels. Essentially to provide art isle help. There's no way to know how well a cheaper paint is going to perform in comparison to a more expensive paint by just looking at the tube, and just because a paint is more expensive doesn't necessarily mean it is going to out perform a cheaper variety. My goal is to show how they perform across a variety of tests so that artists can have a better understanding of what best fits their needs and budget.
if you call the video "brand comparison" you should compare artist grade paints with artist grade paints only, not artist grade paints with student grade paints. Of course Liquitex Basics (student grade) is not as good as Golden (artist grade). That doesn`t mean the brand Liquitex is bad.
No, you're wrong, Wolfgang. It's incredibly helpful for people to see the difference between common paints that have a 6X price difference, so as to know what to expect from both the cheaper and more expensive paints. Also, where's your videos on paint comparisons?
@@TheRamsberg I think it would be better annd more fair to tell people the difference between artist grade and student grade paint first, before saying one brand is better than another. Each of the brands has artist and student grade paint. Except Golden which only has artist grade. To tell them one brand is better than the other, when actually different classes of paint are compared, won`t be helpful in my opinion for people in finding the best paint for their needs and it is not doing justice to the brands either. I am not making paint comparison videos, but I think I have the right to tell my opinion about such videos anyways, and my comment was not made in order to insult the maker of the video or anything like that, but in order to make it clearer to people that there are different grades of paint from each brand, which are of course much different in price and in quality.
@@TheRamsberg I don`t make comparison videos, but this is my opinion on acrylc paint from different brands: Golden makes the best artist grade acrylic paint when it comes to some hues. In other hues Liquitex artist grade (heavy body acrylics) is even better or equal. (I couldn`t find a decline in quality of the Liquitex artist grade paint up to now, which was mentioned by other people - but I knew for a while already that Liquitex in general cannot be stored as long as Golden - the paint goes bad faster). I have Golden paint tubes for years, and they are still perfectly good, whereas some hues of Liquitex, no matter if artist grade or student grade, tend to go bad much faster. But Golden is the most expensive, at least here in Germany, and so you have to decide what works better for yourself. Winsor and Newton Artist grade acrylics are equal with Golden and Liquitex artist grade in my opinion in most hues, but the range is currently limited. Outstanding with the Winsor and Newton paint is the feeling. It feels like painting with oil colors. As Golden doesn`t make student grade paint from what I know, there is nothing to compare here. Student grade arylics: The Winsor and Newton student grade acrylics (Galeria) are at least as good as Liquitex Basics. With the student grade acrylics you can do complete acrylic paintings without problems. If you are using a glazing technique, in some cases the less pigmented / less thick student grade paints might work even better than the highly saturated artist grade paints. For first stages of paintings, underpaintimgs and so on, it would be a waste of money in my opinion to buy the most expensive artist grade paint from the top brands. Best and cheapest is still to make your own paint from binder and pigments, especially when it comes to liquid acrylics / acrylic inks. So I think it depends mostly on your painting technique and your style, which kind of paint works best for you. I worked for years with nothing much more than student grade paints (Daler Rowney is good also) and it worked perfectly for me, even with multi layered very colorful and saturated paintings, I still use student grade paints from various brands as long as the pigments are labeled as lightfast (another criteria to consider). But using the artist grade paints can sometimes lead to results faster. It depends on the painting. I would recommend checking out the whole range (I mean the most necessary colors you need) of a student grade brand paint first, and if you are not satisfied with certain hues, buy another brand student grade paint of same hue, or additionally an artist grade paint same hue. Slowly you will find out, what works for you, without going bancrupt. The paint you didn`t like so much can still be used in many ways, underpaintings, ink making, anything. What will not work if you want to make paintings that should go on sale or should last a long time are the dollar store and cheapest walmart craft paints (but walmart has good brand paint also). The craft paints are ok for craft projects, but for "fine art" they won`t work in most cases.
@@WolfgangSchweizer Thanks for the elaboration. I see what you're getting at now, but the fact that she had the price of them on the sheet, should show people watching that of course one will not be equal to the other. Although, she did another comparison video, this time color blending, wherein both Liquitex Basics and Professionals were used, along with other paints th-cam.com/video/cPN_RXA758Q/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=RachelleByersArt and in that color at least, the Basics arguably performed better, but it wasn't the heavy body professionals. I'm getting back into painting after some 20 years away from it, and it's been a bit rough, just even trying to remember how to properly load paint onto a brush and such. I'm slowly going through making primary(or as close as is available) color mixing tests with Walmart's cheap Apple Barrel, and Folk Art craft paints, Daler Rowney's "Simply" line, Artist's Loft's Gouache, Liquitex Basics, and Winsor & Newton's Galeria. Taking my time, trying to analyze what's going on and have just done the Simply and Gouache ones thus far, (but have recently used Apple Barrel craft paint, and was struggling mightily with technique with it, but that's because I was trying to do things which require a firmer bodied paint than it has, what a difference different paints make). Curiously, the Artist's Loft Gouache has way more pigment, but of a much lower quality than the Daler Rowney's, which has a lower pigment load, but a much more vibrant one, although it dries much darker than the Gouache, which apparently is due to the type of binder used? Again, I must say, it helps me tremendously to see a student grade(such as Basics of Galeria) used in comparisons with the professional paints, so that I'll know what more I'll get when deciding to put down the money to began using the professional ones. My original reply to you was rather snidely, in regards to where your paint comparison videos were, but after reading your experiences and insight, seriously, I do hope you consider putting that in video form on here. You could help people avoid years of struggle and tons of money in ill conceived paint selection choices. My avatar photo thing is one of my old paintings, from 20 years ago. I think it was with Apple Barrel craft paint, which I seem to recall being thicker back then, than it is now. Not exactly certain. Anyways, carry on, and keep those brushes wet and sharp!
@@WolfgangSchweizer I agree with your initial review and left one here, as well, saying the same thing. Thanks for your elaboration on what you use different paint grades for and your experiences with different brands. Just reading this, was incredibly informative!
It's actually not so obvious because most people are unaware that the PR9 pigment used in the mixture is not lightfast. How transparent a product is doesn't actually tell us how useless the product is for serious art. If a product is much less expensive and much more transparent, some artists will accept that it's a less flexible product. And, some pigments are purchased because they're transparent! That's another thing that is falsely implied with many of these video comparisons - that transparency in a paint makes the paint inferior. Many cheaper paint grades are more opaque, due to the addition of white fillers. Professional-grade watercolors, for instance, are often preferred when the fineness of the pigment grind and the lack of opacifying fillers keeps the resulting paint more transparent. In some cases, artists will even prefer a less-pigmented pro-grade paint because of the increased transparency (and, often, increased gloss). The watercolor comparison videos I've seen typically fall into the trap of claiming that a less-pigmented paint is inferior. It depends upon the needs of the artist. I have seen, for instance, some artists complain in their writings about a heavily-pigmented watercolor brand because the pigments were less-finely ground. Different people have different requirements. With watercolors, one very debated quality is granulation. It is true, though, that fillers come with drawbacks - like reduced color intensity, cloudiness, and a matting effect - depending upon the medium and the filler(s). Some fillers in the oil medium can cause the surface to become cloudy with whitish residue, as the filler migrates to the surface. That is certainly not a good thing. And, transparent pigments glaze more effectively in mediums like oil paint. What is generally best is to use a naturally-transparent pigment when one needs transparency (such as PR168, anthra scarlet) and a naturally-opaque pigment when one needs opacity (like PR108 cadmium scarlet). However, there is plenty of complexity involved that makes that rule of thumb (heuristic) overstated. Simply cutting an opaque pigment heavily with filler to gain pseudo-transparency doesn't automatically cause the paint to no longer be useful for serious art. It can have drawbacks, though - like loss of color intensity. The lack of lightfast pigmentation, though, is a deal-breaker with this Liquitex Basics red. This is why these paints are called student-grade. They are not intended for serious art, where lightfastness matters. Instead of being called student-grade, they really should be called sketch grade or amateur grade. A student in an atelier requires serious art materials.
This test set Liquitex Basic up to fail. Golden PR108 is a real cadmium, opaque paint. It's literally made to cover up anything below it. The Liquitex paint is a semi-opaque hue. There was no way it was going to cover up solid black marks without a ton of layers because it's see through. Golden also makes semi-opaque colors and if you had used one of those, it would have taken 6 or more layers to cover up the black markers. Golden has way more pigment than Liquitex Basic but Liquitex Basic is still a decent brand and it's used by a lot of professional artists who want minimal texture. An artist can take craft paint and make an amazing painting. No one has to wait until they can afford an expensive paint to create art. And no one is going to be doing all of that to cover up a black marker. If it's that serious, cover it with white gesso and go on with the painting. These tests are useless, meant to impress people on TH-cam who have never been to art school. Professionally trained artists will use whatever they can afford and not think twice about it. Material will never make the artist.
Thank you so much @serenityjewel for your comment! I agree with multiple of your comments “no one has to wait until they can afford an expensive paint to create art” and “material will never make the artist”. Often as an artist, I am asked what paint brand I use and which one is best. These tests are to show people a comparison between multiple brands so that they are able to determine what paint may best fit their needs as well as their budget. I know plenty of people who use craft paint and create true masterpieces, while others insist that only the high-quality brands can do so. The brand for which an artist selects is based on personal preference doesn’t make one person‘s art better than another just because they chose a pricier brand.
If a brand is half the price and needs twice as many coats, it's no longer half the price 😉 Nice video - thanks for sharing 👍
Thanks so much for watching @Richard Moore
This was excellent! Well designed benchmark tests that shows some of the most important properties of the same color across several brands. Our partner company Utrecht Art Supplies was so happy to see their color included! Some of the more economical versions are especially good for volume use and large classrooms, but we agree that getting the best you can afford is key to having a great first experience with paint. Learning how to objectively compare paints is an important skill every artist should learn. Well done!!!
Wow thank you so much for watching and for leaving this comment! I have tried to design tests that make a fair test across brands to show people how each perform so that viewers are better able to find the paint that best fits their needs. I’d love to do a video sponsored by Blick 😉
This is helpful content for choosing my acrylic paints! Thank you for sharing❤️❤️❤️
Thank you so much for watching!
Being a science teacher, I love your scientific comparison. Excellent job!!😃
Thank you so much! Hope you have a wonderful rest of your day
The application method could use improvement, from a scientific angle. She only dipped her brush into the Liquitex Basics once, when doing the painting over the black. And, she did not dip the brush in as deeply as with the Utrect, for instance.
I might use Liquitex basics for washes and layers
Great video! This is exactly what I’ve been searching for! Thank you!!
So glad to hear it! Thank you so much for watching
These videos are helpful, but mostly they're just really satisfying to watch lol
thank you! Glad that you enjoyed them :) I am working on more of them as people have requested more colors to be done :)
As :I have said before I just love these tests. Your so lucky to find a way to buy a bunch of pant.
Yeah, that’s very helpful my friend.☺️👍🏻
Thanks so much!
Jeej Winsor and Newton acrylic paint. I wanna try the Winsor and Newton galaria acrylic paints. I am not starting out but i am not a artist. I love these test of paint and there colours and there texture,s. Please keep on doing it👋🏾😁🖐🏾👍🏾
I was wondering if you could please compare the golden with the artist quality liquitex paint as well it would give a better comparison . Thank you for the video you did a great job 😊
I will add that to one of my upcoming comparison videos :) thank you for the request
Thank You SOOOOOO MUCH for doing this comparison of Golden, Utrecht and Winsor Newton. I have been moving into Professional level of Acrylics, having seen how much more transparent Student grade paint is. I love Golden but I've noticed that it is VERY EXPENSIVE. Seeing how the Utrecht and Winsor Newton behave shows me that I can also use one or both of them. Pricing is a important aspect of buying paints and all Art Supplies.
Thank you watching and for your comment
Thank you Rachelle, I appreciate all your time and attention to detail for this review! You helped me decide to go ahead and wait until I can invest in W&N when the time is right! I LOVE that Blick even saw your review, how cool! Have a great one. 😁
Glad it was helpful! I couldn’t believe that blick commented. I keep hoping someday they’ll sponsor a video 🤞🏼
Very good video, thank you!!
Would it be possible to do also a color shift comparison by any chance? /if the colors darken 1 shade after drying, comparing to the out of the tube color/
Yeah I can add that into my comparisons
🦋🌷🧸
I haven't tried Utricht yet and only tried W&N this month so feeling a bit excited about this one.
The Blick I tried came from a set and was probably a student grade but I'm not sure.
Now you have me curious about the different versions of Golden.
Open, heavy, high flow, etc.
@Cheryl Alikhani I really like Golden. I like it because it behaves predictably and preforms super well.
This is such a helpful video! I was interested in WN but was afraid how it would perform compared to Golden paint, but this helped me answer my questions!
Thank you @jay kang! I tried to incorporate all the things I would want to know about a paint prior to buying it
I'm feeling the low opacity of the liquitex right now. I have their gesso and I've done 4 layers already and it's still not covering! It was a black paper background and I did add a little water to help reduce lines but you can still see a bit. It won't be an issue with regular white canvas or even cardboard but yeah, not super opaque..
Hoping that you were eventually able to get it to cover the paper!
This was a simple and terrific comparison of the acrylics and really great info! Thank you!
Thanks so much for watching!
This is very interesting!! And perhaps you should get a sponsor! :D
I keep dreaming that one day it’ll happen 😊
Glad to see Utrecht doing well
Really like these comparison videos, they are really helpful for me to make a more conscious and budget friendly purchase. Would also love to see the inclusion of the very cheap craft paints in the benchmark again (decoart stuff for example, it is very easily found here in Canada). All in all, Golden seems to be consistently very good and Liquitex basics seem consistently bad, from all the comparison videos I've been seeing.
Was impressed with the Winsor and Newton here though! On your other comparison video, the Yellow Winsor and Newton looked quite worse than the Golden, while here they seemed a bit more on par. Would love to see a couple other colors from those brands being compared! :)
Thanks so much for watching! I definitely plan to do more of the comparisons in the future as I'm always curious to see how they turn out. I can definitely add more cheap brands in the future! I plan to do one that also has paint that's available on Amazon (probably some off brands on there as well).
Different series of W&N. The yellow was Galeria, which is their studio/student range (one of the best in that category IMO, but here in Europe we don't have all the brands you have in the US), whereas this was their Professional series.
The music is beautiful. What is it called?
Another great review, Rachelle. I’m sure that you should always use single pigmented paints for primary colours. In this review the Liquitex looked orange to me! Take care and stay safe!
@John Byers yes the liquitex was very orange in comparison to the others and very liquidy. Thank you so much for watching
To be precise - this is not the case for phthalocyanine paints. They are nearly always mixed with white pigment (or another light pigment such as pale yellow) when used in paintings, in order to increase their apparent chroma and lighten the hue. Another pigment that is commonly mixed prior to being placed onto a surface is dioxazine violet - for the same reason. But, yes, there are generally advantages to sticking with single pigments for tubes of paint.
Sometimes, though, the benefits of having two pigments in a tube of paint outweigh the drawbacks. This depends upon the needs of the particular artist. One example is to mix an organic with an inorganic of roughly the same hue. This can have the advantage, in oils for instance, of requiring less oil than the organic pigment alone, being more opaque than the organic pigment alone, having more lightfastness than the organic pigment alone - but also improving the intensity of tints. Inorganic pigments such as PR 108 can suffer from a greyish appearance in tints.
There is no single-pigment yellow-green that offers the chroma of a mixed paint involving (for instance) phthalo green YS and hansa PY3. This is why mixtures like that are so common in paint lines. If one of your "primaries" is a yellow-green (primary just means it's a point on the color wheel where the chroma is maximized) then you'll want a mixed pigment paint unless you work with a muted palette. (As a side note, PY3 has lightfastness issues.)
Some inorganic pigments are not very lightfast but are mixed with lightfast pigments so that the fading of the paint is not as drastic. Many "opera" paints do that (using a highly-fugitive fluroescent dye with PR 122 quincridone magenta or PR 19 quinacridone rose). A painter's "primary" magenta may be one of those, if the painter is creating the work for a format that doesn't require archival lightfastness.
Another advantage of a mixed paint is due to the phenomenon of "spacing" - wherein the small pigment particles of one pigment fill in the gaps left by the large particles of the other pigment.
There are drawbacks to the mixed pigments approach, too.
Thank you for this!! No wonder why I fight with Liquitex….🤦🏻♀️ I bought multiple colors for paint pouring, worked well. I tried painting with it…went downhill from there. Never thought to compare it against the other brands. Brilliant! 🌺😊
Glad I could help @Sunflower246 ! I also tried paint pouring with Liquitex but I think my problem was that I just suck at paint pouring 😂🤣
Liquitex Basics is intentionally a substandard "student-grade" paint line. The company offers professional-grade lines for higher prices.
This is a really well-designed test plan, and definitely something we need more of. I'd love a cross-brand comparison of Ultramarine Blue. I have it in Liquitex Heavy Body and Atelier Free Flow and I find neither are particularly pleasant to use, tearing on multiple brush-strokes and generally looking extremely "plasticky". I know it's a transparent colour, but still, it works a lot better in other mediums.
Cad Red Light is a king amongst colours, isn't it? Almost too strong to handle, and I find it takes a while to clean out of brush.
The Liquitex basics hue formulation is interesting, because they've chosen two of the most transparent pigments around to emulate cadmium. Having said that, the warm glow from multiple glazes is a lovely quality in its own right.
Final thought - it's wild to me that Golden's yellow cadmium hue is more expensive than its true cadmium red. I'll have to look up what pigments they're using in there.
Thank you. I would love to do a cross brand comparison of Ultramarine Blue :) I have never heard of Atelier Free Flow but will definitely check that out.
Cad Red Light is an intense color and I find that I need very little of it to mix in before it's overpowering. I also 100% agree that cleaning it out of a brush seems like a lot more work than with other colors (in part why I edited out all of the cleaning segments) ;)
Thank you so much for watching, I truly appreciate your support.
@@RachelleByersArt Atelier is an Australian brand from a company called Chroma - they also produce the Jo Sonja acrylic gouache, which I think Is better known in the US.
@@nicholascaldwell6079 Is Chroma's Atelier the one that is slow drying? "A bit like Golden's OPEN, but totally different" is the description I've recall. Or am I thinking of another Aussie brand here?
@@RachelleByersArt Yes, Ultramarine blue would be a good comparison. The pigment is fairly cheap, but it is not the easiest one to get a nice stable acrylic paint out of.
Other good ones to test across brands are the Phtalos - PG 7 for green and PB 15 (& its siblings PB15:4 and 15:1) for blue. These are cheap and inherently transparent, but insanely staining, so the philosophy in how the paint is formulated varies quite a bit between companies. Just throwing as much pigment as you can into acrylic will get you something insanely dark and potent. For these you might want to add an element of tinting strength to your panel of tests.
@@tonaaspsusa Atelier have a few lines and you're thinking of their "Interactive" heavy body acrylics, which can be made re-workable with a special isopropyl alcohol spray. Their free-flow line is similar to Golden's fluid acrylics but, I've found, not quite as pleasant to use. Though to be fair I've only tried two colours. Matisse, another Aussie brand, have a Fluid line too, which is quite usable.
This is a really helpful video to compare brands. My only request is that you create a comparison video of paint brands all in the same level, so the first three you compare are professional brands. It would have been nice if the Liquitex was also professional level. Nonetheless, I appreciate seeing the differences between the first three brands. Thank you.
This was a helpful comparison! Thank you!
Thank you @Tiffany L I’m glad to hear it was helpful!
You did an excellent job with your explanation.
Glad it was helpful @Theartisthands. I have two newer ones as well that include a few more tests
The Dick Blick is actually also a single pigment paint, if it is only PR 108:1 in it. Pigment Red 108:1 is just a slightly different variant of Pigment Red 108.
Edited to add: Very nice video! You should have more views and subscribers.
Thank you so much! Hoping some day my channel will take off :)
Regarding your comment, you are correct and I miss spoke, what I should've said is that it is not the same single pigment color as the main three professional brands that I was testing.
The colon:1 indicates coprecipitation with lithopone filler. It makes the paint more transparent and can decrease color intensity, especially with an inorganic pigment like cadmium red that has relatively large particles. However, some pigments may have slightly increased intensity with certain fillers, due to a phenomenon called spacing. Barium sulfate filler, one of the two components of lithopone (the other being zinc sulfide white) is inexpensive so it is used mainly to reduce the cost to the manufacturer. It also makes tubes of paint feel heavier which amateurs think means better-quality product. Although regulations requires the use of the colon on the label, there is a massive loophole. A company could use pure PR 108 pigment and cut the product much more by simply adding barium sulfate (and/or lithopone) to the mixture, without even putting it on the label. Generally, therefore, the :1 labeling doesn't tell consumers much.
It should also be emphasized that fillers aren't necessarily something that makes a product inferior. Everything has pros and cons, although too much filler crosses a line wherein the product becomes more and more niche. For instance, too much barium sulfate can cause the opacity to become so low that the paint is less generally useful, since a person could add mediums if they want to cut the opacity and would have the opacity from the paint when they want it. With the filler-laden paint, that flexibility is lost. To obtain the maximum opacity with cadmium pigments, one would purchase the non-colon varieties and a product that isn't strongly cut with filler. More pigment = better is actually not true for several reasons, although the most pigment one can put into the product and have it perform to your expectations = better is a general rule of thumb (heuristic). Barium sulfate in oil paint, the natural variety, dulls color intensity and reduces opacity. However, its inclusion can also reduces the oil percentage in tubes of paint that use organic pigments for their coloration. (Organic pigments need more oil to wet them than inorganic pigments with large particle sizes like natural barium sulfate.) That can be a useful improvement upon the pigment(s) alone. Pros and cons. Some fillers, though, can cause very serious problems in certain mediums. Alumina (stearate and/or hydrate) may compromise the long-term stability of oil paint films, for instance. Despite that, such additives are common in oil paint to keep the pigment from separating from the oil in the tube.
Due to its whiteness, the zinc sulfide in lithopone can cause some pigment mixtures to look a bit brighter. However, lithopone isn't nearly as opaque as titanium white. Too much whitening reduces the flexibility of the paint because an artist could mix an un-cut pigment with white when they want that lightening. Lithopone also reduces opacity, particularly due to the barium sulfate component. (Lithopone is a coprecipitation of the mostly transparent/colorless barium sulfate and the white pigment zinc sulfide. Zinc sulfide is more opaque than zinc oxide, known in watercolors as Chinese white, but less opaque than titanium white.) The base cadmium pigments themselves are coprecipitations, too - except for one (cadmium sulfide, PY 37). The others have zinc (pale yellows) and selenium (oranges to deep reds). The more selenium is in the pigment mix the redder (further from greenish yellow and heading toward crimson) the cadmium paint will be.
@@syrinx9196 Wow! Not only a whole lot of knowledge, also a very nuanced view.
Thank you so much for taking the time to write this all out - it jives well with what I've gleaned from various sources over the years and completes it nicely.
"Fillers" is such a marketing word, and so seldom do you see them even talked about as additives (or actually pigments if we want to be technical). It is really only O'Hanlon from Natural Pigments/Rublev that sells these and provides some information on them.
I don't think I've ever seen lithopone or barite or any other "weak PW" in acrylic, at least not declared as such.
@@tonaaspsusaYou're welcome. Not all fillers are pigments. Some are colorless. Although some fillers can function as pigments, at least to some degree, due to their opacity typically and/or coloration, some additives/fillers are mainly or wholly there for other purposes, such as to prevent the separation of the liquid vehicle and the solids, rheology alterations (such as thixotropic gelling), to make the tube feel heavy, et cetera.
@@syrinx9196 yeah, this "Although some fillers can function as pigments" was what I was thinking of. Coming to oil paints from acrylics and watermedia this was a revelation that made me really think differently about paint and pigments:
You can have colourless acrylic, put without some sort of pigment your oils will just not work/behave well.°
The start is to think of paint as binder + pigment. But that is only the start. Especially in oil paints the line between pigment and additive gets blurry really fast 🙂
°Here's a nice experiement for anyone reading this: take a few different painting oils or oil painting mediums and see how they dry on their own, without any pigment. Highly unpredictable, and highly prone to weird things happening as they age. An acrylic medium otoh (let's specify a non-matte one)... You _can_ get crazing or alligatoring with acrylics, but it's not that easy, and after a week or so it will be stable for years to come.
This is a fantastic comparison. I'm currently whole-hog into Golden, but was thinking of trying Windsor Newton' s pro line. I love window shopping via youtube:D
Cad red is a good choice too, since none of the "student" ranges use it, so now people get to see what they're missing. Glad to see I was entirely justified in passing up the liquitex basics in favor of real paint, even as a beginner.
I hate that label "student". Just be honest and say cheap crap! (Blick looks surprisingly decent though. Guess it depends.)
One suggestion for future compares: once a coat is opague, just stop right there, since more won't actually do anything, and then you have a record of how many coats it actually took.
Thanks so much for watching. Really appreciate the support and the suggestion!
What's actually the most important flaw of the Basics tube here is the use of impermanent PR9 red.
One thing. Golden does not mix well with other colors. Especially blue. You end up with some muddy, dull, weird blue
I love the red Winser and Newton paint
The Windsor Newton I thought did really good at covering the detail, but you were looking at it in person, I’m just looking at it on a tiny phone, anyway this was really cool to see! I’m not even a painter and i still watched the whole thing, so I hope a lot of painters and people starting out in painting find your channel, because they could learn a lot from it. Your videos are so professionally done too, I have no doubt your channel will blow up! Just out of curiosity, does it take awhile to go through a 2oz tube? I know there are probably soo many variables there, like if it’s a common colour etc, but i suppose I just mean in a general sense- If it’s even possible to answer in a general sense
It was definitely easier to see in person and was hard to see in the video (had thought about deleting that portion because I felt the professional brands all did well, but felt that would be dishonest).
So I go through certain colors very fast depending upon the project and scale I’m painting. Lately I’ve had a lot of portraits commissioned so I’ve gone through a lot of those colors. I would say that scale, technique and brand play a big roll in how fast I go through paint. For the basic color staples I use I tend to buy them in 10oz tubes minimum.
Thank you for your continued support!
@@RachelleByersArt ah I see, thanks! 😊
One also using Liquitex heavy body (not Basics) would be nice.
Thanks @Teresa Grigsby-Rose for the suggestion
Thank you for the video.
Thank you for watching!
I've also been wondering how the French made Sennelier Acrylics compare.
Will add that to my list of ones to try in the future
Liquitex has gone down hill. I bought a bunch of paint colors in different brands and i'm unhappy with all three of the Liqitex heavy body paints i bought, and need to buy them again from different brands. Their Indanthrene blue is NOT a cooler blue than ultramarine blue, and i highly suspect that they lied about using the indanthrene pigment, and instead used ultramarine with a little PB15:1 (Phthalo blue red shade) and also some mars black. disgusting. I also bought their phthalo green yellow shade and green gold. the green gold is not as vibrant as other brands and based on that i'm also re-ordering the PG36 from W&N. Ordering the green gold from M.Graham, and the Indanthrene blue from W&N. still waiting to see how different the colors turn out.
Also, I've bought several colors from the Liquitex Basics line, and I have a bunch of old Basics paints of my moms that i still use, and there is a stark difference in pigment load and even vibrancy. I would avoid Liquitex products in the future, unless they apologize and shift gears dramatically. Not to mention that Jerry's Artarma has pointed out that the Liquitex acrylic gouache is not gouache at all, but just a soft bodied matte acrylic advertised as acrylic gouache. Very dissapointed in the Liquitex brand.
Thanks for watching. I would agree about Liquitex. I also have old Liquitex that I feel like performs better than the new stuff. This is a big part of why I started these tests because even if you like how one color performs from a brand doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to like them all
@@RachelleByersArt i very much appreciate yall who demonstrate the differences between brands. it saves people (and me) a lot of money and frustration. The colors and even pigments behave so differently between brands and it's very hard to know what you're buying until you buy it, esp. shopping online. And there's very few visual demonstrations that give practical information on acrylic colors. Very much appreciated.
@roach this means a lot. It takes a ton of time and money to make these. I started doing them because I wish someone had done them for me so I had known the differences between brands. Figure if I struggled with it that there are probably other artists out there that do as well.
There are two varieties of indanthrone blue produced by industry. One is a green shade and the other is a red shade. Unfortunately, C.I. pigment color codes are extremely sloppy in some regards and the use of a single code, PB 60, to refer to both shades is an example.
"the green gold is not as vibrant as other brands and based on that i'm also re-ordering the PG36 from W&N"
PG36 is phthalo green yellow shade (brominated copper phthalo). Green gold pigments do not include any phthalocyanines but do include pigments like PY129 (azomethine copper complex). Of course PG36 is brighter; it is the brightest organic green pigment there is. It's also not a green-gold pigment.
Thank you, this was wonderful! Please, would you be willing to say how to find this music? It put me into a lovely almost trance state.
I believe the music is from the TH-cam Audio Library
thanks
You're welcome!
I'm getting into acrylics and I'm so glad I watched this video. I have watched several and they all come to a similar conclusion. Liquidex is not the way to go even if you are just getting started. I will spend a little more for quality to ensure its not the paint holding me back but my skillset for the moment.
@rccdelmte I'm so glad it was helpful! I've done a few on a variety of colors and brands in hopes that it would help people pick which brands they want to try, before making the financial commitment
That was Liquitex Basics (student grade). I understand that using the cheaper student grade paints makes learning harder. But comparing a student grade to professional grades isn't exactly accurate either. Not all Liquitex paints are student grade.
@Teresa Grigsby-Rose, that's the point of the video. To show the differences between various paint brands and levels. Essentially to provide art isle help. There's no way to know how well a cheaper paint is going to perform in comparison to a more expensive paint by just looking at the tube, and just because a paint is more expensive doesn't necessarily mean it is going to out perform a cheaper variety. My goal is to show how they perform across a variety of tests so that artists can have a better understanding of what best fits their needs and budget.
Thank you.
You're welcome! Thanks for watching
Very nice
@V. Mishra’s art -thank you so much for watching
Thank you! this is exactly what I was looking for!
Glad it was helpful! Thanks so much for watching!
Thanks!
You’re welcome! thanks for watching
nice comparison
Thank you 😊
if you call the video "brand comparison" you should compare artist grade paints with artist grade paints only, not artist grade paints with student grade paints.
Of course Liquitex Basics (student grade) is not as good as Golden (artist grade).
That doesn`t mean the brand Liquitex is bad.
No, you're wrong, Wolfgang. It's incredibly helpful for people to see the difference between common paints that have a 6X price difference, so as to know what to expect from both the cheaper and more expensive paints. Also, where's your videos on paint comparisons?
@@TheRamsberg I think it would be better annd more fair to tell people the difference between artist grade and student grade paint first, before saying one brand is better than another. Each of the brands has artist and student grade paint. Except Golden which only has artist grade.
To tell them one brand is better than the other, when actually different classes of paint are compared, won`t be helpful in my opinion for people in finding the best paint for their needs and it is not doing justice to the brands either.
I am not making paint comparison videos, but I think I have the right to tell my opinion about such videos anyways, and my comment was not made in order to insult the maker of the video or anything like that, but in order to make it clearer to people that there are different grades of paint from each brand, which are of course much different in price and in quality.
@@TheRamsberg I don`t make comparison videos, but this is my opinion on acrylc paint from different brands: Golden makes the best artist grade acrylic paint when it comes to some hues. In other hues Liquitex artist grade (heavy body acrylics) is even better or equal. (I couldn`t find a decline in quality of the Liquitex artist grade paint up to now, which was mentioned by other people - but I knew for a while already that Liquitex in general cannot be stored as long as Golden - the paint goes bad faster). I have Golden paint tubes for years, and they are still perfectly good, whereas some hues of Liquitex, no matter if artist grade or student grade, tend to go bad much faster.
But Golden is the most expensive, at least here in Germany, and so you have to decide what works better for yourself.
Winsor and Newton Artist grade acrylics are equal with Golden and Liquitex artist grade in my opinion in most hues, but the range is currently limited. Outstanding with the Winsor and Newton paint is the feeling. It feels like painting with oil colors.
As Golden doesn`t make student grade paint from what I know, there is nothing to compare here.
Student grade arylics:
The Winsor and Newton student grade acrylics (Galeria) are at least as good as Liquitex Basics.
With the student grade acrylics you can do complete acrylic paintings without problems. If you are using a glazing technique, in some cases the less pigmented / less thick student grade paints might work even better than the highly saturated artist grade paints.
For first stages of paintings, underpaintimgs and so on, it would be a waste of money in my opinion to buy the most expensive artist grade paint from the top brands.
Best and cheapest is still to make your own paint from binder and pigments, especially when it comes to liquid acrylics / acrylic inks.
So I think it depends mostly on your painting technique and your style, which kind of paint works best for you. I worked for years with nothing much more than student grade paints (Daler Rowney is good also) and it worked perfectly for me, even with multi layered very colorful and saturated paintings,
I still use student grade paints from various brands as long as the pigments are labeled as lightfast (another criteria to consider).
But using the artist grade paints can sometimes lead to results faster. It depends on the painting.
I would recommend checking out the whole range (I mean the most necessary colors you need) of a student grade brand paint first, and if you are not satisfied with certain hues, buy another brand student grade paint of same hue, or additionally an artist grade paint same hue. Slowly you will find out, what works for you, without going bancrupt. The paint you didn`t like so much can still be used in many ways, underpaintings, ink making, anything.
What will not work if you want to make paintings that should go on sale or should last a long time are the dollar store and cheapest walmart craft paints (but walmart has good brand paint also). The craft paints are ok for craft projects, but for "fine art" they won`t work in most cases.
@@WolfgangSchweizer Thanks for the elaboration. I see what you're getting at now, but the fact that she had the price of them on the sheet, should show people watching that of course one will not be equal to the other.
Although, she did another comparison video, this time color blending, wherein both Liquitex Basics and Professionals were used, along with other paints th-cam.com/video/cPN_RXA758Q/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=RachelleByersArt and in that color at least, the Basics arguably performed better, but it wasn't the heavy body professionals.
I'm getting back into painting after some 20 years away from it, and it's been a bit rough, just even trying to remember how to properly load paint onto a brush and such.
I'm slowly going through making primary(or as close as is available) color mixing tests with Walmart's cheap Apple Barrel, and Folk Art craft paints, Daler Rowney's "Simply" line, Artist's Loft's Gouache, Liquitex Basics, and Winsor & Newton's Galeria. Taking my time, trying to analyze what's going on and have just done the Simply and Gouache ones thus far, (but have recently used Apple Barrel craft paint, and was struggling mightily with technique with it, but that's because I was trying to do things which require a firmer bodied paint than it has, what a difference different paints make). Curiously, the Artist's Loft Gouache has way more pigment, but of a much lower quality than the Daler Rowney's, which has a lower pigment load, but a much more vibrant one, although it dries much darker than the Gouache, which apparently is due to the type of binder used?
Again, I must say, it helps me tremendously to see a student grade(such as Basics of Galeria) used in comparisons with the professional paints, so that I'll know what more I'll get when deciding to put down the money to began using the professional ones.
My original reply to you was rather snidely, in regards to where your paint comparison videos were, but after reading your experiences and insight, seriously, I do hope you consider putting that in video form on here. You could help people avoid years of struggle and tons of money in ill conceived paint selection choices.
My avatar photo thing is one of my old paintings, from 20 years ago. I think it was with Apple Barrel craft paint, which I seem to recall being thicker back then, than it is now. Not exactly certain.
Anyways, carry on, and keep those brushes wet and sharp!
@@WolfgangSchweizer I agree with your initial review and left one here, as well, saying the same thing. Thanks for your elaboration on what you use different paint grades for and your experiences with different brands. Just reading this, was incredibly informative!
Pretty obvious that Liquitex Basics is junk unless you do transparent watercolor.
It's actually not so obvious because most people are unaware that the PR9 pigment used in the mixture is not lightfast. How transparent a product is doesn't actually tell us how useless the product is for serious art. If a product is much less expensive and much more transparent, some artists will accept that it's a less flexible product. And, some pigments are purchased because they're transparent! That's another thing that is falsely implied with many of these video comparisons - that transparency in a paint makes the paint inferior. Many cheaper paint grades are more opaque, due to the addition of white fillers. Professional-grade watercolors, for instance, are often preferred when the fineness of the pigment grind and the lack of opacifying fillers keeps the resulting paint more transparent. In some cases, artists will even prefer a less-pigmented pro-grade paint because of the increased transparency (and, often, increased gloss). The watercolor comparison videos I've seen typically fall into the trap of claiming that a less-pigmented paint is inferior. It depends upon the needs of the artist. I have seen, for instance, some artists complain in their writings about a heavily-pigmented watercolor brand because the pigments were less-finely ground. Different people have different requirements. With watercolors, one very debated quality is granulation.
It is true, though, that fillers come with drawbacks - like reduced color intensity, cloudiness, and a matting effect - depending upon the medium and the filler(s). Some fillers in the oil medium can cause the surface to become cloudy with whitish residue, as the filler migrates to the surface. That is certainly not a good thing.
And, transparent pigments glaze more effectively in mediums like oil paint. What is generally best is to use a naturally-transparent pigment when one needs transparency (such as PR168, anthra scarlet) and a naturally-opaque pigment when one needs opacity (like PR108 cadmium scarlet). However, there is plenty of complexity involved that makes that rule of thumb (heuristic) overstated. Simply cutting an opaque pigment heavily with filler to gain pseudo-transparency doesn't automatically cause the paint to no longer be useful for serious art. It can have drawbacks, though - like loss of color intensity.
The lack of lightfast pigmentation, though, is a deal-breaker with this Liquitex Basics red. This is why these paints are called student-grade. They are not intended for serious art, where lightfastness matters. Instead of being called student-grade, they really should be called sketch grade or amateur grade. A student in an atelier requires serious art materials.
Where is Liquitex professional?
This test set Liquitex Basic up to fail. Golden PR108 is a real cadmium, opaque paint. It's literally made to cover up anything below it. The Liquitex paint is a semi-opaque hue. There was no way it was going to cover up solid black marks without a ton of layers because it's see through. Golden also makes semi-opaque colors and if you had used one of those, it would have taken 6 or more layers to cover up the black markers. Golden has way more pigment than Liquitex Basic but Liquitex Basic is still a decent brand and it's used by a lot of professional artists who want minimal texture.
An artist can take craft paint and make an amazing painting. No one has to wait until they can afford an expensive paint to create art. And no one is going to be doing all of that to cover up a black marker. If it's that serious, cover it with white gesso and go on with the painting. These tests are useless, meant to impress people on TH-cam who have never been to art school. Professionally trained artists will use whatever they can afford and not think twice about it. Material will never make the artist.
Thank you so much @serenityjewel for your comment! I agree with multiple of your comments “no one has to wait until they can afford an expensive paint to create art” and “material will never make the artist”. Often as an artist, I am asked what paint brand I use and which one is best. These tests are to show people a comparison between multiple brands so that they are able to determine what paint may best fit their needs as well as their budget. I know plenty of people who use craft paint and create true masterpieces, while others insist that only the high-quality brands can do so. The brand for which an artist selects is based on personal preference doesn’t make one person‘s art better than another just because they chose a pricier brand.