Review on 🎨 Daniel Smith Extra Fine Watercolor Essentials Introductory Set, 6 Tubes, 5ml, Blue/Transparent/Yellow by Jessica Lewis

I have been working with watercolor for a year. I have used several different brands of student watercolor paints, most of which are quite good in terms of color saturation and performance. Having tried the professional honey-based brand and now Daniel Smith, I prefer the latter. and yes, professional and student grades affect performance. As a rule, DS colors are much more concentrated than school colors, so it takes a very long time for a small amount of color to come through. Plus, paper (100% cotton) just loves them! However, Primatek inks behave slightly differently than traditional DS inks. They granulate naturally. It's like the mineral base is on top of the paper which causes streaks, although this can be due to not enough water in the wash. Colors are subtle except for rhodonite which is a fairly light pink. For a nice subtle grainy color I definitely recommend it. They dry faster than regular paints. As if they would absorb water differently. I also bought a set of essentials. I tried on and mixed the two sets (photo attached) which resulted in beautiful colours. The tubes are small, but not as tiny as other reviewers have led me to believe. One of the 5ml tubes fills a full pot with the remaining paint in the tube. The INSIDE of the full Meeden shells I use is 2.8mmL x 1.6W x .08H. If you break it down by cost, I paid less than $4 for a full shell. That's not bad for professional watercolors. The paints arrived on time and were personally delivered to my door. The boxes were sealed with tape and the tubes were full and sealed. All matching colors were in the boxes. I am very happy that I will draw with these colors again!