These paints work well with waterbrushes as they can be used to easily wet the paint pans, allowing you to work from them directly. Instead of mixing colours, I used bright purples, pinks and yellows straight from the palette, rather than trying to create a completely realistic painting and found the Chinese brushes absolutely perfect for adding to this watery effect. Hiwa-iro - From the Japanese mahiwa which is the name for the eurasian siskin - a small bird in the finch family which has striking yellow-green feathers. One of the best ways to boost your creativity is to try something new and take yourself out of your comfort zone. Colours] Gansai is traditional Japanese watercolor, utilizing colours that are based off those seen in nature, meaning they are vivid and opaque.

Overall, I am spell-bounded by these beautiful gansai watercolours and would highly recommend them to any artists interested in trying Japanese watercolours. They are designed to be used in a single layer on absorbent Japanese paper rather than in several layers.When you add wet paint to paint that has started to dry, you get a liquid flow that pushes the paint into flower-like shapes. The nice thing about the empty chart is that you can paint the colors showing masstone (the color with no water added) and also what it looks like at more watery tints. Gansai is a lot more vibrant due to this, as well as being more opaque and drying with a glossy finish rather than a matte one.

Byakugun - Light blue; in Japanese this colour traditionally describes the pigment made from crushed azurite. The paints can be used directly out of the box with a wet paintbrush - either thinly in translucent washes, or by layering for a bolder effect.Gansai” just means “watercolor” in Japanese (better translated as “Japanese watercolor” to imply there’s something different about it) and “Tambi” is Kuretake’s marketing hype: the Japanese symbols are for “ecstasy” or perhaps “ecstatic”.