What's It Like: MaimeriBlu and Old Holland Watercolors

There's a good deal of shooting from the hip that I seem to involuntarily do while learning about watercolors. Maybe it's stubbornness, or perhaps impatience resulting from today's world of smartphones and the there's-an-app-for-that way of accomplishing daily tasks. When I have my wits about, I actually make an effort to read, which is still admittedly a struggle, as I still find myself going to YouTube first, just to see if someone has already talked about it. Ughhh, I know, I'm hopeless.

Anyhow, on one of my better days, I read about selecting the best primaries, I came across this pretty thorough blog post by handprint.com. It sings praises for Old Holland and MaimeriBlu, so I got curious and bought a few tubes.

MaimeriBlu 

From the manufacturer: "Maimeri was founded in 1923 by noted Italian impressionist painter, Gianni Maimeri, who was searching to satisfy his own burning desire for artistic excellence in paint.

The result of his passion is a line of highly concentrated, lightfast watercolors with performance unlike most of their mass-produced counterparts. Every color is made with the best binder available — a gum-arabic from Kordofan, in the Sudan region. The result is an almost completely clear and elastic medium, totally soluble in water, yielding the purest and most brilliant tones."

I got the following colors:

1. Primary Yellow (PY 97 Permanent Yellow)
2. Primary Red Magenta (Quinacridone Violet, PV 19)
3. Primary Blue - Cyan (PB 15:3)
4. Permanent Green Deep (PY 15, PG 7)
5. Garnet Lake (PV 19, PV 23)

*Colors may appear differently as your screens may be calibrated differently from mine

Old Holland

From the manufacturer: "Old Holland has been making artist colors since 1664, making it one of the oldest continuously operating companies in the art supplies industry. The company is known for uncompromising adherence to traditional techniques and standards. All color making is done by hand, and all processes are controlled by artists. Pigments are ground in stone rather than metal rollers."

I got the following colors:

1. Scheveningen Yellow Lemon (PY 3)
2. Scheveningen Blue (PB 15:3)
3. Old Holland Magenta (Quinacridone Magenta, PR 122)
4. Old Holland Bright Green (PG 36)
5. Old Holland Bright Violet (Quinacridone Violet, PV 19)

I later found that my selection does not produce great mixes, so I added the following:

1. Cadmium Yellow Medium (PY 35)
2. Old Holland Bright Red (PR 108, Cadmium Red)
3. Ultramarine Blue (PB 29)

*Colors may appear differently as your screens may be calibrated differently from mine

*Colors may appear differently as your screens may be calibrated differently from mine

Can I deduce anything from comparing these swatches? Honestly, no. (Except perhaps how MaimeriBlu glides like cream!!) I've barely scratched the surface on the comparisons, I would point you to the handprint.com blog, but I think some analyses no longer apply given some of them were made years ago. The inability to see difference is just insufficient testing and inexperience. I'll need to mix them to see which combinations create the clearest mixes, try them on different papers to see which behave better on which paper.

What I did learn from trying them, swatching them and seeing them dry (or not!) on my palettes, is that it seems, as far as paints are concerned, that they're not as critical as getting to know your papers. These artist-grade paints are all gorgeous, whether you have one or the other, with these trusted names, you will probably be fine. Which brand you choose, IMHO, should probably be better influenced by their affordability to you, and your ease of access to the paints that you decide to get used to. There seems little worse than running out of a color and not being able to replenish quickly.

I'll share my mixing exercises with you on another blog post. If you would like to try Old Holland, MaimeriBlu and Sennelier but you're not quite as crazy as me to shell out for full tubes, I'm destashing them in some of my handmade palettes in my shop. Just go to Shop > Travel Palettes, and look for ones with Paints options :)