Review and Demo of W&N Cotman Watercolours Sketchers' Pocket Box

Review and Demo of W&N Cotman Watercolours Sketchers' Pocket Box: Painting a postcard of Tuscany

I got the Cotman Watercolours Sketchers' Pocket Box set about a year and a half ago as part of a goodie bag of the Urban Sketchers Oslo event. I never bothered even to unbox it because I already had a "go to" specially curated palette I used for all my paintings, but kept it to eventually regift it to someone else.

It was actually after this event that I started to toy with the idea of painting more outside and for that I needed something more portable, and months later found a good solution for that in a subscription box.

It is a handy mini palette with a mixture of the colors that came with it (I'm not even sure which brand and actual pigments they are, it wasn't specified) and some colors I adore like shell pink from PWC, Cobalt Turquoise Light and Payne's Gray from W&N, etc.

It was in December while planning content for my channel that I remembered that I had this set and, because sets like this are one of the "go to" for beginners to start painting (I started myself with a similar one I still have), I decided to give it a try since I make a lot of tutorials for beginners.

To be able to compare better I chose to re-paint something I had done before that is relatively simple for beginners to recreate.

As a first step I did swatches of all the colors and some mixes I thought I would need for this painting:

The colors are transparent for the most part, except ochre (3) who is more opaque than I expected, it has more of a gouache quality. Cerulean (12) works really well to paint a clear blue sky

 

The greens cannot be used straight out of the pan for vegetation but by mixing them with blue, ochre, and the browns a lot of interesting shades can be made. And well, that's the case regardless of what paints you use when painting nature. 

I think for me the biggest struggle is that I normally use paint that comes originally in a tube, so the consistency is different, and most of my paints are in the professional range, so it is easier to get a lot of pigment in the brush with less effort (I hate when my paintings look anemic). 

I was also taken aback at first with how opaque and gouache-like the ochre color is, since I'm used to the W&N pro version that is on the transparent side. Other than that, provided you pre wet your paints for about 10 minutes before using them, you'll be able to paint things that are colorful and beautiful using this palette (also! remember that the paper you use is even more important than the paints for obtaining good results!).

As for the color selection, I found it decent, although I did miss not having a colder blue. The white worked fairly well for what I used it, but I still think for things like this is best to keep a tube of gouache white paint in your kit.

I wouldn't say it is my favorite set now, but I did enjoy the challenge of painting with something different and adored the result.

The motive itself is a fairly famous chapel in Siena called Chapel of Vitaleta. I think that even if you don't know the name, you've seen pictures of it. I have painted it myself before and it is part of one of my Postcards collections:

I think that I even the new version more color scheme wise, but I do love the Poppies in the foreground for the older one.

You can see the entire process here:

Review and demo video on my YouTube channel. I go in detail about how I pick the colors and do the color mixes

Supply List

A few closeups of the result.

I try to make a simple pencil sketch to figure out the composition of my paintings. Same with making paint swatches when I'm not familiarized with the colors

For being student grade paints, the colors are really vibrant